Just a few years ago, you could get away with building a social media marketing strategy on the fly. As long as you were present, you were doing more than your competitors–right? Well it’s 2018 and not much of the same logic applies today. Brands must be fully invested in their social media marketing strategies and focus on engagement. Otherwise, you’ll lose out on real customers, which means serious effects on your bottom line. This is not here to scare your brand into the world of social media. Instead, this is to provide your marketing team with the right steps to take toward a successful social strategy so your brand isn’t left in the dust. Here are the some steps to create a winning social media marketing strategy in 2018:

1. Social Media Monitoring and Listening.

Social listening enables social media specialists to track and review the social buzz around your brand, industry or competition. By listening in, you can look for trends in moods and behaviors while also looking for opportunities to promote your product.

2. Identify Business Goals.

Every piece of your social media strategy serves the goals you set. You simply can’t move forward without knowing what you’re working toward. Look closely at your company’s overall needs and decide how you want to use social media to contribute to reaching them. You’ll undoubtedly come up with several personalized goals, but there are a few that all companies should include in their strategy increasing brand awareness, retaining customers and reducing marketing costs are relevant to everyone.

3. Create Social Media Marketing Goals That Solve Your Biggest Challenges.

Understand what you want out of your efforts. Social media marketing isn’t about flipping a switch and calling it a day. Instead, social media planning should be looked at like cooking your favorite dish. Once you have your ingredients, you follow a recipe and presto! But that’s not always the case. What if you have guests and need to feed more people? What if someone is allergic to one of the ingredients? Suddenly, your goal goes from making a meal to ensuring it will feed enough people and be edible by all.

4. Analytics and Reporting.

Your social media tool should enable you to export reports on the data that has been collected. Look for quick reporting and analytics to share with your team or clients. Use reporting to make intelligent, informed decisions about your social media strategy.

5. Assign roles.

Knowing who’s responsible for what increases productivity and avoids confusion and overlapping efforts. Things may be a bit messy in the beginning, but with time team members will know their roles and what daily tasks they’re responsible for. When everyone knows his or her role, it’s time to start planning the execution process. You can either plan daily or weekly. I don’t advise putting a monthly plan together because lots of things will come up and you may end up wasting time adapting to the new changes. You can use tools like Basecamp or ActiveCollab to manage your team and assign tasks to each member. These tools save you tons of time and help you stay organized.

If you work at building lasting relationships, there’s a lot less room for failure with your social media marketing strategy.

Did you know that more than half of the population wants to start their own business, but only 10% try to? More and more people try to make it every year. Owning a startup can be challenging in many ways, especially getting what you want on social media. I´ve been working for startups in social media for some years now, and Facebook should always be a big part of the marketing strategy. A Facebook page is a free marketing tool for businesses. Not only can you list your products and services with it, but it also gives you the opportunity to share links and post images and videos to connect easily to your customers. This is where you can show your company’s humane side and develop your brand identity. Let us see how a startup can leverage Facebook’s reach:

1. How to create a facebook page?

Go to facebook.com. Once you’re there, you’ll see a ‘Sign Up’ button on the upper left corner of the page beside the Facebook logo. Click ‘Sign Up’. Again, you need to have a personal account in order to manage your Facebook page. You can change the privacy settings later so that no else sees your personal account if you’re just looking to market your business page.

2. Create a facebook business page.

Go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php to start creating your own page. Select ‘local business’ or whichever category best fits your company.

3. Fill out business details.

Now, fill out the form with the basic details of your business, read the Facebook Pages Terms and check ‘I agree’, and click the ‘Get Started’ button. You’ll be redirected to another form where you’ll provide additional details about your business. Although it has a ‘Skip’ option, it’s a good idea to fill out these details to make your business page appear more professional. When you choose your business category, more specific subcategories will come up– choose the one that best applies to your business. Don’t forget to fill out all the other details such as the description of your business, and your business website if you have one. Creating a unique Facebook address (URL) is also important! A branded URL will makes it easier for people to find your page. Remember that you can only change it once after this, so make sure to double-check. It’s a good idea to use your business name and to keep it consistent with all your online usernames (consistent branding). Sure, it can take some time to fill in all this stuff, but the more specific it is, the better. Think of each little data-point as an opportunity to optimize your page so it’s easier for you to use, quicker for others to find, and better for your marketing.

