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Engagement-Strategy

How to Establish an Engagement Strategy

What is Social Media Engagement?

Think about social media engagement as all of the interactions you have with your followers, across all platforms. It’s LinkedIn and Facebook shares, Instagram likes and Twitter retweets all rolled into one.

Any chance you have to engage with your followers — a reply, a share or a like is a potential interaction that you can increase trust and grow your brand.

Consumers who trust you and your content will eventually become customers. 

Customers like to share recommendations to others — so they’ll eventually become ambassadors for your brand. 

This kind of organic sharing is the best possible scenario for social media engagement.

How to Engage on Social Media

Like most technology, approaches to social media are cyclical and they change rapidly. 

Today, bots are out.

Many social networks have set parameters around engagement, which limits possible bot actions. Social networks can now close your account if you’re caught using bots.

Authentic engagement is in.

You need to spend the time to like, comment and share other content. Or, if you’re not doing it yourself, you need to hire a social media agency to do it. No matter what social media platform(s) best fit your business, you need to be responsive.

Our top three recommendations to clients are: 

  • Build relationships
  • Be casual 
  • And be friendly.

If you need help establishing a voice on a social media platform, let us know

What’s included in a social media engagement strategy

Mapping out how your business will engage on social media is crucial to the success of reaching your target customers online. A social media engagement strategy will outline who and how you plan to interact. 

A few important sections we include in our engagement strategies are:

  1. Accounts of industry leaders
  2. Accounts with the same or similar target audiences 
  3. Industry-related hashtags
  4. Predetermined responses for different scenarios

 

At Smith Social, we always start with a social media strategy to plan how to reach your target customer. An engagement strategy is just one section of the plan. 

If you’re looking to increase your reach on social media, it might be time to consider implementing an engagement strategy. Don’t have time? Ask our team to help! Get started today by reaching out to us.

 

Employees-at-workstation

5 Ways to Engage Employees on Social Media

Do you struggle to motivate your team to engage with your company’s social media?

Sometimes it can feel like a chore, always asking for social engagement.

Many of the top B2B marketing publications commonly mention “employee engagement” as a key tool for growing a social media presence and displaying company culture.

It is true that employees are your biggest advocates.

They should be on the front lines: selling, helping customers, and developing your services/products.

But what if we told you there is an untapped value when it comes to employee engagement?

When was the last time you shared an employee shoutout or a behind-the-scenes video of the team?

Why Employee Engagement Benefits You As Marketer: 

Did you know, employees are more likely to like, comment, and share posts that include themselves and/or other team members?

Sharing this type of content is the true value of employee engagement, which can spike your awareness and engagement rates.

Make employee engagement work for your team by incorporating more photos of your employees/teams and behind-the-scenes content.

Try some employee-curated content like photos/videos/blogs written or produced by different team members.


 Here Are 5 Ways You Can Incentivize Employee Engagement:

  1. Lead by Example: Encourage your team to engage with social media by having a select number of leadership team members engaging (liking, commenting, sharing) with your company’s social media posts. When posting about your team or about relevant topics – tag other employees that have public profiles.
  2. Incentive Programs: Incentivize employees to submit content (photos/videos) for social media. This could be used if you’re having a difficult time collecting employee-curated content. Example: Gifting a $10 Starbucks gift card to anyone that sends your social media team a photo or video from the work conference they attended.
  3. Employee Curated Content: Give employees credit on social media if they authored a company blog. Or when industry “breaking news” happens, ask an employee’s opinion (written or video) and credit them.
  4. Share Accomplishments: Share photos/graphics/videos of employees when they win awards. Share milestones of years of service with the company. Anything related to their work life that celebrates them and their achievements is fair game and highly shareable.
  5. Fun Contests: This can be almost anything; a pumpkin carving contest, gingerbread house contest, a paper airplane-throwing contest. Document and share your employees enjoying their time and working together. Take it a step further by asking your social media following to vote on a winner. 

