Social media are now being widely used to promote businesses and services. If you are struggling to see the benefits of social media marketing, then keep on reading.
Social Media Marketing
97% of marketers are now using social media to promote their business and services while 78% of salespeople who use social media outsell their peers who don’t.
It may seem overwhelming because it requires strategy and creativity, but the importance can’t be overstated. Plus, the benefits are far more than just increasing sales and revenue.
Not everyone is aware of the many benefits of social media. Only 50% of small businesses are using social media, which is an alarming number.
It’s also alarming to know that almost 25% don’t even plan on using social media in the future.
If you are struggling to see the benefits of social media marketing, then keep on reading.
Managing Social Media Using One Marketing Management Platform
CoSchedule is a marketing management platform that helps you manage everything with social media. It empowers your team to:
● Schedule and automate posts and complete cross-channel campaigns on all networks
● Manage social media workflows and team communications
● Measure performance with robust social analytics.
● Manage all your marketing projects and campaigns on the same platform
Using Social Media To Grow Your Brand Awareness
1. Create Brand Recognition
One of the most important marketing goals is to gain brand recognition because most consumers will only trust and buy from brands they recognise. Social media allows easy and effective brand building.
Social media also gets your brand in front of people much quicker than traditional media. It also gets them to look at your brand even without thinking about it.
Tip: Pay attention to your profile and cover photo. Place your logo strategically. Make sure the visual elements of your brand are well represented.
2. Generate A Conversation Around Your Brand
If you have a strong social media strategy, you will generate lots of conversations about your products and brand.
Tip: Make sure there is always a person behind your brand. Reply to every comment and make your customers feel like they’re talking to an actual human and not a robot so they can feel more valued.
You can also create content that creates conversation like:
● Give shout-outs to businesses you network and work with.
● Solicit feedback about your products.
● Ask open-ended questions, then let the audience reply so they get involved.
3. Learn How To Connect Through Social Listening
Social listening is the monitoring of social conversations about particular topics. You’ll understand what is important to your audience and can identify trends your audience is following.
Once you know what they’re struggling with, you can create content addressing those pain points.
Burger King is a great example. They have younger audiences so they use the same slang and tone. 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 social listening so you know what people in your industry are saying.
4. Tell Your Brand’s Story
Using social media to share stories and brand mission can also have a great impact on your business.
Tip: Share stories from people who use your products and services.
5. Gather Data From Audience Research To Improve
Audience research is just like social listening. It searches keywords that your audience is searching but more product focus.
Tip: Facebook and Twitter allow you to view the reach and insights of all your posts.
6. Provide Exceptional Customer Service
Most customers expect companies to handle requests using social media. It allows for immediate actions and customer feedback. Having social media as a customer service strategy is extremely important.
Tip: It’s also smart to have separate teams handling social media and customer service so they don’t get confused when providing customer service.
7. Build Customer Loyalty
Customers interact and follow brands they truly support and enjoy. 53% of customers who follow your business on social media are most likely to be loyal. If they’re loyal, they’ll increase your traffic.
Tip: Keep your loyal audience engaged and happy. You can offer promo codes for discounts, ask interactive questions, and do giveaways (they don’t have to be expensive).
Use Social Media To Increase Your Traffic
8. Direct Referral Traffic To Your Site Or Blog
Social media allows more diverse inbound traffic streams that can help in sending customers directly to your site.
But you need to consider what to post and how often you post so you won’t turn off your customers.
Following a schedule when posting will help ensure that your content is posted at an effective time and will give you more time to edit your content to help with SEO.
9. Social Media Can Assist With Link Building
Social media also has an indirect impact on SEO. If your post has good content, others may write similar content and link back to your original post as their source. If this is done a good amount of times, your post can rank higher than your competitions on search engines.
Google and Bing also show tweets as search results.
10. It’s MOSTLY Free
It’s free to set up social media accounts and post contents but for some, it may not be enough. Social media allows users to go the extra mile by paying for promotion to increase exposure. Facebook has the option to promote your business for any budget.
You can create a campaign according to your budget which means you’ll have a huge return of investment.
11. Establish Your Brand As A Topical Authority
Build your brand as a topical authority. This means your business is a reliable and trusted source of information. How can you use social media for this? The more relevant content you post, the more search engines pick up on your authority.
12. Retarget Your Audience Using Social Media
On average, only 4% of your customers will purchase during their first visit to your site. By retargeting ads, you can reach the other 96%.
Retargeting works by creating a list of people who have visited your site and placing “cookies” on their browsers. By using a retargeting service, it displays ads and allows your business in the eyes of the customers.
Tip: Find a retargeting tool that is easy to use but remember not to annoy your customer.
13. Help Your Cause To Go Viral
Social media has made so many ads go viral. For example, the #likeagirl ad made by Always in 2014 received a lot of positive publicity because of the great message. It has been aired many years ago, but the hashtag is still being used today.
The hashtag will direct people to the social media profile of Always and then to their website. You can also do the same. With a viral ad, you can get a lot of attention with just a little effort, getting a huge ROI. But keep in mind that you shouldn’t force an ad to go viral.
Tip: It’s still better to reach 20,000 correct people than 500,000 random ones. Being viral comes with good content and good promotion. It can work out but it can also be risky and expensive.
14. Driving Conversions
Here are four ways to drive conversions through social media:
● Add calls to action: Motivates and empowers customers to buy your product. You can also add designs to your posts and messages to add appeal to the customers. The entire process from call to action to final sale should be engaging enough so the customers don’t back out.
● Contests: Anyone would be more compelled to purchase products from a company who already gave them free stuff. Giving away free stuff may be something your business won’t want to do, but it’s extremely helpful.
● Ads: Nobody on social media wants to buy things so the challenge is to grab people’s attention and make them want to purchase from your business. Facebook and Twitter allow you to post ads on your targets timeline. Those can lead them to your page and drive up conversions.
● Landing pages: Similar to blog posts but with a call to action. If you’re building a website through WordPress, there are plugins that can help you build landing pages.
Use Social Media To Promote Your Product
15. Promote your content
When writing a social media post, it’s important to look into things that make a difference like headlines, images and time of posting.
Keep in mind that you have to be creative and make sure you only post original content.
Telling stories can be an effective way to promote content without looking like an ad.
16. Talk About Niche Topics You Both Love
Facebook has over 620 million groups and you will surely have a target market in a few of those. Finding the right groups and getting involved can help your audience. 72% of customers are likely to purchase from your business after they follow you.
Tip: Try building your own group on Facebook or LinkedIn.
17. Use Social Proof To Connect With Your Audience
No one wants content that no one cares about. They want one that they’re familiar with and being shared often. Contents shared the most must have some authority, creative and original.
18. Easy A/B Testing To Get The Biggest Results
A/B testing is showing a different version of the same website to different people. For social media, instead of trying different websites, try similar posts and monitor the reach and conversion results. Twitter made it easier to track results by using the analytics dashboard.
Tip: It’s important to track the results of these tests to ensure that you’re getting the correct results.
19. Use #Hashtags
Hashtags are powerful in connecting groups of like-minded individuals on social media. It’s a simple way to increase your reach. Tweets with hashtags are 55% more likely to get retweeted.
Plus, hashtags are free, so why wouldn’t you want to use it? Just keep in mind that too many hashtags can devalue your message.
20. Keep Your Customers Up-To-Date
Keep your customers up to date with new products and events coming up. So what type of news should you share?
● New products
● New services
● New updates
● New expansions or departments