Social Media Marketing has been gaining popularity for some time now and it’s not just hype. If you want to grow your business through Organic Traffic, Email Leads and Sales, then there is no better way than Social Media Marketing.
It’s a multi-faceted approach to getting bite-sized information from multiple growing networks. Let’s take a look at what this entails and show you specifically how you can get started today so you can begin seeing results in no time.
Create Brand Recognition
With over half of the world’s population using social media, platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter a natural place to reach new and highly targeted potential customers.
Think people only connect with brands they already know on social media? Consider that 83 percent of Instagram users say they discover new products on the platform.
When Stillhouse Spirits ran a Facebook campaign to increase brand awareness among outdoor enthusiasts, the company achieved a 17-point lift in ad recall.
Gaining brand recognition is one of any business’ most important marketing goals. That’s because consumers want to buy brands they recognize. Thankfully, social media allows for easy and effective brand building.
Social media has a benefit over traditional media because it can get your brand in front of people much more quickly and easily. Furthermore, it gets your audience looking at your brand even when they aren’t thinking about your brand or product.Tip: Pay attention to your profile and cover photos. A great way to create brand recognition is to place your logo often yet strategically. You want to make sure that it’s not overwhelming or distracting.
Make sure the visual elements of your brand are well represented.
Take a look at Nike’s Twitter page. Nike keeps their Twitter profile neat and clean. They place their recognizable logo on both their profile image and cover photo without being overbearing.
The cover photo is especially effective because it connects the Nike logo to the idea of running.
Generate A Conversation Around Your Brand
A strong social media marketing strategy will generate conversation about your brand, products, and partners.
Take this example from PlayStation. A simple post saying congratulations to Naughty Dog (the company behind the new video game Uncharted 4) for its success generated feedback on the game.
In doing so, they received a great amount of feedback about their product. They also got people talking. Fans were having genuine conversations, all facilitated by social media.
Tip: Engage with your audience when they comment on your social media messages. Make sure they feel that there is a person behind the brand.Ensuring that they don’t feel like they’re talking to a robot will give them a better perception of your company and make them feel more like a valued customer.
Focus on sharing content that naturally creates conversation. Some of those ways are to:
- Give shout-outs to other companies you network and work with.
- Solicit feedback about your products.
- Ask open ended questions, then let the audience reply to get them actively involved.
Humanize your brand
The ability to create real human connections (a.k.a. Meaningful Relationship Moments) is one of the key benefits of social media for business. Introduce your followers to the people who make up your company and showcase how existing customers are using and benefiting from your products.
Authenticity builds trust. Trust, in turn, builds marketing receptiveness and drives new business. And social is the best place to get real!
Show how you’re embracing your brand values, how your product works in real life, and how you’re putting the interests of your employees and customers first.
Learn How To Connect With Your Audience Through Social Listening
Social listening is the act of monitoring social conversations around certain topics. It helps you understand what’s important to your audience and identify trends your target audience is following.
You’ll learn about what they’re struggling with, which can help you create content addressing those pain points.
You can also identify the tone and language that your target audience uses.
Take a look at Burger King on Twitter. They use the same slang that the younger audience on Twitter uses to represent themselves in a comedic fashion. If you’re unsure how to match the tone and style of your audience, social listening can help.Tip: Make it a part of your daily routine to do some social listening and see what people are saying in your industry. If you want to take your social listening to the next level, check out Mention (the same social listening tool used by the CoSchedule team).
Establish your brand as a thought leader
The 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer found that while there has been a recent swing towards distrust of government, NGOs and media, business is an institution with a 61 percent level of trust. People are looking to brands for insights and information… and there’s no better place to share that than social media.
No matter what industry your business is in, social media offers the opportunity to establish your brand as a thought leader—the go-to source for information on topics related to your niche.
LinkedIn—particularly the LinkedIn Publishing Platform—is a great network to focus on when aiming to establish your thought leadership.
Tell Your Brand’s Story
Using social media is a great way to share your brand’s mission and share stories. Effective stories can have a great impact on your brand’s image. They can be simple or extensive depending on what you think will be most effective.
Take this Starbucks post for example. It simply tells the story of someone getting a job at a hiring fair, and it effectively helped their public image. It has only one image, but the story is impactful and clear.Tip: Share stories of people who use your product or service. If they give you great feedback, share it! It’ll spread the message that your product is effective enough for someone to give you positive feedback.
Provide Exceptional Customer Service That Keeps Your Followers Happy
Customers now expect companies to handle their requests through social media.
A strong investment in customer service can build meaningful relationships between your company and your customers. And with social media, the challenge of customer service remains as demanding as it had before.
Social media allows for immediate interaction and customer feedback. Businesses can also respond to their customers right away. With nearly half of U.S. customers using social media to ask questions about products or services, having a social media customer service strategy is extremely important.