4. Ensure all business info is complete.

Update your page information. You’ll see this option as you scroll up the page, on the upper right side. Updating your information builds credibility and helps your audience get better acquainted with your brand. There are so many data-points, and if you’re in the initial startup phase you might actually find out some things about your business you didn’t know before through this process. For instance, have you thought about your general business category? Have you ironed out simple things like hours of operation? Do you know your targeted audience? Be thorough.

Creating a local business page on Facebook and listing your products and services can help you generate more leads for your small business. From taking up more space on the search engine results page, to advertising lead magnets to your target audience, understanding how to leverage what Facebook has to offer will greatly enhance your marketing and sales efforts.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recently announced changes to the company’s news feed have the potential to dramatically affect how people interact on the social network. Over the next few weeks, Facebook’s news feed will start showing fewer news articles, and less marketing content and ads, Zuckerberg wrote. Instead, users should start seeing more vacation videos from their friends, photos of their nephew’s college graduation, and other more family-friendly posts about the people they know. It’s a major change for Facebook, which over the years has shifted from being a social networking service connecting friends and family to one of the world’s biggest distributors of news and online ads. Here’s what you need to know about Facebook’s big news feed change:

1. Facebook will be prioritizing news from trustworthy sources, news that is informative, and news that is relevant to one’s local community.  According to Mark Zuckerberg, “news will always be a critical way for people to start conversations on important topics”. So the team at Facebook is making another major update to make sure that news on the News Feed is of high quality. Specifically, they will be prioritizing the following types of news:

• News from publications that the community rates as trustworthy
• News that people find informative
• News that is relevant to people’s local community

Facebook has been surveying users to help determine the trustworthiness of publications and informativeness of news.

2. In this newest update, Publishers and marketers may find themselves rethinking their social strategy or scale it back altogether. Mark Zuckerberg stated, “I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.” His statement coincides with this new update that will diminish posts from brands, publishers, marketers, and news stories. Facebook is concerned about providing a quality experience that will promote a user’s well-being. Their studies have shown that genuine interactions between friends is what promotes a strong well-being. Publishers and marketers should look to create posts that will generate back-and-forth discussion among Facebook users, such as Oprah’s recent speech at the Golden Globes or local events that may excite a community.

3. Messenger Ads are now Available Worldwide. Initially tested in Australia and Thailand, brands can now reach Facebook users (all 10 billion of them!) directly through their Facebook messenger app. These ads will appear in a user’s inbox, according to Facebook, based on “how many threads a user has, the size of their phone’s physical screen and the pixel density of the display.” Messenger ads come with a “sponsored” label in the home tab of the Messenger app. They are formatted to look like a typical newsfeed ad, including the headline, copy, image, and calls to action. Users can then click through to any website or destination you select when setting up the promotion. If you’re on the receiving side of a Messenger ad, there’s no way to permanently turn off ads, but a user can tap the downward arrow in the bottom right of an ad and see options to report or hide it.

One of the most important thing, marketers must do is stay up-to-date with every algorithm change. What worked in the past does not necessarily work now, and what works now may not work in the future. Stay current on how social media evolves and be prepared to evolve with it.

You’re shaking, sweating, and have a pit in the bottom of your stomach. You’re not watching a Halloween horror flick. You’re looking at a social media account you manage. Social media people face a lot of potential bumps in the night, and we see brands make mistakes all the time. But what happens if it is you? No need to fear! Here are five common prevention for social media nightmares if they occur.

1. Be Prepared. It’s easy to go into panic mode if your brand is suddenly flooded with negative social media coverage. Not all companies have the resources to secure a team solely responsible for crisis management. If you fall into this category, ensure each individual on the team is aware of their duties should something occur. Having an agile team of people who are ready to react in an instant will ensure everyone is aligned and all necessary steps are taken

2. Consistent spelling errors and grammar mistakes, on the other hand, won’t go unnoticed. If you’re getting more words “wrong than write,” your audience will be distracted from your core messages (as you just were). Your brand’s credibility and authority will be damaged if you are guilty of regular and careless mistakes. Prevent these by having “someone on your team look over your content before you hit ‘Post’; ideally, you’d want at least two pair of eyes after you compose it. Double-check everything, including the @mentions in your Tweet: it’s common to skip Twitter usernames during the proofreading process, only to realize that the post mentions an incorrect or nonexistent Twitter handle! Read your composed messages out loud. If you have any hesitations at all, look up spelling or grammar issues you might be unsure of.

