7 Social Media Strategy Tips for 2013

2012 brought more change in the social media and advertising world than any year before. Facebook became public, the blogging world boomed and more and more people are creating online lifestyles.

For businesses, that means social media planning must take a few more turns to keep up and adapt. With the New Year upon us, Click Z, a website for marketing news and expert advice, suggests seven tips that your social media strategy cannot ignore in 2013.

1. Consumers listen to their friends. Not your ads.

In 2012, advertisements blew up social media sites. You couldn’t scan your Facebook News Feed, watch a video on YouTube or even search for a job on LinkedIn without advertisements popping up before directing you to the requested link. Impressions were made, yes, but were these impressions positive or negative?

What this means for the year ahead is that consumers are focusing on what their friends post about your business. Therefore your social media strategy needs to switch gears from focusing solely on online ads to encouraging customer testimonials or a reward system for consumers sharing their experiences or your brand name. Your customers are paying more attention to what their friends post than the ad on the side of the page.

2. Facebook is not the end all, be all anymore.

Countless social media tools were born in 2012. Pinterest, Twitter and Tumblr really expanded in popularity. Click Z revealed these incredible stats: 

• 70% of consumers click through on a retail blog to the firm's website.
• 68% of consumers use YouTube to browse and research products.
• Consumers follow the majority of brands on Pinterest, next they followed brands on Twitter.

Basically, promote your brand on all populated platforms, not just Facebook. Get a blog, get on YouTube, start a Pinterest board and Tweet interesting facts about your business in 2013.

3. Be accessible from more than a computer.

This should be at the top of your 2013 social media strategy to-do list. 2012 brought a whole new world of technologies to consumers from updated iPhones, to accessible tablets and more. Your business needs to be available on all of these devices. Spend the extra money and get a team together that can make your social media and advertising user-friendly on all of these devices.

4. Promote share worthy content.

Content marketing became a huge trend towards the end of 2012 that is absolutely necessary to carry over into 2013. Think Red Bull on this one. You don’t want your content to be a banner ad; you want it to be the feature story. Red Bull promotes extreme sporting activities, not it’s energy drink.

 

5. Stop the phony promoting.

Consumers know an ad when they see one. Stop promoting with ads on social media and start talking about what they want to know. Consumers want to see product information, reviews (both positive and negative) and deals. Answer their questions, tell them how to use your product, then let your product or service speak for itself.

6. Social media strategy must post photos.

Photos are number one in 2013 for social media posts. When people are scrolling through their Twitter feed or timeline pages they want to see pictures, not words. Find photos that are consistent with popular trends and post them more than you post words. It’s a full time job to keep up with what’s fresh and new, but the more you share what people are looking for and more importantly, what they’re talking about, the more buzz your business will gain and you’ll appear to be on the social media cutting edge.

7. Keep it old school with CRM as top priority.

Customer relationships management will never die along with quality customer service. These are staples for any business and they must always be kept as a priority. Now what we must consider is inbound marketing. Collectively looking at all of our online efforts and funneling those leads through the sales process to covert onlookers into customers, which eventually leads to sales.

As you can see, the New Year brings with it much change in social media and advertising. For help with your business’s social media strategy, contact our Atlanta advertising agency today or click here for a complementary SEO assessment.

 

Jocelyn Smith is the author of this article. You can learn more about her expertise here.