You will hear over and over that it is important to have a social presence where your audience is for reach. And yes, it is very important. But when you are just getting started, in order to build momentum and to help you to stick to a plan, start doing what you do well. If you are a strong writer, begin by writing a blog. For community builders, setup a Facebook page and start enticing visitors to follow you. Or if visual is your forte, create videos for YouTube or post photos on Instagram. By doing what comes easy, you can begin to build relationships.
To use your time and effort strategically and efficiently make sure you set your strategy and goals. Know who your audience is and what is important to them. Develop a compelling message – one that will attract and engage your audience. This will be the cornerstone of all your communications. Then prioritize. Start with what is easy, then build on your marketing continually focusing on what is important to your audience and reaching them where they are. This way, everything you publicize will be associated with the same communications thread – your company message.
Here is a list of marketing functions for who need to get started on social:
1. Writer: You love to write. You are good at writing. Start by writing a blog. Write consistently and often. Look for guest blogging opportunities. Guest blogging allows you to repurpose your content and reach new readers.
2. Content Creator: Creating communications materials is your strength. White papers, presentations, infographics, etc., all of these can make great offers for your audience. They make great tools for your lead generation efforts.
3. Social Communicator: Some people have an amazing sense of humor and have the ability to communicate clearly and positively with others, building an audience without much effort. If this is you, put your efforts into reaching others through social media. While there are many outlets, choose one that is easy to manage and where your audience is and start communicating.
4. Community Organizer: Despite challenging situations, you come away with patience and grace. Your curiosity transcends difficult situations with an effort to understand and help others. Begin building a community on Facebook, Google+, or a forum on LinkedIn.
5. Visualizer: You have an innate ability to create images and videos that outshine anything remotely close within your industry. Customize your photos and videos then share on YouTube or Instagram.
6. Instructor: Using your knowledge and knowhow, host a webinar, or create a video that demonstrates how to use your product.
7. Campaign Manager: Managing campaigns is your specialty. Start planning and building email campaigns as well as offers with landing pages to attract and capture leads.
8. Project Manager: Maybe you are a behind-the-scenes kind of person who prefers to put it all together. Pull existing content and images together to create a new piece of content or added enhancements to your current website.
9. Sales: You have the ability to sell socks with holes in them to someone who never wears socks. If this is your specialty put a sales plan together and start reaching prospects.
10. Analytics: While it may be too early to have the traction to analyze your market performance, start by optimizing for SEO. Add keywords – one per page. Make sure your page performance for each page is high. And one item that can easily be missed – meta data. Make sure you add meta data copy for the search engines to leverage and score. Once you have been in business for a short time you will be able to establish your company’s KPI’s. From there, you will be able to put together market performance and key marketing activities reports.
Yes, creating a content plan, known as an editorial calendar will help you be more effective reaching and communicating your audience. However, don’t allow limited time and resources prevent you from laying that foundation. Since you are starting from ground zero, sometimes it’s best just to get started. So, whatever your strength – just get started. Use your efforts to begin building an audience. From there you can begin to construct your marketing plans to expand your audience reach and increase engagement with content.