How-To: With these 7 tips, you can implement social media

1. Create the right conditions

A channel without a goal is like a dead end: it ends in nothing. So, before you plan a social media campaign, make sure you can measure and understand it correctly. Build a corresponding pixel on the page from every social media platform. 

Then you can see where visitors are coming from, and maybe even your campaign was the trigger. The clear measurement and assignment is only possible if each campaign is individually named and deferred. 

UTM parameters in the links mark the contents of a campaign. In addition, your website should have a direct link to all social media offerings, so users can be quickly and easily redirected to the channels and immerse themselves deeper into the brand world.

2. Plan your social media activities like a marketing campaign

Properly used is social media for entrepreneurs nothing more than a marketing channel. Accordingly, you should carefully plan all activities and their implementation as well as incorporate them into your overall strategy. 

Start by defining your goals: should social media support your sales, or do you want to build your brand to attract new employees? Depending on how you answer this question, you should populate your social media presence with either product or brand content. 

In order not to just upload disconnected posts, you should tell a higher-level story, that of your company, through the posts. With storytelling, you get your audience emotionally better off and it can then identify much better with you and your brand.

3. Make enough resources available

One of the most important but still underestimated factors for the success of a social media presence is the maintenance and servicing of the sites. All fan pages, groups or channels must be continuously updated with current content and communication with the users maintained. 

It is therefore important that you define a social media manager who is dedicated to this task and also responds to criticism, questions or negative developments within one hour if possible. The contents of the channel should come from you, because authenticity is essential for success.

4. Be where your customers are

Less is often more in social media marketing. Therefore, identify the right platform for your social media presence and ensure that it is looked after well and comprehensively. Which social medium do your customers use the most? Concentrate on this channel first. 

Facebook is still one of the classics and still offers the simplest and most efficient advertising opportunities. Even with a budget of 500 euros a month, you can achieve visible results here. On Snapchat and Instagram, you'll find a very young audience that's used to faster, visual communication. 

For them you should produce relevant videos as well as interesting pictures or pictures. For offers that live on photos such as furniture, painting, travel, fashion or toys, belongs to Pinterest to the Hidden Stars. Especially in the field of e-commerce, you can quickly generate high sales figures here.

5. Address your target audience correctly!

As in traditional marketing, addressing the audience with the right content and tone is critical to the success of your campaign. In the first step, you should think about which approach suits your customer best - do you prefer to be tutored or do you prefer a formal speech? What content interests your customers? 

Stay close to your business topics or products without being too promotional. Keep in mind that social media thrive on user engagement and encourage your followers to actively participate. Open questions, links with experiences (for example, childhood memories), surveys or competitions on suitable topics lend themselves - then it also works with the interaction.

6. Check the response to your posted content regularly

Is my content relevant and creative enough for my target audience? Does the format and the preparation of my post come to my followers? What is your commitment? How often is my post corrected, shared or even commented? These are the questions you should ask yourself regularly. 

Because only if you can answer them, you learn from your mistakes and permanently set course for success. First of all, a look at the statistics of the individual platforms helps: Insights from Facebook or Twitter Analytics illustrate how well a post was taken and how visible it is. Use the views and interaction rate to identify popular topics and content formats. 

Instagram also offers similar analyzes and statistics for the evaluation of a social media presence. Interesting for you is that you can also see the analyzes of competing companies and learn from their successes or missteps. Software solutions for web analysis such as Google Analytics , Matomo (formerly Piwik) or Webtrekk also help you to evaluate exactly what posts users have in your store or on your website.

7. Keep an eye on your goals and miss your success

Social media is a fast-moving medium where you have to stay on the ball constantly to avoid any innovation. Sometimes Facebook or Instagram change the algorithm, and your hitherto successful channel loses reach overnight. Is that the case, research and better immediately. 

The Facebook metrics and tools like face lift or over metrics help you to continuously analyze and evaluate your results. Changes within the channels or the range you recognize and can respond accordingly. In addition, they are important for your internal documentation and for measuring the success of individual actions.

It's also important to use tracking to reach out to more audiences: Facebook Pixels and Events, for example, can help you get started on shopping cart abandons or get them excited about similar products. 

Re targeting, that is the renewed response of existing prospective buyers or buyers, is possible in all social media platforms. However, you should keep the privacy laws in mind: In your privacy policy, the info about the pixel should be included, also you should give customers the opportunity to opt-out.

Conclusion: Good planning as the key to success

Social media communication is always changing, which is why it is often difficult for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs to access. However, if you can create the right conditions, allocate capacity, and keep track of your goals, you'll be clear for the success of your social media channels.