 

Baby Steps to Success:

Whenever you ask employees to be involved in social media, it is possible that you’ll receive some push back or resistance.

Start slow, find a few employees that embrace social media, and begin with them.

Sharing employee-related content is just one piece of a solid social media strategy.

Test and validate, and find what works for your company and team.

Most companies who have a strong social media presence have been working on it for years. It will take time, but the benefits pay off.

If you want help with social media strategy for your company, give us a shout.

 

B2B Bubbles

The Top 3 B2B Marketing Lies

Marketers love terms like pain points, validation, social proof — to name a few.

However, we consistently see B2B marketing using tactics based on the idea that “B2B buyers make rational, emotionless decisions.”

Here are our top three B2B marketing falsehoods.

  1. B2B marketing is rational.

If you think a B2B service/product is just a solution to complete a necessary job — you couldn’t be more wrong.

Buyers aren’t strictly interested in the rational benefits of your solution. Instead, they are interested in what the services will make them feel.

Will it make them feel better about making difficult decisions? Will it give them confidence that they are staying ahead of the pack? The emotional benefit provided by your solution needs to be addressed.

You can’t set it and forget it.

B2B marketing is not rational, and emotion is involved throughout the process.

  1. B2B marketing is not financially emotional for the buyers.

Another lie we strongly disagree with is that B2B buyers aren’t spending their own money, so closing a sale is more manageable. This is a common falsehood.

B2B services and products typically have large price tags — the type of price tags that can get people, or whole departments fired if an uninformed choice is made.

Despite the fact that it might not be their own money, most decision-makers do truly want to make the best choice possible for their company, with the best ROI.

With that being said, it is a very emotional process with multiple stakeholders involved. Each stakeholder has human emotions that need to be addressed throughout the marketing and sales process. Money always comes first, with feelings and egos.

  1. B2B marketing is easy.

B2B marketing is challenging in the best ways possible, but it is not easy.

If your product or service doesn’t interest you, it won’t interest them.

Gone are the days of “necessity” and the thought process that “someone needs my B2B solutions, so I just need to make them aware we exist.”

B2B creativity and competitiveness are at an all-time high.

If this is all familiar to you, and you agree with all the items above, that is awesome!

We are here and ready to help your team take your B2B marketing to the next level.

Request our free B2B social media audit and see how your social media presence stacks up.

Twitter-Business

5 Twitter Stats All B2B Marketers Should Know in 2021

We love Twitter at Smith Social. For some B2B marketers, Twitter can be hard to figure out. With character count limits. Short life spans on timelines. Twitter marketing can seem overwhelming if you aren’t familiar with the network. However, Twitter is an effective B2B platform when you spend time to align the power of the platform with your marketing and sales goals.

Here are five stats B2B marketers should be aware of when thinking about their Twitter strategy.

  1. There are 192 million daily active users on Twitter.
  2. Leading countries based on the number of Twitter users are: United States, Japan, and India.
  3. 52% of American Twitter users access the platform daily.
  4. The age group of 35-49-year-olds is the largest age group of Twitter users worldwide. 
  5. 82% of B2B content marketers used Twitter for organic content marketing in the last 12 months.

 

Twitter is a great platform for sharing industry-related content, spreading the word about your business offerings, and sharing company news.

Interested in seeing how your Twitter stack ups? Request our free B2B audit or contact us to see how you can benefit from a robust Twitter Strategy. 

Free B2B Social Media Audit

Case Study: How we Doubled our Client’s Website Traffic during a Pandemic

When COVID-19 hit the United States in March of 2020, it forced companies to rethink their digital marketing messages. The unknown of the pandemic and how the economy would respond was scary for brands and caused many companies to hold or press pause on their marketing campaigns. Despite the unknown, companies were leaving marketing opportunities on the table. 

