Social
networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and
Instagram have given businesses unprecedented opportunities to grow and
thrive through the use of
Social Media Marketing. This isn’t surprising since 42% of the current global population or
3.4 billion people use social media on a daily basis.
But getting started with
social media marketing can be overwhelming – especially for small businesses who have yet to find their company’s brand voice.
Your
don’t necessarily need millions of social media followers to build an
effective social media presence. It’s not really just about the number
of followers you can gather, but rather how you engage with the ones you
already have, and provide useful content to draw more followers to your
social media channels over time.
Social media is
very powerful and effective way of connecting with potential customers,
fans of your company’s brand and general followers. If you haven’t yet
created a accounts on major social channels that can most effectively
reach your company’s target audience, you are missing out on a
potentially vast source of customer prospects that are willing and
waiting to connect with you.
Consider this: about
63% of customers
actually expect businesses to offer customer service through their
social accounts and 90% of users use different social platforms to
communicate with a brand.
The best part is that
social media marketing
doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. Here’s how you can easily
reach new audiences, create awareness, and drive sales through your
social media presence.
Shortlist Platforms According To Your Audience
All
networks are not equal – it’s essential to compare the key demographics
of top platforms and compare them to your ideal buyer profile and
target audience.
To start with, find out where your prospects
spend most of their time online; for example, B2B companies should head
over to LinkedIn because that is where
80% of all their leads come from.
On the other hand, if Generation Z is the target audience for your brand, know that
71% of them use
Snapchat at least six times every day.
It’s
perfectly fine to have active profiles across multiple networks, but
focus most of your time and efforts on one or two platforms where your
target audience is most active.
Set Realistic, Specific Goals
Have
a social media plan to back up your online presence and don’t post
content without some strategy or reason. In other words, identify your
marketing goals and then use social media to achieve them.
Consider this:
eMarketer research
that studied more than 300 B2B and B2C businesses found that 88% of US
companies use their social media for brand awareness and brand building,
64% introduce new offerings via their SM pages, and another 60% acquire
new clients online via social media.
Hence, with Social Media Marketing, your objectives could be to:
- Increase brand awareness
- Reach new fans/audiences/ followers
- Provide better customer service
- Grow your sales
Balance Your Posts
Every post does not need to be a sales pitch; as such blatant self-promotion can drive your audience away.
Instead,
try to balance your posts with the 5:3:2 rule; five posts should be
from other relevant sources, three should be content that you’ve created
yourself, and two should have a ‘fun’ element to humanize your brand.
It
may be a good idea to engage your employees, and other social media
advocates of your brand to help your company’s social media reach, and
retweeting or sharing your company’s social media posts. This approach
is guaranteed to work because
50% of consumers in a survey expressed that seeing user-generated content would increase their chances of buying from an online brand.
Choose and Use Images Wisely
The
right visuals can help your audience read and retain information
better, form opinions, develop feelings and decide on the appropriate
action to take in response to what they see.
When compared to other types of content, videos and images are
41 times more likely to get shared on social media. This is why nearly
80% of marketers
deploy visual assets with their social media campaigns – and this has
contributed to the growth of videos by 63%, surpassing blogs as an
indispensable marketing asset.
Engage with your Audience
The key to
Social Media Marketing
success is fostering a two-way conversation with your audience, as
people appreciate brands that are accessible and responsive to their
followers and supporters. This is why it’s crucial to keep your
followers engaged by interacting with them through replies, retweets and
other forms of follower and customer outreach.
Remember,
57% of consumers
reach out to brands via social media because they are looking for
answers. Connect with them, answer their queries, have meaningful
conversations and they’ll be naturally drawn to your products and
services and feel more personally connected to your company.
Focus On Quality Over Quantity
People become followers and fans of a social media page or channel because they like and trust the content on your page.
This is why you have to make sure that your posts are both reliable and relevant to your audience – especially since
86% of all consumers say that they try to only support brands that exhibit authenticity.
So,
reach out to your audience, understand them, and then provide quality
content that they want to see, and which answer questions they may have,
or provide a solution to their specific company needs.
Monitor the Conversations around Your Brand
About
80% of online companies
believe that they are exceptionally good at social media customer
service. However, you’ll be surprised to know that typically only 8% of
their clients and followers agree.
If you want to do social media
right, then monitor what people are saying about you on different social
media platforms and use this information to respond to them in a
respectful and authentic way. A social listening strategy lets you track
and analyze online conversations about your brand and the industry at
large.
Be Patient
Patience is a critical factor in
social media marketing for small businesses; understand that you won’t get tons of followers, likes, comments, and shares overnight.
Building
a trustworthy presence can take years, but it’s worth it in the end.
Don’t stress or fret about the end-goal on a daily, weekly or even
monthly basis; just trust the journey, engage your followers, take care
of your clients and keep giving them the quality content and service
that they love you for.
Schedule Your Content
Planning
your social media activities through a scheduling tool allows you to
post consistently, and it will help you manage your presence across
multiple networks.
Not only do social media management and
scheduling tools save you time, but you can plan your content well in
advance and schedule posts for different networks at peak traffic times,
and track the results so you can refine and modify your
social media marketing strategy.
Track and Refine Your Performance
Keep track of what works and what doesn’t, so you can adjust your efforts and improve your results.
Once
you have a baseline of how your strategy is working, use A/B testing to
boost your chances of success. Use different hashtags, target unique
audiences, and play around with the Call To Action links in your social
media posts to get a feel for what your followers appreciate, and most
importantly, what they respond to.
In short, the results can help you make minor – or major – tweaks to your
Social Media Marketing strategy that can lead to increasingly more effective results over time.
Social Media Tools to Help You Manage Your Social Media Marketing Campaigns
Here is a list of tools that company’s can use to manage their
social media posts.
- HashtagsForLikes
- Hootsuite
- Buffer
- Khoros
- Sprout Social
- Socialbakers
- Tagboard
- Agorapulse
- Statusbrew
- Post Planner
- Tailwind
- Sprinklr
- Followerwonk
- Sendible
- Meet Edgar
- SocialFlow
- Oktopost
- Falcon.io
- Brand24
- DrumUp
- Quuu
- Everypost
- Tweepi
- Cool Tabs
- Unmetric
- MavSocial
- SocialOomph
Conclusion
With over
63% of small businesses gearing up to increase their spending on
social media marketing, companies can no longer afford to ignore the impact of Social Media Marketing on company sales and brand management.
You need to create a focused
Social Media Marketing Strategy that aligns with your company’s strategic goals and build your social media marketing channels one by one, over time.