Take this example with HuHot, a popular Mongolian grill chain restaurant in the Upper Midwest (where CoSchedule’s offices are located). A customer inquired about a time-sensitive situation, and the company answered her question within hours:
Tip: Assuming that you have separate teams for social media and customer service, it’s important to maintain a strong line of communication between the two. That way, your teams don’t get tangled up when providing customer service through social media.
Gather Data From Audience Research To Improve
Audience research is similar to social listening. It searches the keywords your audience will be using, but it’s more focused on your specific product. You can use social media to gather this information.Tip: Both Facebook and Twitter allow you to view the reach and the insights of all your posts.
To view the insights on your Facebook page, simply go to the page that you are the admin of and they will be next to your cover photo. Twitter will have an option to view the insights of every tweet you post at the bottom of each tweet.
Build Customer Loyalty
What could possibly be better than building brand loyalty for free?
Customers follow and interact with the brands they enjoy. But what’s interesting is that 53% of customers who follow your business are likely to be loyal to your business specifically.
It’s an obvious direct correlation: If customers follow you, they are more likely to choose you versus your competition. Furthermore, if they’re loyal customers, they’ll increase your traffic.
Tip: Be sure to keep your loyal audience engaged and happy. Here are a few ideas:
- Offer promo codes for discounts through social media to your followers (while remaining mindful of Facebook’s promotional content guidelines).
- Ask open-ended questions that allow your audience to reply.
- Give away inexpensive things such as stickers, patches, shirts, sunglasses, lanyards, hats, and Koozies that will make a long-lasting impression.
Direct Referral Traffic To Your Site Or Blog
Social media marketing can assist in sending customers directly to your site.
It’s unlikely that all of your traffic will come through search engines. Social media channels allow for more diverse inbound traffic streams.
Though social networks are great for getting traffic to your site, you need to consider not only what to post but how often to post. You don’t want to become that overbearing marketer, or you’ll turn off your customers.
It’s good to follow a set schedule for posting your content (link to one of our blog posts). This will help you ensure that your content is not only posted at a time that is most effective, it will also give you time to edit your content to help you with your SEO.Tip: Use bit.ly to shorten your links and place them within your posts and profiles. The shortened links will save space and not look overbearing to the audience. (You can do this with the bit.ly integration in your CoSchedule social media calendar.)
Google and Bing also display tweets in search results. This feature is more relevant for trending topics.
Tip: Using a social media scheduling tool like CoSchedule can help you plan your social media posts so your content can be found and be linked to.
It’s (Mostly) FREE
Thats right, (mostly) free.
It’s free to create social media profiles and post organic content. For some, that may be enough, and the quality of the content may promote the content on its own. However, if you’d like to go the extra mile and promote it further, paying for promotion will help increase exposure.
You can promote your business on Facebook for any budget. Facebook also automatically directs your ad toward users that are interested in what you’re advertising. Twitter works the same way.
You have to set up a campaign, and they’ll work with your budget. That means you’ll have a huge ROI and you’ll use your marketing budget in an effective way.
Tip: Don’t write organic content that sounds like an ad. It’ll make your posts look like spam. If it sounds like an ad or includes a transactional call to action (ex: Buy Now, 30% Off, Use This Coupon Code), you should pay for it.Many marketers look at social media as a way to blast free advertising, and social media platforms have caught on to that idea and are restricting the reach for unpaid-for ads. By all means, if you want to advertise on social media, you should. But make sure you pay for it so that it looks professional and you get a good reach.
Establish Your Brand As A Topical Authority
Topical authority means your business is a trusted source of information on a given topic.
So where does social media come in? Establishing topical authority is a subset of content marketing. The more you use social media to post relevant content, the more search engines will pick up on your authority on that subject.
This can make you become the “go-to” authority for a specific topic. The more authoritative your page, is the more traffic will increase.
Page authority is a ranking based on how well a specific page will rank on a search engine. Domain authority is a ranking based on how well a specific website will rank on a search engine.
When you’re searching for a source or writing content, use the Moz tool to help you find valuable sources. The higher the number, the better.
Tip: Build a list of two dozen sources that you think are authoritative. Use Moz’s free toolbar to determine which sites are most authoritative, a great tool for finding out what websites and blog posts have topical authority. Moz gives a rating between 1–100 of how authoritative a website or post is. A good rule of thumb is that 60 is a good base number to use a site or post. Keep in mind that a new site may not have gained any authority no matter how good it is.
Social Media Can Assist With Link Building
Social media can have an indirect impact on SEO.
For example, let’s say that you get 1,000 shares on a blog post because it contains strong content. Some of your followers who see your post may write similar content and link back to your original post as a source. Search engines will then pick up on the fact that your content has linked back to a good amount and (hopefully) rank your post higher than your competition.
