Social Media Marketing: it’s a brave new world.

As an artist or a small business owner, you are probably feeling increasing pressure to get involved with social media. You hear warnings all the time: “your customers are on Facebook and Twitter, ignore them at your peril!” This is one bandwagon that you know you have to jump on, and maybe you already got yourself a Facebook page, a Twitter account, or a YouTube channel.

But it’s discouraging. Maybe your numbers aren’t growing as fast as you’d like them to, or no one is engaging with you. What are you doing wrong?

Let’s back up the truck for a moment. I’m guessing what’s happened is that you’ve moved directly to stage 3, which is tactics, all the while either ignoring, or only having a very hazy idea of what your goals and strategies are.

1. Goals

What are your overall marketing goals? Get as specific as you can. Maybe you want to have exemplary customer service, maybe you want to make a foray into the Japanese market, or you want to increase your online sales by 20%.

2. Strategies

The next step is to come up with strategies to make your goals happen. Zappos, for example, who is known for providing exceptional customer service. Their strategy is to empower their front-line customer service representatives to do whatever they see fit to make the customer happy.

With your business, your social media marketing strategies might include creating engagement with your client base, getting to know them and their needs better, and creating a deeper level of trust.

3. Tactics

Tactics=Tools. In our Zappos example, it would be the method that the employee uses to achieve the end result (100% customer satisfaction), which could include free shipping, or hand-delivering their purchase.

Your tactics could then include things like posting relevant and useful articles to your Facebook Page and Twitter stream, conducting polls on your Facebook page, asking questions of your Twitter followers, and checking your streams a couple of times a day to see if anyone has responded to you or asked you a question, and then responding accordingly.

I’d encourage you to step back and take a broader look at your social media marketing. Are your tactics working? If they aren’t maybe your strategies are to blame.