Change The Channel - How do you know which social network right you?

Social Media is a great marketing tool – you know that already! But how do you decide which networks to use when there are literally hundreds to choose from? There’s actually a simple answer...

Everything you read about marketing these days seems to be about social media. It’s all like ‘tweet’ this and ‘post’ that. Often the discussion gets really involved with terms like ‘algorithms’ and ‘edge-rank’ getting thrown about, and that’s all well and good, but it doesn’t help you choose which social and marketing channels to use in the first place.

Don’t worry though – I’m here to help!

Choosing the right channels for your marketing starts with what you want to achieve in the first place, and you need to know what that is. So,

Step 1 is to set your goal for your marketing campaign.

Your goal is just a specific idea of what you want to do, whether that is to get a certain number of mailing list sign ups before a specific date; register a number of trailers; build your network by a certain amount; sell a specific number of packages; or, whatever your goal is.

Hint: A proper goal has a specific amount and a deadline in it. That way you will actually know when you’re done.

Once you know what you want to achieve, you need to look at where your target customers are, and which channels they use. Then you’ll know where to run your campaign. This is Step 2.

For example, do your target customers have email accounts? Do they use Facebook? Are they on Twitter? Are they active on Linkedin?

You can find this out by doing some simple deduction and/or asking them (maybe by running a short survey).

Hint: You can use MORE than just one channel

The next step is to check how you can achieve your goal on your chosen channel(s). This is Step 3.

Let’s use an example here: Assume you want to run a competition, and you know that your target audience has email, spends time on Facebook, and usually has a Linkedin profile.

Well, running a competition on email is easy – you just ask for email submissions, or give them a link to click.

For Facebook, you can use a tool like our Social Campaigns to run a competition.

However, for Linkedin it’s a bit more difficult and wouldn’t really sit well with the way that channel works.

The next step is a simple one – ask yourself if you like using the channels that you’ve selected. If you don’t, either ditch that channel or get someone who does like it to help you out. This is because your audience will be able to tell if you’re using a specific channel with your teeth gritted and you won’t get very far.

Your final step is to take action, in a way that makes sense for your chosen channels. So, for example, a Twitter campaign should probably have an associated hashtag, but they don’t really work on Linkedin or Facebook.

A forward to a friend campaign works well on email, but you have to remember to put a clear call to action in there and make it easy with a nice ‘forward to a friend’ button and link.

If you can do all of that, you’ll have exactly the right channels for your campaign and they should go really well. If that doesn’t happen though, don’t panic, just take another look, see where some of your assumptions weren’t correct and give it another go. The joy of social media and email is that you ALWAYS get a second chance.

source - thepitchuk