Social media has become an integral component of nearly every business’s marketing strategy. The most effective social media strategies are smart, on-brand, and reliable. To develop a strategy that ticks all three boxes, it’s essential to identify your target audience and develop a unique voice for speaking to them.

Whether you opt for in-house employees, third-party contractors, or virtual assistants to handle your social media strategy, they must be fully in tune with your brand and community. Below, the members of Business Journals Leadership Trust share 15 expert strategies to help businesses develop and manage an effective social presence.

1. Understand your organization’s needs.

Do you need a big social marketing team that requires a hefty budget, or would a small group of creative and experienced people be enough? Next, determine a strategy. Set goals and objectives and deduce the budget accordingly. A straightforward layout with members knowing their exact roles will reduce friction in developing creative ideas and reduce unnecessary costs. – Alina Clark, CocoDoc

2. Create a clear message.

The most important social media considerations are content and consistency. Firms that “win” the game create a clear message, identify the platforms that best fit their brand image and dedicate a person or team to posting fresh content to keep followers engaged. Start small, focus on quality and grow your platforms organically with consistent, well-considered messaging and execution. – John Palter, Palter Sims Martinez PLLC

3. Blend social media efforts with PR, marketing and sales.

Make social media part of the overall marketing strategy. I often see companies operating social media as a separate campaign, and the results are dismal. However, when social media is blended into PR, marketing and sales, the impact can yield high results. – Donna Michaels, LMGPR

4. Keep it smart and sincere.

Too many companies try to saturate social media channels with daily posts or beautiful graphics, but that doesn’t necessarily tell your story in a smart way. Focus on what makes you better and different from the other guys — is it about comfort, is it about feeling better, is it about confidence? Find that niche and own it. – Mary-Cathryn Kolb, brrrº

5. Go where your target clients are.

Align the target client you are looking for with the right social media platform. Then communicate your social media strategy in the voice of that client. Too often, companies are publishing great social media content, but it’s on the wrong social media channel. For example, if you are looking for retirees on LinkedIn, you’re going to have a hard time seeing results. – Bryan Sarff, True Wealth & Company

6. Work backward from your clients’ and industry influencers’ preferences.

Think about your clients and influencers. What platforms are they most likely to engage with? Start there. Your social media should be an extension of your brand narrative, and you should give more than you ask for. A good rule of thumb: Think of your social media as an NPR channel; tell great stories and share new ideas, but only ask for something once a season. – Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications

7. Hire people who will best relate to your audience.

Find people who will best relate to your company’s target demographic. Put them on your social media content team. Chances are they will communicate more authentically with your company’s primary customer in your social media messaging. – Keith Woods, KB Woods Public Relations

8. Seek alignment with your core values.

It all goes back to core values. You have to have people managing your social media presence who believe in the same core values the rest of your team does. The social media team needs to truly know you and your brand, and they absolutely have to believe in the mission. If they do, it’s easier for them to be effective on social media because, at their core, they have the same motivations you do. – Kris Lindahl, Kris Lindahl Real Estate

9. Monitor and adjust your strategy.

You can post every single day and waste thousands of dollars on advertising, but if it is targeting the wrong demographic, it is not beneficial to you or your business in any way. Constantly check and recheck your target audience for your ads and check the demographics to make sure they are hitting the right market. – Scott Scully, Abstrakt Marketing Group

10. Diversify your team’s skill sets.

Make sure you’re diversifying your skill sets as you build your team, whether by hiring an in-house marketer or adding depth to your bench with an outsourced partner. Successful social media relies on innovative thinking and unique tactics, so build a proactive team comprising multiple marketing disciplines and backgrounds to achieve your business goals. – Melea McRae, Crux KC

11. Prioritize a few channels to maximize ROI.

Identify which channels your audience is using most and focus your efforts on those. Prioritizing can help maximize your social media ROI and will help you craft meaningful messages for those platforms you use. Your goal is not to engage everyone on social media but to be thoughtful in marketing to those who have an interest in your product, service or intellectual property. – Liz Wooten-Reschke, Connect For More

12. Have a goal for your social campaigns.

Why are you running this campaign? For name recognition? To promote a particular product or service? The “why” matters for the message. If it is simply for name recognition, you want to run items of interest that are consistent with your brand and that people find interesting and want to share. Conversely, generalized messages won’t work for a specific product or service. – Christine Durrett, Durrett & Kersting PLLC

13. Treat your social media presence with professionalism.

A social media campaign can create additional visibility beyond a great website, SEO and SEM. It must build on and reinforce existing content, offer an interesting and “bite-sized” topic, have goals and metrics, and be reviewed and measured consistently. Social media can be a relatively low-cost program, but that doesn’t mean it should not be treated with professionalism. – Mark Coronna, Chief Outsiders

14. Encapsulate your ‘solution’ in your posts.

All of your communication — including social media — needs to encapsulate the solution your organization offers for the problem your clients and prospects have. The content the team creates should clarify and reverberate what separates your company from the pack. – Rachel Namoff, Arapaho Asset Management

15. Establish a vision for what you want your brand to represent.

Our vision is to provide legendary IT support for businesses. We brand that message everywhere we can and work to make its presentation consistent across all platforms. It takes multiple outreach efforts to build a consistent image, so be sure each time you reach out to your audience that you are presenting your message in a consistent way. – Jared Knisley, Fizen Technology

Even the best employees will make mistakes at work from time to time — it’s part of being human. Leaders want their team members to come to them quickly and honestly acknowledge the issue. However, many may hesitate to do so out of a fear of punishment or damage to their reputation.

