Do you work for a small business? Do you have a recent college graduate doing your social media? Can you be sure that your recent college graduate is doing a good job? Well, if you answered "Yes" to the first two questions, your answer to the third questions is a big fat "NO!" Because there is no way of tracking conversions from social media sites, you must look at other variables to ensure that your social media specialist is doing their job well. Here is the first thing you should do (something this team of bloggers has mentioned several times). Set up Google Analytics, and find out how many people are coming to your website from one of your social media pages. Those who are naive to social media will mistake the number of "Likes" a post receives for how that is post is effectively marketing the brand. If your college grad posts something to Facebook that gets twenty "Likes," check the analytics to see how many people arrived at your website on that day. Similarly, if a twitter post gets ten responses, how many people proceeded to your website from twitter. Many people are under the assumption that getting a lot of responses means their social media strategy is working, but that cannot be guaranteed. When a post gets a lot of responses, it shows up in the news-feed for a variety of people. This does result in good exposure; however, any good online marketing specialist knows that this business is about conversions! For a small business, exposure is good but sales is EVERYTHING! Here are three tips to help your social media "Guru" post the right things that drive conversions:
1) Always Alert The Online Community To Sales Leads And DEALS! By putting your best products forward, you are more likely to grab the attention of what we like to call the "Impulse Buyers." You know, the people who can't help themselves from checking Groupon and Living Social every day to see how they can save a ton of money on a product that they probably don't even need. Present any item as a deal on social media sites, and people will click through to learn more.
2) Post At The Right Times Of The Day. This actually does matter; especially with Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. As Twitter has become a hub for news, the best time to post to Twitter is between 10am-2pm on weekdays. You want to catch people as soon as they take their first break of the day, then when people stop working for lunch, and again when people restart in the afternoon. Facebook is similar. Both Facebook and twitter are useless during the weekends, and during early mornings and late nights. Facebook's premiere time frame is from 1pm-5pm during the week. Most people wait until the afternoon to check Facebook, and it is a very common for people to check their Facebook pages at the end of their lunch break (They also have a tendency of procrastinating into the early afternoon on Facebook). Hit them hard while they eat their sandwiches, and stay away from Facebook posts in in AM. Lastly, Tumblr is the opposite. Schedule those Tumblr posts for after 7pm, and wait until after 4pm at the earliest. Even Friday and Saturday nights are good times to hit the Tumblr community. Those who aren't into the weekend party scene are very into the Tumblr scene.
3) Always Post About Trending Topics. You are guaranteed to hit a larger audience; and even if they don't like the post, they make just click on the link to find out why you would post something so unattractive. The key to getting conversions is getting people to the website. After that, you must let your product do the rest of the work. If you have great products and they are properly displayed on your website, you will see conversions. If you aren't getting good business from your website then either your website is not giving your products the right image; or, no one is looking at your products because they can't find your website. Follow the tips above to help you use social media to generate traffic; and, if you still aren't getting the ROI, then call us to give you that extra edge.