Morgan & Associates is a CPA and advisory firm based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with locations throughout the state. Their primary focus is to support business owners with expert tax, accounting, and advisory services. They provide regular analysis and insight to business owners to help them make smart business decisions throughout the year. 

Katie L Smith & Company began working with Morgan & Associates at the beginning of 2019 to increase awareness of Morgan & Associates in Michigan and drive potential leads to their website. The social media strategy was to reach successful entrepreneurs and business owners through the sharing of tax news and business-related information that was directly applicable (and exclusive) to the financial well-being of entrepreneurs/business owners through blogs and social media posts. The process would be to build trust with the target audience by first educating about current market opportunities and pitfalls.

 

Want a custom social media strategy for your business? Contact us today.

 

Establishing a social media strategy upfront (a year ago) for Morgan & Associates allowed for an immediate shift in their marketing strategy and messaging when COVID-19 made its presence in the US economy. Morgan & Associates was able to use the same social media strategy but shift it to address the current market opportunities and pitfalls that COVID-19 brought with it. We were able to reach entrepreneurs and business owners right where they were, experiencing fear, the unknown, and questions that surrounded COVID-19. We immediately started posting on topics such as: staying safe during COVID-19, what rental owners should do during COVID-19, SBA loans, sick credits, CARES ACT updates, layoffs, PPP, loan forgiveness, etc. 

While other companies were hitting pause on their social media and marketing campaigns, Morgan & Associates quickly pivoted and provided the necessary information to their target audience during an unprecedented time, amplifying their trust-building strategy. The pivot proved successful. Morgan & Associates’ website traffic immediately increased, doubling in months of March and April. 

 

 

Without a social media strategy and management process in place, it becomes difficult for a company to successfully pivot in time for a natural disaster, environment change, or an industry shift. Before COVID-19, Morgan & Associates moved their marketing from a guessing strategy into a more calculated environment, setting themselves up to be ready when their environment changed.

Is your Twitter Strategy missing this?

Is your Twitter Strategy missing this?

Crafting the perfect tweet consists of obtaining a sweet graphic or video from your designer, writing a creative 280 character description, having a Call-to-Action (CTA) link that is begging to be clicked on, and scheduling the tweet out on Twitter during an optimized time.

Each tweet takes time, and for your business, that’s company time and resources. Which is why it’s natural to hope for the best results from each tweet. However, if you’re looking at the analytics a day after a tweet is posted and you’re disappointed in the singular results of one tweet, then your Twitter strategy is missing something.

Your tweet didn’t fall short because of its content, but from Twitter’s algorithm not ranking your tweets high enough. Here’s what you need to know about Twitter’s algorithm, and the one change you can make to increase your tweets’ ranking.


The Twitter Algorithm

Twitter has been known for its reverse chronological order for years, however, in 2017 Twitter introduced its first feed algorithm with “while you were away” and “in case you missed it.” Twitter’s “new” algorithm was to help users see relevant content they missed when they were offline. 

Twitter’s algorithm brings a mix of real-time content and content shown based on the algorithms’s ranking of past tweets to your Home feed (unless you turn off the Twitter algorithm on your account).

Twitter’s algorithm is constantly evolving, but when first released, Twitter publicly stated three characteristics the algorithm considers when ranking tweets. They are…

  1. The Tweet: recency, media usage, and interactions received
  2. The Author: past interaction with author, strength of connection, origin of relationship
  3. You: tweets you found engaging in the past, how often and heavily you use Twitter

 

Twitter Reposting Schedule

Every time you open your Twitter app or refresh your feed, Twitter is scoring every tweet from the people you follow to determine what tweets will be shown at the top of your Home feed. Changing the feed every second, in real time.

This is the same for your target audience’s Twitter. So when you post your tweet once, you leave too much up to the “fate” of Twitter’s algorithm. If you want your content in front of your followers regularly, you need to be repeating your tweets on a consistent basis.

