Social Media Marketing, is it worth your time? What should you use? That is a question on the minds of many small business owners from lawyers to independent consultants and start-ups.
“Social Media is like bubble gum; it’s colorful, flavorful, sweet, explosive, and gone.” – Peter lucking
The answer is yes if you have a plan. If your content provides benefit and value to your target market, and answers their needs and concerns and is placed with a strategy that targets where your clients gather, and the ROI makes sense.
Time is Money
For example, if your time is worth $175 and you take an hour every working day to blast out tweets every morning, afternoon, and evening are you getting a return, did you sell your product, close a deal for more than the value of your time? What was your ROI? Did you get caught up in the Twitterverse for hours chasing down rabbit holes?
Twitter – $175 X 52 weeks in the year = $9,100 – some days off, $8,000 is the value of your time.
Could you have spent that money more wisely? What was your ROI?
The answer is Yes – if you had a plan and implementation tactics, you could have spent your money more wisely.
Before we can create a marketing plan for social media, we need to think of our content and time as an investment that should have value. If it takes an hour to write and place each piece, the costs are ($175 x 2 = $350) and say it lasts 36 minutes on the twitter newsfeed you have a looser if you did not make a return of equal value to your time.
I hear you say, “Add Hootsuite and schedule your tweets to go out automatically.” The plans cost $29- $599/mo, and unless you know what you are doing are a waste of time, even if you use hashtags, it is still shouting in the wind.
Don’t believe me? Every second, on average, around 6,000 tweets are tweeted on Twitter
Will yours be the one that gets read among the 500 million tweets in a day?
Every penny counts you need eyeballs – You need to know “What is the life cycle” of your content on social media? Is to help with your marketing content decision making process?
What is the Life Cycle of Social Media Content to ROI
Now before we jump into the process, get a good handle on all your marketing efforts and channels. Evaluate what you are presently doing. If you are a start-up, now is the time to create an outline master-plan and budget for all your marketing.
- The half-life of a tweet is around 18 minutes, according to Moz. You spent an hour tweeting, and 18 minutes after you stop, they are lost forever in cyberspace. Ask yourself did you get a bite, a lead, or a sale. If not, move on – stop wasting your time.
- Facebook’s Life Cycle lasts 2 hours and 30 minutes for 75% of impressions and engagement, great for B to C businesses. The only problem for small businesses is that your friends already know what you do, so you will need to use targeted pay-per-click to reach a broader audience.
- Instagram posts by top brands receive 50% of their comments within the first six hours and 75% within 48 hours. Are You a Top Brand – Will You be Seen?
- LinkedIn’s Life Cycle is 24 hours great for links back to your website articles if you are targeting professionals.
- A Thought leadership article on your website lasts up to 2-5 years if you refresh it and link it back through multiple media channels. That is Value – What is it worth to have an income- generating article that works 24/7/365 for years?
Remember that $8,000 You Could Have Spent on Twitter?
Spend It On Articles that Answer the Concerns of Your Clients and Promote those Articles.
Increase the Return on Your Content Investment
If you blog, write snippets and thought leadership articles on your small business website, you should maximize the value and ROI of your post by:
- Using SEO – to get long-term eyeballs
- Sharing it on multiple social media networks to increase your reach
- Increase your posts life cycle time by updating your posts over time to make them evergreen, sustainable, and valuable
- Use images in the posts to increase viewer retention and engagement
- Use infographics, charts, and tables. Showing is better than explaining in many cases, the graph above is a great example
- Utilize LinkedIn for your thought leadership posts
- Consider Pinterest for onsite construction project images and updates
- Consider a YouTube channel
OK! Now you have an idea of the life cycle of some media channels let’s get back to your Marketing — Advertising Promotions Channel Strategy.
Do You Have Time To Create Your
Marketing Strategy / Campaign / Run Your Business / Take Care of Your loved ones / Have Me time?
If Not Let Us Help You!
