Social Media Marketing for Your Business
Social Media Marketing for Your Business
For a business, having a Social Media Marketing is essential for increasing brand awareness, reaching your target audience, and driving sales. For businesses focused on community and individual customers, this makes social media a powerful platform for connecting directly with an audience to build brand awareness and brand loyalty. Social media is also an effective platform for lead generation. Social media is now an important part of an inbound marketing strategy.
Social Media is all about your
customer and how you can help them. If you're successful on social media,
you'll have an opportunity to interact with your customers one-on-one depend
your relationships, and earn their trust. Even when they're not on your site or
in your store.
Ask yourself what social media
channels they're on and whether they want to interact with you there. Then map
your customer's pain points and figure out the kind of content you can create
to help to solve your customers' problem when they need it.
Once you understand your customers'
needs, you can start to figure out how to connect with them and develop your
online brand personality.
Social media marketing is a long-term
commitment. So be sure you have the resources to maintain it. The most
important thing to remember is go where your customer are. Don't make to come
to you.
For small businesses focused on
community and individual customers, this makes social media a powerful platform
for connecting directly with an audience to build brand awareness and brand
loyalty. Even better, social media is also an effective platform for lead generation.
You can create the content and resources that will provide added value to your
prospects and customers, all the while nurturing their brand affinity. When
users click on your content or offer, they are actively looking for it or
opting in to receive updates by following your business. Because these people
have already opted in, they’re likelier to convert than a random person seeing
an ad or offer unrelated to what they need.
Facebook:
Active Monthly Users: 2.5 billion users
Facebook is the new face of mass
media, and that's why so many companies use it. Some of leading industries on Facebook
include financial Services, Ecommerce, Retails, Gaming, Entertainment, Media,
Telecom, Technology, Consumer Goods and Automotive Industries. To share photos,
advertise, host contests, publish news and live-stream video. Just remember,
Facebook is pay-to-pay platform. Organic posts, that are your regular updates,
won't get seen by too many people without paid promotion. To get the most out
of Facebook ads, start small and be specific about the audience you're trying
to reach and their interest. Then, add in a budget and timeframe. Once you see
the results, you can adjust your creative & spend.
Instagram:
Active Monthly Users: 1.2 billion users
Eye-catching visuals & inspiring
creativity. 63% of users are between ages of 18 to 34.
Instagram, a mobile-friendly app that’s part
of the Facebook family, is a photo and video sharing site. Keep your images
creative and non-commercial. And add in relevant hashtags for wider reach. You
can also partner with Instagram influencers to help build awareness for your
brand. Instagram offers a variety of ad
options, including shopping ads to encourage your customers to buy. One of Instagram
most popular features is stories, short photos and video clips that work well
for behind the scenes content, fun and playful images. Think of stories as a
quick burst of energy your customer can enjoy.
Twitter:
Active Monthly Users: 330 million users
If your business is related to
entertainment, sports, politics or marketing you stand to earn tremendous
engagement on Twitter. Twitter's where we go to find out the latest information
and news in real time. Many businesses also use it as their primary customer
service platform. Make sure your tweets include photos and video so they stand
out in the feed. Use hashtags more sparingly on twitter than you would on
Instagram and don't forget live-stream video, especially if you're planning a
launch or a special event.
LinkedIn:
Active Monthly Users: 310 million users
If you are looking for decision makers
who have power to hire your company, stock your product or partner with you, LinkedIn
is place to be. It's a place for
business people to connect, network and find jobs and share updates. Publish
thought leadership pieces on LinkedIn and promote them through your company LinkedIn
page. Consider trying out LinkedIn’s live-stream video for business
announcements and news.
YouTube:
Active Monthly Users: over 2 billion users
Most brands use YouTube to showcase
company videos. If you're using it as a home for your videos, be sure to
organize your channel and optimizing it with your branding and description of
your video in the more section to help it show up in search. And consider partnering
with YouTube Influencers to extend your product's reach.
Pinterest:
Active Monthly Users: 431 million users
People visit Pinterest to find aspirational
images about fashion, decor, lifestyle, beauty and entertainment. One of the
main benefits of Pinterest is the images you use point back to the source. So
it can be a good driver of traffic to your website. And Pinterest offers visual
search which surfaces images related to what your customer are looking for and
promoted pins to help your brand get discovered at the right moment of
intent.
Snapchat:
Active Monthly Users: 428 million users
Snapchat's a messaging app where users
share disappearing texts, images and videos that are often enhanced by filter
and emoji. Everything on Snapchat disappears.
Snapchat created stories format. They also popularized those fun, augmented
reality lenses so users an add lots of personality to their snaps. If your
customers are young, you may want to try Snapchat.
Use Social Media to listen to your customer
To better understand the perspective
customers and where the challenges and opportunities lie, you need to pay
attention to the conversations your audience is having.
Listening is a key part of research. The first step in doing this is listening to
the conversations your customers and prospects are having, understanding what
they're looking for, the problems they need to solve, and where your business
can help.
A social media management platform simplifies the way you can manage your social media marketing programs. I like using a Hootsuite. With
Hootsuite, you can organize your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn
profiles. So they're all accessible from one place. From there you can schedule
updates, post to one or multiple social networks, respond to customers, conduct
social listening, and see what's going on with your feeds, all from a single
dashboard.
Pillars of Social Media Marketing
1. 1. Your Customer
Put yourself in your customer's shoes and map their day to
understand the best times and channels to reach and help them solve a problem.
And be sure your social media content is consistent with your brand personality
so customers get a clear picture of your company wherever they are.
2 2. Your resources
Social media isn't free. Even if you're
posting updates and photos to social network or having a staff member produce and
upload short video, all of that takes away from the time your employee could be
doing something else related to your business. You've got to balance your resources.
3. 3.
Budget
You'll need to put money aside to create
social ads and promote or boost your best-performing posts.
4. 4. Develop Social Media Plan
Social media, like other marketing
initiatives requires energy, planning and resources.
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