Cultivate Your Social Landscape (Part II)

Are you roaming the ever-changing social landscape without a map? Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest, oh my! The first part of our Clean Up Your Social Landscape blog offered tips on tackling your company’s overgrown social presence.

We helped you clean up. Now, let’s venture into the dry, cracked desert of channels long ignored to cultivate your social landscape.

Get the Fertilizer

You jumped into social media for your business, starting with the standard three channels: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Everybody uses Facebook. Everyone has a Twitter account. LinkedIn is a no-brainer. You posted your first post, your second, but where was the engagement? You asked questions, used polls, but where was the reach? You planted the seed, but nothing grew.

The Right Channels

Posting a poll to your Facebook page about which color of your product customers like best won’t work if the people who like your Facebook page are your employees.

Not only do you need to know who your existing social audience is, but you also need to figure out where your target audience is on social. Facebook is full of employees? Great. Try finding leads on LinkedIn. Twitter isn’t getting any love? Try posting your latest product colors on Instagram.

Industry is a factor, too. B2C companies might see greater engagement using customer-focused channels with built-in ad platforms: Facebook, Instagram and SnapChat. B2B companies might use Twitter to share news and events to get in front of journalists and trade publications, but then turn to LinkedIn to collect and nurture leads. Plant the seed where your audience is, not where you think they are.

Time and Resources

It won’t matter that you’ve chosen the plot of land where your audience is waiting to see what blooms if you don’t have the time and resources needed to cultivate it.

Marketing teams get leaner every year. The person who was once your webmaster now also manages your blog, email marketing, newsletter and social media. As technologies evolve, so does your team. But your team doesn’t always grow. Wear too many hats, and you might lose one. That one is usually social media.

Faced with emailing your loyal customers about a just-for-them offer and coming up with something to tweet… well, we’d pick the email, too.

We had a client who came to us with all the talent to activate social for lead generation and public relations, but not an ounce of time left in the day to post. We audited their content and resources, categorizing everything for ease of immediate use, and alleviated the stress of planning what to say when. Passing the cultivation over to us allowed our client to bloom.

Social Advertising

Your business might be brand new and, therefore, brand new to social media. It won’t matter how engaging your content is, how dedicated your social media manager is or how often you tweet if you don’t have an audience.

Today, the social media landscape is pay-to-play. Advertising gets your channels in front of an audience. With advanced targeting, you can get in front of the exact audience you want – your customers, potential employees or the media.

Clean It Up

Cultivate your own landscape with these tips:

• Do your research. Make sure you’re activating social channels your audience uses.
• Adjust your content to talk to the audience you want. Think: Employees are on Facebook; customers are on LinkedIn.
• Hire a dedicated person or team to manage your social media. Put time and resources into your strategy to see return.
• Boost your organic social with advertising. Build your audience or sell your products, but make sure you’re visible.

Click here to contact us if you need help cultivating your social plot to get your channels in front of the right audience. Our support comes in a variety of levels. Ad hoc, supplemental or full-service, we’ve got you covered.