That’s a lot of information we’ve covered and a lot of different strategies. We’ve seen how to set up a social media empire and how to thrive across all platforms and on certain platforms specifically. We’ve looked at how to leverage new emerging technologies, we’ve seen apps and tools you can use and we’ve addressed the psychology of sharing.

But throughout all of this, what has remained the most important is that you deliver value. Value is what draws people to any social media account, just as it’s what draws them to a website. Value is what keeps them there and it’s what keeps them clicking on your links and sharing your posts.

And moreover, value is what helps you to build your reputation as a brand that can deliver. And this is absolutely crucial – because there’s no point having a big audience if that audience doesn’t trust you and isn’t interested in what you have to offer. Don’t post clickbait or spam the web with promotional messages – use your social media accounts to show what’s important to your organization, to entertain your visitors and to show that you know your topic inside out.

Likewise, make sure that you are actually engaging with the audience that visit your site. Respond to comments, ask questions and contribute to the communities you join. This way people will feel like they know you and they’ll go from being customers and leads to being fans and real contacts. Every single one of those followers can be turned into a fan and 1,000 true fans is really all any business needs to go nuclear.

The key then is truly to just think carefully about what you post and to hold yourself to high standards. Think about how you want to be seen on social media and about what impression you want to make. If you do this, then you’ll find that you attract new followers and new customers like a magnet. Social media is like a megaphone and will amplify your message. This can be irritating, or it can be a great way to demonstrate your enthusiasm and passion to the masses.

Understanding Social Media – Checklist

Success on social media is really just a matter of ticking all the right boxes. If you can understand how to connect with your audience and you know how to provide them with the value they’re looking for through social media, then you can grow your followers and subscribers while at the same time becoming a thought leader within your niche.

Here are all the steps and factors you need to consider.

Tick these all off and you’re on your way to social media domination!

Create a Brand

A consistent and strong branding is important to ensure that all your social accounts appear linked. This way, every interaction will strengthen your brand and increase your visibility.

A brand consists of:

• A well designed logo
• A catchy name
• A tag line
• Some cover images
• A web design that incorporates the logo’s design language
• A consistent tone and subject matter

Now link your blog to each of your social accounts and each of your social accounts to each other.

Be Everywhere

Be on as many social networks as possible to create more in-roads to your business.

This means specifically that you should set up accounts with:

• Facebook – Giving you access to the biggest audience and great advertising tools. Set up a Page for your business and share content.
• Twitter – Great ROI as it requires minimal time investment.
• Google+ – Useful for improving SEO and affecting personalized search results. Powerful communities tool.
• LinkedIn – Great for networking with other businesses. Lets you see major influencers. Create a company page and showcase pages for your products.
• Instagram – The second biggest social network, great for showing off the visual aspect of your products and value proposition.
• Pinterest – For creating boards.

You can also benefit from some accounts and platforms that are similar to social networks:

• YouTube – Use video marketing to persuade your audience and engage them. Also has a strong social element of its own, linked with Google+.
• Vine – Short videos that link with Twitter.
• Persicope/Meerkat – Live streaming apps that are quickly becoming very popular. Great for events.
• SnapChat – Shares photos that are viewed for a couple of seconds. Great for creating a sense of personal connection.
• Reddit – A powerful social bookmarking/content curation site.
• Forums – Places on the web where users discuss specific topics.

Posting

Most social networks let you post:

• Images
• Status updates
• Links
• Videos

Some also have the option to advertise.

Through all these means, you need to provide value. You do this by:

1. Providing informative and unique articles and blog posts.
2. Updating with statuses that are entertaining or that provide useful tips.
3. Giving people an insight into who you are as an individual (personal brand) or company (corporate brand)
4. Offering special deals and promotions
5. Curating other content from around the web
6. Promoting the lifestyle that your products/services aim to facilitate

Ultimately, your account needs to inspire, entertain and/or be useful. It should essentially be a product in its own right.

Grow Your Following

These strategies can help you grow your social media following:

• Using social sharing buttons on your website and content
• Using influencer marketing to get shout-outs from the leading figures in your niche
• Running promotions to get a certain number of likes etc.
• Post about trending topics using the right hashtags
• Use real world interactions to build social media contacts. Go to networking events.

Tools for Social Media Management

Running all these different social media accounts can take a long time. The following tools are ideal for saving you time and for helping you get better results with less work:

• IFTTT – For setting up complex interactions between multiple social media accounts
• Buffer – For scheduling posts to be uploaded at specific intervals
• Hootsuite – For viewing and managing multiple social media accounts at once
• Rapportive – For seeing the LinkedIn details of anyone who e-mails you on Gmail

FollowerWonk – For getting more information about your followers to identify the most valuable people in your contacts

Understanding Social Media – Mind Map

Understanding Social Media Resources

Running a successful social media campaign is about delivering great value on a regular basis to strengthen the visibility and reputation of your brand.

