First, let’s talk about how I ended up at UPRAISE. My junior year of college I was given an opportunity as a social media marketer for an online marketing agency. With previous experience in marketing and event planning, I had never thought much about a career in social media. At the time it was still a questionable form of marketing to many. I took the opportunity and entered an unknown world of marketing. I had no sense of what I was getting myself into and I haven’t looked back since. Fast forward to the summer of 2017; Finally ready to move closer to home, I decided to take my 3 years of social media marketing experience to the fast-paced world of public relations.
Related Post: 4 Hard Truths of Social Media Marketing
Throughout my career Facebook has become one of the top advertising platforms, live streaming has become the new norm, and influencers are leading consumer purchases. These are four lessons I’ve learned that stand out above the rest:
Things are always changing. Always.
When it comes to social media marketing, you can never rely on one single platform or strategy to get you the results you want, as things are always changing. There is a lot that goes into the success of marketing a business on social media and what worked one week may not work the next. Successful social media marketers know the importance of staying on top of trends and best practices.
It’s not all fun and games.
As a social media marketer, you are doing a lot more than sitting on Facebook all day. Often marketers must wear many hats, as content creators, advertisers, reputation managers, and strategists all packaged in one. With all content living online and accessible to almost anyone, at some point, you will come face to face with angry customers, Internet trolls, and spammers. There are rules you must follow and often need to fit a lot of thought into a 280-character tweet.
Don’t get discouraged.
As mentioned above, there is no exact science when it comes to social media marketing. Looking at competitors and colleagues can give you a good idea of what they are doing right, but when in a social media slump it can be very hard to figure out what you are doing wrong. My best advice for someone in a slump: try something new. If that doesn’t work, try something new again. Trial and error play a huge role in social media marketing. Don’t be discouraged by failure, when you succeed, it is worth it.
Related Post: 5 of Our Favorite Tools for PR and Marketing Professionals
Analytics matter.
Many people underestimate the tools that are available to measure the success of social marketing campaigns. If you aren’t tracking your page followers, engagement, website referrals, etc., you’ll never know how your work is actually performing. A mantra to live by is quality over quantity. While having 10,000 followers looks great on paper, if only 50 of them click over to your site each month, is your marketing campaign really successful? Tools like Sprout Social or Google Analytics are pivotal in analyzing your marketing efforts.