“People who love to eat are always the best people.” – Julia Childs
We could not agree more – fellow food lovers are our kind of people! Here at Tytanium Ideas, we’ve found the best recipe for growing their business: mix passionate foodies with a dash of social media. So our digital connoisseurs hopped on a plane to the Big Apple to cultivate superior social media prowess at Specialty Food Association’s Summer. Tyler and Great taught the three simple steps for “Using Social Media to Grow your Business.” An appetizingly apropos offering, to be sure!
#TeamTytanium kicked off the 8:00 a.m. session with – what else? – a group selfie!
These tactics aren’t the digital equivalent to instant pudding or a microwave dinner. “Using Social Media to Grow Your Business” is the fine wine of social strategies. Developing, executing, and winning at social media takes care, focused forethought, solid strategy, dedication, consistency, and, above all else, time. So grab yourself a perfectly paired and substantial snack as we explore the 3-ingredient recipe guaranteed to make you win.
- Ingredient 1: Quality Content
- Ingredient 2: Engagement
- Ingredient 3: Follow Up!
Ingredient 1: Quality Content
Great food is crafted from great ingredients; the best social media strategies start with creating quality content. First, decide what stories you’re going to tell by identifying:
- What makes you special?
- Who is your target market? What do they care about?
- Where do your stories and their interests intersect? The stories in this intersection are pure gold (or, better yet, Tytanium!)
Go for quality, compelling content gold – find the intersection of your stories and your target market’s interests.
Then, tell your amazing stories. How?
- Tell them what they want to hear. Follow the 80/20 rule – 80% is pure gold content, relevant to your target market, and 20% of the time you talk about yourself.
- Talk their talk. Adhere to your brand identity while speaking in the voice, tone, and general vernacular of your target market.
- Show what you’re made of. Include visuals like pictures, videos, and graphics.
#TeamTytanium at #SFFS14, showing what we’re made of!
- Sharing is caring. Post other organizations’ content. Sharing fosters beneficial relationships and builds your reputation as a (fill-in-the-blank) authority.
- Be unique. Mix up content types. Variety is key! Share an infographic, then an inspiring quote, then a recipe. Be emotional, personal, detailed, useful, and fun.
- Stay organized. Establish an editorial calendar to keep you on track. We’ve started a template on Google Docs you can use here.
Ingredient 2: Engagement
You posted. Now what? Be an active, valuable part of your community. Show you’re present, paying attention, and you care – a lot! Talk to your MLTAs regularly. MLTAs are users Most Likely to Advocate, people active in your networks, influencers who love you and your brand, your hands-down, biggest fans who amplify your message in all kinds of ways and, most importantly, bring you business. Share their content. Like their posts. Go to where they are; be involved in their communities. Give MLTAs Michelin-star attention.
Ingredient 3: Follow Up
Follow up, follow up, follow up! Use social media touchpoints to extend your reach. Share content from your other social networks to build that community. Gather email addresses to send e-newsletters. Post teasers directing fans to blog posts. Analyze all available data. Examine each source individually and your online presence as a whole. Look at behaviors granularly, discovering what content resonated most with your target audience and why. Learn your fans and visitors’ demographic profiles, and then dive deeper, determining interests, attitudes, behaviors, and overall sentiment. Track their journey across the web. Tytanium Ideas’s Twitter statistics – just one example of analytics to examine!
Interpret all this information to better understand your community, discern what you are doing well and should keep doing versus where you need to change your tactics, deliver the best content, and, ultimately, to use social media to grow your business.