Retarget Your Audience Using Social Media
Retargeting is a wonderful tool for social media marketing. Generally only 2% of customers will actually purchase something during their first visit to your site. Advertising can help reach that other 98%.
One way to do that is to run retargeting ads.
Retargeting works by keeping a list of people who visit your site and placing anonymous “cookies” within their browser. When they visit a social media site, a retargeting service then displays the ads. This allows for your business to be in the eyes of the customer beyond just when they’re on your site.
Tip: There are some great retargeting tools out there that are easy to use. Check out those tools and find one that works for you. Use them to promote your product. But remember not to annoy your customer.
Help Your Cause To Go Viral
We’re all familiar with viral ads; just take a walk down memory lane and take a look at some of these great viral campaigns. Social media can have a huge impact on making ads viral. In fact, that’s where most of those ads are shared.
It not only spreads a great message; it also gave Always a ton of positive publicity. The original ad aired in 2014, but the hashtag they came up with is still being used today. That hashtag will direct people from their social media timelines to the social media profile of the Always brand and then to their website. You can do the same with an effective viral ad.
The beauty of a viral ad is that you can get a lot of attention for relatively little effort, getting a huge ROI. But you want to keep in mind that your focus shouldn’t be on forcing an ad to go viral.Tip: Keep your expectations in check. It’s far better to reach 20,000 correct people than 500,000 random people. Though it can work out, it can also be risky and expensive, so making something go viral shouldn’t be your prime concern. It could force your business to try something unnatural to your business. Virality will come with good content and good promotion.
Social Media: Saying No Is Dangerous
You’ve likely tried a social media campaign for your small business in the past. If you dig hard enough, you might even find your business’s old Facebook page, sitting there all neglected and abandoned. It’s important to not get discouraged by past failures- the fact that you didn’t see any ROI back then could be due to a lot of things: you not understand the benefits fully, the fact that your execution was lacking, or difficulties with measuring success and replicating it.
Poet William F. O’Brien put it nicely: ‘It’s better to try and fail than never to try at all’. If that past failure is holding you back now, just consider what you’re risking
Influencers Help Build Brand Trust
Influencer marketing is having a big moment now. Brands are increasingly turning to social media platforms for their marketing, and there are good reasons why. 49% of consumers claim that they depend on influencer recommendations on social media to inform their purchasing decision (Fourcommunications, 2018). This means that if consumers feel confident in the recommendation from an influencer, they’ll be more likely to purchase the product. This social media statistic makes it evident how brands could piggyback on the power of influencers to reach out to their customers.
New customers flocking to your competitors through social media.
Showing up is 80% of success. Your competitors showed up on social media – you didn’t – so they get to take home the bacon. A lot of your target audience never hears about your company because they don’t participate in the traditional marketing activities you’re still focusing on. Perhaps it is time to consider hiring a social media marketing agency, and we have some helpful tips to help you answer that question.
They don’t attend as many trade shows as in the past. They don’t read (what they think of as) spam mail, or don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize.
Those who do hear about you often forget by the time they’re ready to purchase because your competitors are the ones they see in their social feeds. Social media offers an opportunity to regain that audience engagement among your customer base.
Spending more money on traditional and digital and having nothing to show for it.
Add up everything you spend monthly on traditional marketing and digital ads. Now look at that number and realize that you could have reached at least a 100X more potential customers through strategic social media marketing.
Let that sink in.
It’s true that most of those views and interactions wouldn’t actually translate into leads, but it’s the same with the conventional methods – not every phone call turns into a warm lead, nor does an ad read signify a sale. Spend your marketing dollars where they count. Right now, they count on social media platforms.
Breaking the ‘purchasing path’ chain and losing a potential customer forever
Google has been talking about the ‘Zero Moment of Truth’ (ZMOT) for years now. Essentially, it describes how people shop today – from Google searches to reviews and testimonials. Social media figures prominently into ZMOT. It’s where people turn to for social proof.
If you’re not there, you’re breaking the chain, and your potential customer will move on to something else.
Looking obsolete, irrelevant, and untrustworthy to your target audience
Without a strong social media presence, you will have a tough time making a genuine, ‘human’ connection with your potential customers. Research has shown that customers put a strong emphasis on that connection, and that shapes their purchasing decisions.
Not being able to respond to negative comments about your brand
Customers often use social media to vent about brands. If you’re there, you get a chance to respond in real time, and turn a bad experience into a customer support victory. If you’re not, you end up not seeing those negative comments – causing them to pile up, overwhelming your marketing message.
Now that you understand how critical social media is for your business, in our next piece we will delve further into its ROI by introducing the advantages of social media for business.
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Conclusion
Social media platforms have revolutionized the way businesses market their products and services to consumers. Businesses use social media platforms to build brand awareness, customer loyalty, gather feedback, advertise their business, increase sales and market research. It is one of the most cost effective ways to reach new customers.