Social media is an essential marketing tool for any business. Managed effectively, social marketing can spread your reach to:
- Increase brand recognition;
- Improve brand loyalty; and
- Create more opportunities to convert.
This impressive range of benefits can only be realised by taking a strategic and structured approach to feeding and managing your social media platforms. Some businesses achieve this in-house, whilst others hire a digital marketing agency to look after it for them.
Whichever route you take to managing your social media, here at 2C Digital we use six key ingredients for turning your communication into revenue:
1) Sharing meaningful content
Social marketing requires that you understand your audience’s demographic. How old are they? Are they male or female? Where do they live? What lifestyle do they lead? What tone of voice will engage them? When you understand these things, you can appeal directly to your audience with posts that are relevant and interesting to them. Use images to capture their attention and hashtags to increase visibility.
It takes time to build a picture of what your audience will respond to and you won’t always get it right. Refine and develop the content you share with the help of trialling and historical analysis.
2) Being an influencer
Positioning yourself as an expert within your industry can go a long way to building trust in your brand. Keep up-to-date with the latest industry trends and techniques and share your thoughts on them with your audience.
3) Content mix
Every social media post needs to have a marketing goal, such as raising brand awareness, increasing leads, building relationships or providing good customer service. It’s important to always keep these goals in mind and share a mix of posts that support each one. A good way of planning and keeping track of this is to run a social media publishing calendar.
4) Staying current
When a business doesn’t keep its information up-to-date it can damage brand loyalty and conversion rates. Tell your audience when you move offices or change phone number. If your products or services change, let your audience know what’s changing, why and how it will benefit them; this includes new product lines and special offers. It helps to keep existing customers stimulated and can also bring new visitors to your website. Helping your customers to find you, contact you and keep up-to date with your services will keep relationships sweet.
5) Social engagement
Social media presents an opportunity to engage with your audience directly and build authentic relationships. We all like to be noticed, right? Show your audience that they matter to you by reaching out with more personal responses. Be the person behind the screen – it’s a great way of building trust in your brand. Try regularly liking, sharing and commenting on others’ content, and answering questions raised within your online community. This is a time-consuming aspect of social marketing, and it does require certain skills, but the return on investment can be significant.
6) Analysis and review
Repeat after me, “Launch. Review. Adjust. Repeat.”
This is your marketing mantra. Stick to it and good things will happen. Social media marketing can only become targeted if you analyse what has and hasn’t worked. It’s a dynamic process of testing, revising and testing again. You need to know, for example, what types of imagery, wording and offers gained you likes and followers. Metrics provide intelligence, and intelligence is a beautiful thing. It gives you insight into the customer journey, allows you to measure success, and informs your wider digital marketing strategy. Keep a close eye on your competitors’ social channels too. Observing what has and hasn’t worked for them can save you valuable time and learning.
If you need help implementing and managing your social media marketing, email us at hello@2cdigitalmarketing.com and speak to a member of our expert team today!