At Katie L Smith & Company, we use a simple reposting schedule that sends out the exact same tweet, not once, but up to seven times during a 12 month period. This reposting strategy guarantees an increase in the reach of a single social media post.

For example:

Post #1 receives 40 impressions

Repeat Post #1 receives 30 impressions

= 70 impressions total


The reposting schedule we recommend for Twitter:
   

 

A Quick Note: When following the above reposting schedule, remember to consider the shelf-life of your content. Consider how far into the future the post will remain relevant to your target audience. Will it still be relevant in 24 hours? Next week? Next month?, etc. Once the content reaches its relevancy expiration date, remove it from your reposting schedule.

A reposting schedule is just one piece to a well-rounded Twitter strategy that touches on only a portion of the Twitter algorithm characteristics. If you are interested in learning how you can obtain a well-rounded Twitter strategy and have your tweets rank higher and get seen by your target audience, fill out the contact form below, and our social media strategist will be in touch with you!

The B2B Social Media Strategy that Works

The B2B Social Media Strategy that Works

Prior to planning out your social media strategy, it’s important to first understand where social media fits into your sales and marketing process. Once you visualize this, you will bring more purpose to your posting.

“When we do Influence Marketing well, we widen the funnel at the top.”  – Anonymous

Social media is a tool to increase awareness and influence of your company and brand. And when you play to this strength, you can load up the top of your sales funnel with potential new leads.

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In the sales funnel above you can see social media fits well at the very top under the Awareness stage. The Awareness stage is where “strangers” (or your target audience) are first introduced to your company. Where they receive their first impression of you. Tools under the Awareness stage can include: Google searches, SEO, web pages, blogs, and social media. 

From the first awareness (or subsequent), you drive your target audience into the second stage of the sales funnel, or the Consideration stage. Driving people from only “seeing” your content to engaging with it and seeking more.

 

The B2B Social Media Strategy

Now you can map out your social media strategy to fit the journey your potential leads (target audience) take from not knowing your brand to their first awareness on social media and into consideration of your product/service. 

Below is an outline of the B2B strategy that we use for our clients and have found success in. Spend some time brainstorming and outlining each section. If you have any questions or need assistance, please reach out. 

 

Blueprint

The blueprint sets the foundation for your social media. It identifies who you are, who your target audience is, and how you will be speaking to your target audience on social media. You will want to…

» Identify who you are and what you provide to clients.

» Identify who your target audience is on social media. 

» Identify your brand’s voice and tone for social media.

» Identify the specific pain points your target audience is experiencing.

 

Posting Strategy

The posting strategy outlines the specifics to the day-to-day operations of your social media accounts. As a team you will need to decide upfront…

» What you want to accomplish on social media (your goals/objectives).

» What social media platforms will work best to reach your target audience and achieve your goals.

» How often you will be posting on each social media platform.

» What type of content you will be posting on your social media accounts.

 

Content Strategy

The content strategy dives into the plan for reaching your target audience on each of your designated social media platforms. By using your messaging and content and keeping your goals in mind…

» Lay out the “big idea” for each social media platform.

» Lay out which type of posts will be published on each social media platform.

» List the KPIs (key performance indicators) for each social media platform.

 

Hashtags

Do the hashtag research. Each social network’s hashtags differ, so you’ll want to lay out your industry hashtags ahead of time for each social network you will be posting on. You’ll want to…

» Research the popular industry hashtags being used on each social media platform.

» Research the fastest growing industry hashtags on each social media platform.

» Research location based hashtags that are related to your business.

» Research some general popular hashtags that fit well into your social media strategy.

 

Industry Influencers

Industry influencers are people or companies who are the experts and industry leaders in your business field. Knowing who your industry influencers are can help you stay in the know, add expert content to your social media strategy, allow you to engage with them on social media, and advertise to their followers. 

» List out the industry influencers your company can connect with.

» List the social media networks of each industry influencer.