3. Think Before You Post. While no SMB wants to be the recipient of negative comments on social media, there’s one simple way you can help prevent this: think before you post. In the case of Amy’s Baking Company, the company’s owners started to receive media attention in 2010 after responding negatively to a review about their restaurant on Yelp. But that was just the beginning. Recently, it was reported that they posted insulting comments about their detractors on the company’s own Facebook page. The couple later claimed someone unknown to them hacked into their Facebook account and posted the insults. No matter who posted the disparaging remarks, a key take-away can still be learned: never post rude comments or become overly defensive to the point of insulting on your social media pages. Doing so is one of the quickest ways to land in the middle of a social media nightmare.

4. Find Your Brand Advocates. Word of mouth is ever-powerful. Brand advocates come across as authentic, passionate and lacking an ulterior motive for supporting your brand. Brand advocates may reduce the impact or even prevent social media nightmares because of how they often defend your brand as negative activity is emerging. Turning customers into brand advocates can be daunting, but it is an achievable goal that can really help you should a social media disaster occur.

5. Have Security Measures in Place. PC security is one of the most obvious but often the most forgotten elements to include in your crisis communications plan. Update your computer, use separate passwords for each account, and create strong passwords.

Social media doesn’t have to be a source of stress if you’re well prepared for anything that can come your way. Keep these tips in mind and you’ll be able to handle anything that comes your way.

With the help of entertaining content, better brand positioning, and improved customer experience, Facebook Messenger can be used to establish a long-lasting relationship with customers. Owing to the tremendous popularity of Facebook as a potent social media platform, Facebook Messenger has also got a huge traction in recent years. As a conservative estimate, there are over 1.5 billion Facebook users today who are actively sharing, commenting and liking various interesting posts day-in and day-out. Most if these users are using Facebook Messenger as a preferred medium for individually communicating with each other.

However, this profound messenger platform has more potential than meets the eye. Businesses can implement and integrate Facebook Messenger into various service processes in order to simplify business-customer interaction. Since users have started communicating rich content through pictures, videos, GIFs, emoticons or even PDFs via messenger also, this creates a great opportunity for businesses to make messaging an important part of their strategy. Here are benefits in using Facebook messenger for your business:

1. Provide Service. Some customers post questions in comments, but others prefer private messages. They don’t want to share their personal information publicly, so they send you a message through Facebook messenger. With the help of messenger, you can directly send a private email or message with required information to your customers and clients.

2. Messenger is “safe” but it’s also far more engaging because it’s so versatile. In the mold of China’s WeChat, Facebook Messenger does it all: video calls, emojis, stickers, mobile games, payments, group chats, music, bots, and integrations with services like ride-hailing apps. The ways to engage are endless. And unlike static Facebook brand pages, which resemble the bulletin-boards of yore, Facebook Messenger is a truly 21st-century channel: it’s a never-ending personal conversation.

3. Provide real-time customer care. The Facebook Messenger facilitates a live conversation platform almost as if you are speaking with your customers face-to-face. You can instantly help them choose the size, color and quantity of products they require, you can immediately send them order confirmations, and let them check their shipping info as well. From customers’ perspective, it is always welcome to be given a private support – which is possible via FB Messenger. Using this strategy, you can send your prospective customers a sharable link, which will let them initiate a private message when they click it. Moreover, customers always love to get a real-time response whenever they seek solutions for their problems. In a survey conducted by Sprout Social, as many as 1,000 people were approached; it was found that most consumers expect a response on social media within 4 hours. This clearly makes a case for Facebook Messenger to deliver a real-time customer service.

You can quickly receive and send messages automatically, like weather and traffic updates, to customized communications like receipts, shipping notifications. Also, answering common questions like; business hours and locations, appointment scheduling and confirmations, product or service feedback. This will not only, save you time, but it will also improve the quality of your interactions so you never miss a lead, or opportunity to engage with your customers and clients.