Is your social media agency doing you right with regards to local Internet marketing? With each passing month, it becomes more and more evident that social media marketing should be a vital part of your Internet marketing strategy. Coordinating your social media marketing with local SEO and online marketing takes some time and attention, but the payoff is more than worth the effort. These tips can help you and your social media agency up your game in the local market.
Use Local Hashtags
Hashtags are the coin of the realm in social media. Those #whatever tags are the way that people find what they’re looking for in their Twitter, Instagram and Google+ streams. Even Facebook recently joined the hashtag revolution. Many Twitter users are set up to read any tweets with specific hashtags, so make use of #local tags to help your local users find you.
Build Your Local Circles
Whether you call them followers, fans, circles or friends, local Internet marketing is all about building and interacting with your networks. Put in some upfront time to find and follow local thought and opinion leaders, as well as local businesses and customers. It’s a quick and easy way to get your own networks up and running because many of them will return the favor. Use in-store promotions, website promotions and other strategies to build your social media following on each platform.
Provide Value
The earliest waves of social media “marketers” focused on self-promotion and turned a lot of people off. When building a social media strategy, remember that people follow accounts that provide valuable content – but that value varies from one platform to the next. If your social media agency is simply using your accounts to send out announcements of new blog posts or other self-promotional material, they’re not using those platforms to their best effect.
Create a Local Internet Marketing Strategy
Take time to plot your strategy with your social media agency. It can be as simple as tweeting today’s lunch special at the same time each day or involve a cross-platform marketing campaign to launch a new product or service. The keys to successful online marketing – whether it involves PPC buys, social media posts or retooling your entire website – are research and planning, so take the time to do both before launching in feet first.
Don’t have a social media presence yet? What are you waiting for? Marketing via social media is getting more and more important to your success. Talk to a social media agency about your needs and how they can help you achieve your goals today.