Now after I have built my website, my social media profiles including their visuals, what next.
For Facebook I have made the Cover Photo and image, graphics posting templates and made some posts. I have done the same for the other 3 Networks. I opened a new Hootsuite account and started posting and scheduling the posts on the 4 Networks.
The question now is when should I start promoting those profiles, is it suitable to do that from first day? Or after some time when I have some enough fans and followers and enough posts to have an impressive presence that ought to be followed?
I found that I can invite some intimate friends to join at the beginning in order to have them as numbers who will not criticize you for low number of fans, they will also draw your attention to mistakes you might be doing and give you feedback about your performance. They will later on act as brand advocates who will drive their friends to follow you too.
When the web site is finished you can also make your announcement on your social networks so that you drive traffic your web site fast. On your website you should also have all your social networks announced so that you get some followings from referred traffic. You can also make some ads that direct to your web site from first day of launch specially if you have had a lot of good content on your site blog. The blog should be a vital part of your site as it will drive traffic using numerous ways as:
- Search engine organic traffic: search engines – especially Google- like very much the site that has a lot of content and a lot of pages. Text is the most important kind of content regarding search engines as searchers use text to search. If you have a lot of articles in your blog carefully optimized on keywords related to your business and related to what people use of keywords to search, then your blog will get you much targeted leads to your doorstep. Try to make some research for most important keywords people use to search for your type of business or service, and for each key phrase you find make an article where this key phrase is repeated in the context such that it forms a density of 3-5% of the article. As much as you have pages related to the content people are searching, Google will rank you high relevant to those search terms that you might be able to be listed at the first page of the search results. As you might already know more than 99% of internet users do not go behind the first search results page.
- By publishing useful information about your industry you set yourself as the market leader in your field, thus becoming credible enough for leads to make business with you.
- Your site will enjoy repeat visits especially if you keep on updating the site blog and of course the rest of the site regularly. Repeat visits makes you engaged friends in your market.
- When your site has rich content some websites will refer to your articles thus spreading your site address all over the internet, thus attracting more visitors by referrals, as well as raising the Google Rank for popularity of your site. (You are popular when people in the street point to you, the same applies on websites, Google knows that your website is popular when a lot of web sites point to your URL).
Now after 15 days or so, you will have a nice web working web site with blog articles and some suitable traffic, your social networks will start to be filled with posts, tweets, fans and followers, you can make some advertising to attract more fans and followers and thus attract new level of engagement.
You will then have the problem of having a lot of comments that you need to answer, you will be having a load of writing some suitable daily posts in order to keep your followers engaged. You will also have to make some graphics for your posts and choose images to post with and make some Photoshop editing before you post. You will then have to publish your posts on time every day with a constant frequency. If you do not make time for all that, your social presence would be a mess and might fire back, then how would you do it and overcome those obstacles?
First, if you don’t have the time or the skill to do that, you should hire somebody who understands how to do it. There are a few who can do all of those tasks together as you need a copywriter, a graphic designer, a marketer, and a moderator, if you would make an AD campaign you would also need an AD specialist, so you would be better off with a social media agency that has all those skills and can give you your share of each function with moderate cost. Ie. You will be timesharing in a social media team. But if you have some time, then you can make some discipline using the following methods:
- Try to write your posts in bulk, if you are experienced at your work, you can maybe write 30 related posts in just one hour. That would make part of the postings for 30 days.
- You will have some different types of posts, from informative posts to engagement posts to selling posts. Try to use the selling posts as minimum as possible so that not to let your fans run away.
- Do not copy posts from others, try to be unique in order to engage your fans and acquire their loyalty.
- Make a template on Adobe Photoshop where you can insert your posts, this will give it a more attractive look.
- A good practice is to write posts that promote your blog articles.
- You can use a tool as dlvr.it to announce blog articles as soon as they are published to all your social media pages.
- Use a posting and management tool such as Hootsuite.com in order to make automated scheduled posts across all the platforms.
- Always make what you can do in bulk: composing the content, posting the content and collecting information.
- Use Google Keyword tool in order to know what are the most searchable keyword in your business in order to compile them in blog articles, that will help your blog to attract a lot of targeted visitors.
Now what about advertising, how could you make your first campaign? In order to launch your first campaign you have to think strategically in the following aspects:
- Who is your target audience? How do they look like: male, female, age groups, interests and likes, ….
- Are you selling to business or consumer?
- What is it you are providing the market with? What business are you in?
- What is your competitive advantage? How do you stand out from competition? What makes you unique?
- Which geographic location you would like to advertise to, or start with?
- What kind of budget figures are you willing to spend?
- What are your goals out of this campaign? (try to be specific as a goal is a measurable Target, time and money)
- What is your campaign duration?
After being able to write down the answers of the previous questions, you will have to write the following:
- The most important media through which you will advertise:
- Google Search Ads
- Google Display Network Ads (GDN)
- Facebook Ads
- LinkedIn ADs
- Portal Ads (if you have a large buget starting from $5000 and depending on the country you will advertise from)
- A creative brief for both visuals and text of Ads
You will then have to know which analytic tools you by which you will be measuring your traffic performance:
- For your website and blog: Google Analytics
- For your Facebook Fan Page: Facebook Insights
- For your LinkedIn account: LinkedIn insights
- For Google Adwords and GDN you will use Google Adwords analytics.
A good digital advertising agency can make all the above easily, but it pays off to understand what you are up to before contracting with them.
