Social media marketing has a lot in common with one of my favorite pastimes: fishing. As an avid lover of the outdoors and all its activities, fishing holds a special place in my heart. Give this girl a rod and a reel, and you’ll see a marketer in her element of joy.
What I cherish most about fishing is the tranquility it offers—a serene environment that fosters reflection, particularly on how marketing, especially social media marketing, parallels fishing in many ways. To succeed, you need the appropriate tools (or gear), to be present where your audience congregates (the right place), and to engage with them at the optimal moment (the right time). When these elements align in social media marketing, just as in fishing, you’re likely to catch a customer.
The Right Place: All the Many Marketing Choices
What kind of marketing do you do? There are so many kinds, you could write a series on it:
- Email marketing
- Content marketing
- Video marketing
- Paid marketing
- Social media marketing
- Print marketing
The list goes on. Are you using the right format for your audience? Have you ever checked? To have a successful marketing campaign, it’s imperative that you’re where your audience is. Let’s break this down a bit, using a few of the choices above.
Content Marketing
If you’re sending out posts to non-related sites just hoping to catch something, this is not good marketing. If you have a technical product, for instance, and you’re guest-posting on a site for shoes, it’s not the right place. If you’re nodding your head and saying, “of course,” this happens a lot more than you might think.
Don’t waste good content in the wrong places. Do your research and make sure you’re putting it where it will actually do you good, either as an audience builder, an authority builder or straight sales.
Further reading:
- The Crucial Elements of Content Marketing That Your Business Needs
- How to Create a Content Marketing Plan for Your Company
Social Media Marketing
Social works much like content marketing. You have to be where your audience is. It seems like there’s a new social media platform popping up every week; your job is to find out whether your customer base is using it.
Again, do your research (this will be a common theme in this post). Don’t just jump onto a social media platform because a lot of people are using it. It doesn’t matter how many people are using a platform if none of them are interested in your product or service.
Also, consider this: if you’re posting on all the platforms, and your audience is only on a quarter of them, you’re wasting three quarters of your time, money and resources on empty results. Make your social media efforts matter!
Paid Marketing
Paid marketing, or PPC, or ad placements, is a straight-forward way to turn dollars into more dollars. You put up an ad on Google, people click and order. No worrying about ranking or anything else, right? Or is it more complicated than that?
If you’re doing PPC, do yourself a favor and hire a professional. The only time PPC is for the novice user is if you have enough time to go through Google Ads training and if you have enough money that you can afford to make mistakes.
The Right Gear: How to Hook an Audience with Social Media Marketing
Just as in fishing, where the right jig, pole, and line weight are essential to land a catch, the tools of marketing, especially social media marketing, must be tailored to the audience you’re aiming to attract. The diversity of your audience necessitates different approaches; not all fish are caught with the same gear, and not all audiences will respond to the same marketing tactics.
Repurposing Content for Social Media
This principle underpins the variety of channels we use to distribute content and the strategy behind using each to its fullest potential. You don’t need to start from scratch for every campaign. Instead, take advantage of “repurposing content” to extend your reach. By adapting existing content for different platforms, you can engage a broader segment of your audience without additional content creation burdens.
Take, for instance, a blog post you’ve written on the 20 best cat memes. This single post can transform into a dynamic Slide Share presentation or a series of individual memes for social media sharing. Suddenly, from one original piece, you’ve created 22 distinct pieces of content, each tailored for different segments of your social media audience.
With social media marketing in mind, assess your content arsenal. How can it be reshaped or reformatted to thrive on another platform? This strategic approach not only maximizes your content’s value but also ensures your message resonates across the diverse landscape of social media, effectively hooking your intended audience.
Further Reading:
The Right Time
Obviously, you wouldn’t post articles about Christmas on the 4th of July, or Happy Valentines on Memorial Day. That makes sense. However, you need to take the same consideration with the rest of your marketing efforts. It takes A/B testing to get it right. When is the best time for your audience?
Email marketing is a good example. When is the best time for people to receive your emails? You might think first thing in the morning, but so do a lot of other publishers. Which means your email gets lost in the crowd. Instead, test your email send rates. Look at open rates. Look at the days you send. You’re look for the day and time with the most opens.
Another example is social media marketing. Facebook and Twitter both have scrolling feeds, which means you need to post not only when your audience is on, but when they’re actively looking at the feeds. Again, this takes testing. Look for higher engagement rates and audience reach, days you post and times you post.
It might take awhile to get it right. It might take a lot of tests. But the right time makes a huge difference.
Final Thoughts
If your marketing efforts feel like they’re floundering, resist the temptation to pin the blame on a single factor. Dive into research and engage in rigorous testing, because the issue could be isolated, or it might be multifaceted. Perhaps the challenge lies in the realm of social media marketing, where choosing the wrong platform can disengage your target audience. Maybe your email campaigns feature compelling content, but they miss the mark by reaching out at inopportune times. Or, you might find yourself perfectly positioned, at the ideal moment, but with content that fails to resonate.
The absence of research and testing is akin to fishing in the dark without knowing what’s beneath the water’s surface. At Level343, we’ve always emphasized the importance of a strategic approach: test, tweak, and revisit. Integrating social media marketing into this mix, with the right platform, timing, and content, can significantly amplify your reach and engagement. Remember, aligning the correct place, time, and “gear” can dramatically transform your marketing outcomes, shining a light on your path to success.
