As more and more businesses join the online communities, a common question emerges. How can you guarantee social media success?
Sadly, the answer is “you can’t.” As with any business venture, there is no magic bullet for success. There are, however, certain steps that can increase the chance for success. Recently, the San Diego Union Tribune published an article providing three tips on how to improve one’s chance for social media success; these center on create, share, and track.
If a social media channel is to succeed, it must contain content people want. Whether it’s blog posts, videos, webinars, or traditional news releases, creating interesting and sharable content is the first step towards social media success.
The operative word in the previous sentence is sharable. A key step in creating successful social media is creating content that people want to share with others. Of course, this content also has to be shared or spread easily. A Twitter page and a Facebook Fan page are great ways to spread content and engage followers.
The third key to successful social media is measurement. Any successful marketing effort requires measuring results, and social media is no exception. Tracking social media results can be difficult, however. So the trick is to start small. Successful tracking means defining the things to impact first. For example, do you want to track the number of fans/followers, mentions on other social media channels, or number of referrals from social media? Of course, using analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Bit.ly can make tracking results relatively easy.
While there is no guarantee for social media success, creating engaging content, sharing content among a targeted audience, and measuring results can increase the chance for success.