To help you do this though, you can use a number of tools that will let you access a larger audience, that will automate some of the process for you and that will provide you with more data and insights. This sheet will provide you with all the social media resources you could possibly need to start absolutely killing it on social media.

Social Media Sites

To start, let’s list the social media sites you should be on right now:

Facebook  – www.facebook.com

Facebook needs no introduction, as the biggest and most successful social media site of all. Every business needs an account.

Twitter – www.twitter.com

Often considered the ‘second’ social media site, despite not actually being the second biggest. Short statuses mean big rewards for small amounts of work, while hashtags allow you to jump on trending topics.

Instagram – www.instagram.com

This arty photo app is the second biggest social media site. It’s perfect for showing off the glamorous and beautiful side of your business/niche.

Google+  http://plus.google.com

Google’s own social site hasn’t taken off quite as much as the others but it’s crucial thanks to its ties to the search engine and YouTube.

Pinterest – www.pinterest.com

Pinterest is about creating ‘mood boards’ by pinning images you find online. This can be a very useful resource for people, which is very useful for allowing your company to provide value.

LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com

LinkedIn is a networking tool for professionals. This is very useful for influencer marketing and networking genuinely, while features like the ‘showcase pages’ and ‘LinkedIn Pulse’ also make it handy for general digital marketing.

Tumblr

www.tumblr.com

Tumblr often goes forgotten as a social media site but in fact it’s still very popular. The original idea was that it would provide a text-light, image-heavy blogging platform. It’s an idea that has caught on and it has a lot of very dedicated users.

Other Social Sites

If you’re on all the above sites then you might think your brand is now officially ‘everywhere’. However, you would be forgetting a large number of sites, apps and other tools that aren’t necessarily ‘social networks’ in the traditional sense but nevertheless provide many of the same advantages and opportunities.

These resources include:

Forums –  www.thebiggestboards.com

The link above is for a list of forums and message boards that include some of the largest currently available. Forums provide a great opportunity to interact with a very targeted community and to build meaningful relationships with some influencers in your niche.

Reddit –  www.reddit.com

Reddit is a social bookmarking site that provides user-curated content on specific topics. It works similarly to a message board and has a gigantic userbase as well as many powerful features.

SnapChat – www.snapchat.com

Snapchat allows uses to send pictures to one another that are seen for only a few seconds. This is a great tool for keeping fans up-to-date with your activities and has a very personal feel.

YouTube – www.youtube.com

The video sharing site is crucial for video marketing and has a very strong social aspect.

Periscope – www.periscope.tv

A video streaming app that companies are using to stream events and help build hype for product launches and more. This is widely believed to be the future of video marketing.

Meerkat –  www.mekatapp.com

An alternative video streaming app.

Vine – www.vine.co

A tool that lets you share very short video clips. Works well with Twitter.

Social Media Tools

Now you’re on pretty much every social media site out there, the next step is to start adding content. The following tools can help you do that while saving time and engaging with your followers more effectively.

IFTTT –  www.ifttt.com

IFTTT stands for ‘If This, Then That’ and is a tool that lets you set up relationships between different social media accounts and web apps. This has many powerful uses and is certainly worth investigating.

Buffer –  www.bufferapp.com

This app lets you schedule multiple posts. Write all your status updates in one go and then let them go live at set intervals.

HootSuite – www.hootsuite.com

This is one of the most effective tools for managing multiple social accounts and has advanced features allowing multiple users to access the same account etc.

Shareaholic – www.shareaholic.com

For adding social sharing buttons to your site. This way, your users can share your content on your behalf.

Buzzsumo – www.buzzsumo.com

This tool lets you find currently trending content online so that you can share it to your own followers.

Followerwonk – http://followerwonk.com

This gives you more information about your users, telling you what time of day they’re active etc.

Rapportive – http://www.razorsocial.com/linkedin-tools/

This is a plugin for Gmail that allows you to see the LinkedIn profiles of anyone who messages you. Great for building your connections.

Klout – https://klout.com/

Klout is a tool that lets you measure your overall social media power – useful for measuring your performance over time and setting goals.

More Resources

The above tools and social media sites will let you get started with a ubiquitous and consistent campaign. However, there are many more opportunities to take this even further if you have the right resources.

“8 Great Social Networking CMS Options” – http://www.cmscritic.com/8-great-social-networking-cms/

This is a list of tools you can use to build your own social network. Slightly more advanced but has a huge amount of potential for ambitious organizations.

LinkedIn Pulse – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/

LinkedIn Pulse works like a blogging platform especially for LinkedIn, allowing you to share more content with other LinkedIn users.

Twitter Blog – https://blog.twitter.com/

Twitter’s official blog is a great place to stay up-to-date with changes affecting the platform.

The Facebook Blog –  https://blog.facebook.com/

Likewise, the Facebook blog can ensure you’re kept up-to-date regarding policy and feature changes.

The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Marketing – https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-social-media

This is a guide from MOZ blog, one of the leading digital marketing blogs on the web.

Dig into these resources, try out these tools and you should be able to develop a more powerful social media presence than ever before.