 

Paid Advertising

Social media is a pay-to-play environment. Social media platforms like Facebook utilize the willingness to pay for ads as a determining factor between an actual business account and spam account. Having a plan for consistent monthly advertising spend will help to play towards the social networks algorithms and help to boost your overall monthly analytics. You will need to decide…

» What is your monthly budget?

» What will be your campaign objectives?

» What type of content will you promote each month?

» How long will your campaigns run for?

 

KPIs

When you set a goal, it is important to follow it up with trackable KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Avoid falling prey to vanity metrics and lay out your social media KPIs in advance. Here are some common B2B KPIs…

» Impressions – the total number of people who had the opportunity to see your content in their News Feeds.

» Clicks – the number of times people clicked on your content to engage with it.

» Outbound Clicks – the number of times people clicked to a blog or landing page.

» Engagement Rate – the total number of engagements divided by the total number of impressions.

» Leads – the number of new contacts, forms submissions, downloads, etc.

Two Types of Hashtags You Should Be Using

Two types of hashtags you should be using on your social media posts

Hashtags have now been around for over a decade. The first hashtag was used by Chris Messina in August of 2007 on Twitter. Chris had the idea to use a hashtag to categorize a group’s discussion or an online conversation on Twitter. Over Benny Pointingthe years hashtags have spread from Twitter across multiple online platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, as well as entering into our text and verbal communications.

Hashtags were originally meant for discussing certain events or topics of conversation. While this is still the case on many social networks, hashtags are becoming exceedingly popular being used to further describe the subject of a post or to create a humorous bit. Many of these hashtags become one-off hashtags that aren’t found on multiple social media posts. While this is creative and fun on a casual communication level, they don’t add value to your business’ social media posts. These hashtags won’t get your content seen.

However, there are two types of hashtags your business should be using to help increase the reach of your content.

 

1. Common use hashtags

A common use hashtag is a hashtag that has the highest count of usage across a particular social media network. Common use hashtags can have thousands or even millions of posts that contain a specific hashtag in the post description. Sometimes these can be popular words or phrases to categorize a certain subject; for example: #bunnies, #rabbit #bunnylove

To determine what the common use hashtags are for your business, start with listing out possible hashtags for your industry. Next research how many posts are currently using each hashtag on a particular social network. For example, on Instagram you can type the hashtag into the search bar and Instagram will give you the current number of posts that contain the searched hashtag. Add this number next to the hashtag name. Creating a small chart like the pictured example will create a visual representation of which hashtags are the most popular in your industry.

Common Use Hashtags

* Note: If you are using Instagram and Twitter in your social media strategy, make sure to research your hashtags for Twitter and Instagram separately. Hashtags that are popular on Instagram are not always popular on Twitter.

 

2. High growth hashtags

High growth hashtags are hashtags that don’t necessarily have the highest count of posts but are growing at a faster rate than other hashtags. High growth hashtags are a good indication for where a current conversation or trend is taking place. If you can identify high growth hashtags for your industry, you will have the opportunity to join an active online conversation and greatly increase the reach of your content.

To determine which hashtags from your common use hashtag list are also high growth hashtags, add two more columns to your chart. Wait 24 hours and recheck the post count for each hashtag. Add this number in the next column. After inserting all the numbers into the chart, you can then calculate the growth rate percentage with the formula below:

Growth Rate Percentage = (New Post Count – Original Post Count/Original Post Count) * 100

Calculate the growth rate percentage for each hashtag and insert into the last column of the chart. Identify which percentages are the highest. Identify which hashtags have the highest use count and which hashtags have the highest growth rate. Are they the same hashtags?

High Growth Hashtags

*Note: It is best practice to calculate high growth hashtags for your industry once a quarter to make sure you are still using the fastest growing hashtags.

 

Benny Sitting

Calculating common use and high growth hashtags will give you a solid plan for utilizing hashtags on your social media posts and working towards increasing your content reach. Using a combination of each type of hashtag is best practice. If you have any questions about setting up a hashtag strategy, contact us for a free consultation.

