Social media and the digital world of marketing, in general, continue to be more and more effective every year. There are billions of potential members for your association. If you haven’t already, now is the time to create a social media marketing strategy. Here are a few handy tips.
Identify the Best Platforms
Behaviors and audiences vary quite a bit from platform-to-platform. The easiest way to determine where to put your marketing efforts is to do your research.
Take the time to determine where your current members spend most of their time online. Then, dig into trends and types of content that do well on that specific platform. After you develop a strong following on the platforms you choose, you’d do well to look into things like paid or boosted advertisements as a supplement to your social strategy.
Create Relevant Content
These days, video is the king of content. But it’s also important to be realistic about what kind of content you can consistently produce.
We are constantly bombarded with stimuli, so we crave quick and easy information. This is especially relevant in a social media marketing strategy because you are trying to get your audience to take action. You have to determine why your content is of value to your audience, enough so to inspire them to take that specific action whether it be to follow your page, sign up for your newsletters, or become a member.
Examples of relevant content that can be showcased on social media are infographics, blog posts, informative or entertaining video, and third-party shares. Each piece of content has a different goal, so it’s important to determine what your goals are first.
Determine Specific Goals for Social
When creating goals, just like any personal goals, start with where you’re currently at.
Good questions to ask to determine where to start are:
- Does my association already have a following on social media?
- Do the members I want to attract know of my association?
- Do I have valuable content and resources that will drive leads?
- Does my current website represent the brand well?
After determining where you are in the social media marketing process, you can create SMART goals for your strategy.
The content you create and within your About page will link back to your website, which is where your visitors will hopefully become leads or members, so you want to make sure you’re routing your social followers to a user-friendly website, and representative of your brand.