Trying to hide a mistake is never the way to go; if you share the mistake with leadership and let them know you want to help make things right, you can work together to quickly resolve the issue and minimize — perhaps eliminate — any negative consequences. To help, seven members of Business Journals Leadership Trust share things you can say when you’ve made a mistake at work to calm the anxieties that may arise on both sides.

1. ‘Here’s exactly what happened.’

An honest explanation is what is needed from someone making a mistake. We are all human; we make mistakes. Owning a mistake is something that some people avoid. I always say, “I do not know what I do not know,” and that runs true with mistakes. If someone makes a mistake and I do not know about it, then it cannot be fixed. – Brandy McCombs, IBC

2. ‘I made a mistake, and I won’t make any excuses.’

Honesty is always the best policy. If someone makes a mistake, proactively brings it to my attention and admits to making the mistake without making excuses I will almost always work with them to find a solution. Doing this shows character and should be rewarded, not punished. Everyone makes mistakes. –Brock Berry, AdCellerant

3. ‘I need your help.’

They should say, “I have made a mistake. This is what I think we should do, and I need your help.” As a leader, you should create an environment where everyone feels safe to let you know that they have failed, and now we all get to learn from it. Fail forward fast! –Paul Herring, 101 Solutions LLC

4. ‘I want to do what I can to fix this.’

I appreciate team members who are genuine and take responsibility for their actions. Stating, “I made a mistake, but I want to do what I can to fix it and make sure it doesn’t happen again in the future” is important. –Christen McCamie, Nesta Real Estate Consultants

5. ‘Here’s what I want to do to correct it.’

“I made a mistake” is half of the discussion. The other half of the conversation should include, “and here is what I can do to correct it.” Accepting responsibility is important, but so too is accepting your role in correcting the problem. Having solutions already considered lessens the anxiety associated with the original mistake. – Paul Weber, EAG Advertising & Marketing

6. ‘I have ideas to keep this from happening again.’

Acknowledging the error and taking responsibility for what happened is of first importance. Then the employee should offer potential solutions to the problem and action steps that will ensure that the error does not reoccur. They should come in with these solutions prepared. This shows management that they really care and know how important it is to avoid this error in the future. – Zee Ali, Z-Swag

7. ‘I have learned from this.’

Encourage a culture of honesty, integrity, and forgiveness. We’re all going to make mistakes, so confess it right away, take ownership of it, do everything you can to correct it and make it right, and then learn from it and move on. It’s important that employees see the bosses behave this way too because that will show them the company’s values in action. – Mary-Cathryn Kolb, brrrº

Original Post: Biz Journals

Atlanta Business Chronicle Leadership Trust

By Atlanta Expert Panel

Atlanta Business Chronicle Leadership Trust is an invite-only network of influential business leaders, executives and entrepreneurs in Atlanta.

A business performs best when leadership has insight into customers’ wants and experiences. Such insight can help guide service offerings, provide marketing copy and more. In theory, getting customer feedback is easier today than it ever has been — online surveys, review sites and multiple social media outlets offer tools for both businesses and consumers. However, persuading your customers to share their experiences can be challenging.

Below, six leaders from Atlanta Business Chronicle Leadership Trust share strategies about when and how businesses can approach their customers for feedback, as well as what they should do with the information they receive.

1. Have someone else solicit feedback.

Asking for candid feedback can be awkward, and a fear of offending or hurting feelings can make people reluctant to say what they really think. So have someone else do it. Ask a trusted person from your marketing or PR team, a consultant, an outside adviser, or even a board member to ask specific questions (for consistency), and make sure some of those questions are about what could be better. – Mary-Cathryn Kolb, brrrº

2. Show your commitment to customer care.

The entire customer journey experience — from a website visit to a phone call, email or in-person interaction — is paramount. Every touchpoint should be one that reinforces your business’s commitment to customer care. If this is done successfully, the customer will be more inclined to provide feedback without your needing to ask. – Don Dodds, M16 Marketing

3. Always respond to all feedback.

I’d recommend making it a clear goal to seriously respond to all feedback (positive and negative) your customers give you. This way, you will get an active feedback loop with your customers. – Mats-Ola Bydell, Odgers Berndtson

4. Ask what you can do to improve.

We ask our clients to rate their satisfaction level at the end of each project. We ask them not only what they felt went well with the project but also what we could have done better. – Michele Grant, Block + Tackle

5. Start by building a strong bond.

We kick off every client relationship with a half-day offsite that encourages team bonding. Everyone working on the project, both on the agency’s side and the client’s side, attends with the goals of getting to know each other better and setting a foundation where trust can begin to build. We find that a trusting partner is more likely to openly share feedback. – Jeff Hilimire, Dragon Army

6. Focus on encouraging referrals.

We always strive to perform the best we can, and we have an annual stewardship review with our clients to receive direct feedback. However, the best feedback we can receive is when a client refers us to someone new — it’s the best strategy for us to know if we are executing on our client service commitments and goals. – Neil Metzheiser, Lockton Companies, LLC