Breathing New Life into Your Social Media Campaign

When your initial social-media mojo slows down or stagnates, then it's time for you to re-evaluate your approach. Don't worry; you can always resurrect your presence in social media. According to the KISSmetrics marketing blog, at least 70 percent of the companies on the Fortune 500 list use Face-book and Twitter for business promotion, and you can discover more of the widespread benefits of social-media marketing too by using the following tips:

1. Look for the weak spots in your social-media strategies. It's important to become familiar with your metrics-tracking reports on whichever social-media platform you're using. Social-media management programs like Hoot-suite and others have clear reports to show you:

• How many visitors are coming to your web-page or profile

• How many traffic sources sent visitors to you

• How many followers or members you have

• How many comments you've received

• Your current and past search-engine ranking positions

• The number of new leads you've received for potential clients

Each month, try new strategies and see how they affect these numbers. Discover your least popular messages or campaigns and don't repeat anything like them in the future. Find your most popular posts and try to create more like them next month. When you know your weak spots, you can consider trying appropriate new tactics to improve them. Here are some ideas to start with:

2. Get more in touch with your audience. Staying updated about what your audience wants is one of the best ways to attract brand loyalty while also boosting the engagement in social media. One way to listen effectively is by signing up for a media-monitoring service like mention, which sends you real-time alerts whenever someone comments about your brand, website or social-media profile anywhere across millions of sources like web-pages and social websites in more than 40 languages. This tool helps you respond to false rumors quickly, find counterfeit brands trying to steal your thunder and learn what your audience really thinks of you.

3. Give more people a reason to connect with you by starting a new campaign. To clarify, simply posting regularly doesn't create a campaign. A strategic social-media campaign is more effective as a contest, prize drawing or special offer limited to a few people. For example, people can follow you to enter the contest if your objective is to get many new followers quickly.

4. Use better keywords to get more traffic. If getting more traffic is your weak point, try using low-competition keywords recommended by the Google Ad-words Keyword Planner. It's much easier to get higher rankings in search results when you're not one in a million websites loaded with high-volume search terms. A good rule of thumb is to keep your keyword usage down to around five percent of your total word count, or at least make sure the words appear organically within the text.

5. Add more evergreen content. Check your posts to make sure you have good amounts of valuable content for readers that doesn't require updating. Loading any social-media channel with too many advertisements and breaking news stories doesn't serve you or your audience in the long run. Try adding more informative content that creates interest, such as instructional pieces, videos and useful info-graphics.

6. Divide and conquer. You'll become really unproductive trying to master every social-media platform at once. Just take one social-media platform at a time and really make it your own. After you've mastered your first platform, this technique also gives you more online attention that helps you to start developing other social-media platforms over time.

Search Optics Inc is a leader in digital marketing solutions for the automotive industry. Search Optics' automotive marketing services include custom websites, search engine optimization, paid search and mobile solutions that generate leads which result in sales opportunities. Search Optics specializes in car dealer marketing and automotive SEO services. For more details, please visit www.searchoptics.com.