Social media is now an effective marketing and communication tool for online businesses. Consider these numbers if your business still isn’t into social media marketing:

Of all other internet marketing strategies, social media is now the number one channel that businesses plan to increase budgets in 2015 and 2016.

Sixty-four percent of businesses now see social media strategy as critical in enabling their products and services to reach more of their target niche.

Fifty-three percent of customers expect a social media response in just one hour, and 72 percent expect it at least in 24 hours when they have complaints.

However, many online businesses still stick to the old passive social media marketing of simply posting sales-oriented messages and only making passive social responses to customers. For a good social media strategy to be successful and spread the word for a brand or company, the following four steps must be undertaken:

Listening

Social Media Strategy

Online enterprises should start with active listening. They need to research which online social-networking communities have discussions about their brand’s industry. When you listen, you’re tuning in to prospective buyers you can sell to later. Sooner or later, you can start participating in chats and subtly promoting your brand.

Publishing

Social Media Strategy

Now that you’ve picked up on what others are saying regarding you and the industry, it’s time to start publishing content that directly relates to the topics being discussed. It doesn’t require you to respond to every topic with a new post every two hours. You can present it to your audience, give them some background on it, and maybe even suggest an improved alternative or choice that would help them out.

Community Management

Social Media Strategy

You’re listening, posting, and conversing, so now it’s time to develop different types of conversations, replies, comments, and answering inquiries and complaints and not taking too long to do these. For instance, if a complaint or inquiry is posted on Facebook, the reply should never take more than an hour.

Customer Care

Social Media Strategy

This last step sets social media strategy apart from traditional and internet marketing strategies. Assuming that you were able to convert leads to make sales, you continue to provide impeccable customer service by conversing continuously with customers on how they use the product, how they feel, if they have any complaints, and if they may have ideas on how to improve the product. When you continue interacting with your customers even after the purchase, they might become repeat buyers when you have a new product or upgrade, or they may spread the word about your product and share your posts with other people they know. This is the holy grail of social media strategy because you have all your customers in one place, whether Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, and can respond to them even in minutes. Again, this great advantage is not seen in any other social media strategy.