 

 

Your no-fail, 5 steps to strategic social media

Your no-fail, 5 steps to strategic social media

When it comes to social media, building a strategy is essential. It should serve as the foundation to everything you communicate about your business across platforms. A successful strategy should:

  • Explain your “why”—the reason you’re even using social media
  • Describe your target audience, which will help guide every social media decision
  • Establish key objectives and map out your “how” so you can begin measuring success
  • Ensure you know whether you dollars are being put to good use

The bottom line: You should always know the “why” to every single post or ad campaign across your social media accounts and be able to explain the greater goal each is working to accomplish.

If you cannot, you are wasting time and money because you have no way to measure whether or not your marketing has been successful.

Let’s repeat that.

If you don’t know the strategy behind your social media posts, you aren’t marketing.

You are posting and praying something works.

In order to avoid the “posting and praying” trap, here are 5 steps to developing a successful social media strategy:

1. Start with the “blueprint” of your business

Begin by laying out the most important features of your brand—elements that are necessary to weave into your social media strategy. Nick Westergaard, author of Get Scrappy, Smarter Digital Marketing for Business Big and Small, describes this as defining your brand and how you will tell your story online. “You can’t always see your brand, but it’s what the rest of your work stands on.”

Important features include:

  • Know your target audience (Be specific. Utilize Facebook ad categories to help)
  • Define what makes your business/brand unique
  • Map out your brand story
  • Describe your brand personality and voice
  • Define your brand visuals

2. Map out your social media plan

Asking questions is the key to mapping out your plan. Begin with asking the why, what, where, when, who and how.

  • Why are you even using social media?
  • What is your objective, and what are you expecting as a return on investment? Are you looking to increase brand awareness, discover new leads, provide customer service? What social media networks and content can help you reach your goals?
  • Where will the action steps take place?
  • When will they take place?
  • How will you implement them?
  • Who is going to do it?

These questions might be tough and take some time to figure out, but answering them will help clearly define the work that needs to be done and who is expected to accomplish it.

3. Understand no two social media platforms are the same

Every social media network is different and contains its own best practices for marketing. It’s important to understand each in order to map out how you can use it to reach your goals.

Decide on your objectives for each social network in terms of reaching and interacting with your target audience. For example, how are you going to use Instagram to achieve your social media objectives? Will you use Facebook, or LinkedIn, or any other social media network differently? Using each social network in a way that matches best practices will help you clearly define and measure whether or not you’re reaching your goals.

4. Map content to your yearly sales cycle

Every business has a sales cycle, which includes seasons and trends. What are yours?

It’s helpful to take a step back and review how your social media content could align with specific seasons and trends. What are your potential customers thinking about during specific times of year? Can you match your sales trends with topics to use on social media?

For example, a landscaping company is looking to book summer lawn care packages when the snow is starting to melt. Or a retail shop is gearing up for the holiday season in the fall. Match your sales trends with potential content and call-to-actions in your strategy. You will use this later when building out your monthly content calendar.

5. Plan on paid advertising

Social media is pay-to-play. The days of reaching your customers organically (free) are over. The research is clear. It’s a foregone conclusion across social media news networks.

But that doesn’t mean you should jump off Facebook or other social networks. It means you have to step up your money spend. Determine what that looks like for your business. What can you spend monthly? What content should you promote on which networks?

The importance of paid advertising makes having a strategy even more important because it allows you to be strategic from the beginning, ensuring you’re not wasting money in places that make no sense for your audience and goals. When looking at how to use your advertising dollars, refer back to your goals. How can you accomplish them through paid advertising? Can you establish monthly, quarterly, yearly campaigns with a corresponding budget? Map out what that looks like for your company.

 

Want to know how your company's social media stacks up?

Receive your first ever social media grade with our FREE B2B Social Media Audit.