- Marketing – Advertising Promotions Channel Strategy. To make social media worth your time and money, we recommend you consider a mix of channel strategies working in unison to reinforce your experience and thought leadership skills. You want to be perceived as the “Knowledge Experts” “ and the go-to firm in the field.
Tips for Utilizing Social Media Marketing:
- Try to set up a quarterly cycle; this will help content be fresh with cycles of whitepapers, thought leadership articles to online presentations that will attract a broader audience.
- Do not overuse your personal Facebook, LinkedIn pages, or start-up email funnel series. You’ll wear out your contacts and your friends. Use your emails to inform your list of articles of interest and upcoming quarterly white papers. Share your knowledge.
- Look for places your targeted clients gather online– conferences, LinkedIn and Facebook groups, and associations. Now put together an article of interest or presentation proposal that will get your firm to be speakers at that event.
- Use Great Content that includes images.
- Press Releases should be used to announce useful content, a new book, a special award, etc.
Black Friday special 50% off $7,500 $3,750 on a single page landing page for a Small business or Start-up
Content Conversion Strategy
Now that you have identified your qualified suspects chosen you social media outlets, it is time to attract prospects and convert them to Clients.
Focus on delivering relevant value. Content conversion should be a natural component of the flow and not the prime motivator.
-
- Is your website content custom? Is it targeted? Is it readable? If not, fix it.
- Do your articles portray your thought leadership and expertise as the go-to experts in your field, are you sharing knowledge?
- Chose your topics tied to your business goals that answer your client’s questions, include industry insights and fact-based content thoroughly researched.
- Use Google Analytics to find your top-performing content and create relevant call-to-action (CTA) for each piece.
- Make useful free downloads, free sign-ups, and content upgrades.
- Do you have a call-to-action (CTA) on your site? In your blogs, etc.?
Source: (Correia, 2013)
Do Not be a Marketing Dinosaur: Put a Digital Content Marketing Plan in Place
Give us a call now we are here to help you succeed in 2020! 303-362-0498
- Identify Joint Ventures and Partnerships. Potential partners surround you.
- Identify who you can Joint Venture and Partnership with, set aside a date and a time for that call.
- Referral Strategy. How many referrals have you missed because you do not pay a referral commission?
- Put a referral strategy in place
- Ask clients for referrals
- Ask associates and the consultant team for referrals
- Helping others succeed is the right step to your success! What goes around comes around!
Don’t Miss Next week’s blog,
Marketing Budgeting for Small Businesses and Start-ups
Setting a realistic budget that matches your online media marketing goals, promotion strategy, marketing content, and materials assets creation costs is key to success.
Executive summary
Social media is worth your time when you plan out your marketing strategy with an implementation plan? Work out the value of your time and look for strategies that may be more effective and allow you to do what you are good at while others implement your tactics.
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War
A well thought out marketing plan that incorporates social media serves as a resource to get your content marketing started. Always test each piece to see the results and adjust your strategy for maximum success.
If you need help try this:
FREE Marketing Plan Generation tool from HubSpot or Give us a call Now 303-362-0498
Need help Orchestrating Your Marketing Planning Meeting?
Give us a call Now 303-362-0498
Cheri Lucking and Peter Lucking Co-CEO’s
Communication is Our Business. We have a passion to Communicate in Words, Images, and Actions. Our mission is simple; to Communicate TIMELESS messages through CONTENT, GRAPHICS, and COACHING for all your media needs.
Services
- Website Design – Websites that Generate Leads 24/7/365
- Premium Content
- Images Graphics Infographics
- Coaching
- Refresh Your Brand
- Editorial Services
- Thought Leadership
- Design + Construction Industry experts
- Consulting
Content Branding Solutions, Denver, Colorado
Content Website Design Graphics Infographics Coaching
Digital marketing for the Small Businesses, Consultants, Start-ups, and Professional Practices
References
Correia, D. (2013, Jan 25). Crawling Out of the Cave. Retrieved from https://www.dragon360.com/blog/digital-content-marketing-strategy/
Drop us a Line or Call 303-362-0498
