Online businesses today clearly understand the importance of social media as a tool for marketing products and services. It’s like a digital extension of your brand – a venue where you can part your services and products and engaged an additional audience.
With almost half of the population using social media platforms, it’s hard to deny that it’s the perfect place to find potential customers.
Well, in fact, they have predicted that seventy-one percent of small businesses will be utilizing social media content to entice customers by this year.
Who wouldn’t want to be involved with social Web when everybody else are connecting with brands. Aside from that. speaking to a larger audience can be done just by using your keyboard, therefore, it’s a lot easier to reach prospects.
So to keep you going today, whether you are just getting started, or just sitting on the sidelines – we are here to help you make your recipe of success through social media.
Here are some tips to get you off to a flying start.
What are the important social networks to consider?
You can take part across different platforms and not just select one and disregard another. All you have to do is find a distinct group of industry and clients amongst various platforms.
You can tailor a unique strategy for each social media marketing sites as each of them have a different customer base and they require distinct approaches.
So here are the most prominent social media sites that seem to stay forever and is a safe bet to invest time…
Using Facebook as part of your social media marketing calls for an active strategy. Firstly, you need to create your Facebook Business Fan Page and take into big consideration the importance of visual layouts since user experience is mainly based on this key element.
If you are then to run Facebooks ads, it is important to think about the cost that you would want to give since organic Facebook reach is very limited. However, if you have direct focus and with some best-laid plans, the cost-efficiency of the site will even surprise you. But if you go sightless, like a bat out of hell, then you will be near to losing money faster than you are at a casino.
Here’s one way also to easily throw money on Facebook ads – failure to test. Others might pour out their whole budget to not well-demonstrated campaigns and it is really a heartbreaking moment when you only find cold results. The truth behind is, you don’t have to risk on a thing that might not work. Go test first before you dive. By getting into it slowly, you will stay longer in the game.
Linkedin has been populated with over 500 million members in 200 countries and territories. Because it has a huge pool of professionals, it has become an ideal center for B2B companies to find valuable opportunities by connecting with potential buyers and sellers.
While B2B opportunities are ever blossoming in this site, B2C companies can also make their way as well on this networking center. They can take advantage of the connections that they can build which can open to chances for recruitment, finding influencers, and even market research.
How to be noticed on this site?
Develop a strong business page and buck up your ideas.
Get your business a recommendation from some of your customers and clients on your LinkedIn profile. This will make your business look believable and reliable.
The content that you are going to publish should be aligned with the tone of the platform. This site is a place where you can post something to like-minded individuals. Pieces of information that tells about what your business is also a good idea to post. Generalized articles are also interesting and can be appreciated by many.
Take note of the time that users have peak usage of the platform. Schedule the time for posting so you can be sure that your posts will go live at those moments. Usually, the time of usage is high before working hours starts (7-8 am), during lunch break, and also after work between 5 to 6pm.
Allocate time for answering queries in Linkedin question sections. Make exceptional answers for them that are related to your business. This will make you appear as a thought leader (sort of an authority to your industry).
Twitter gained its popularity as a micro-blogging tool. It has become valuable to marketers as its users’ number exploded since 2009.
With the rise of social media platforms as venues for marketing products and services, businesses have redefined its way of communicating with customers.
Twitter stands out from the rest because it’s specificity rest in its messages – tweets. It’s low character count that runs up to 140 characters before is now extended to 280 character limit. The hindsight of this extension has contributed to the way the users use the services now. More are retweeting, there are a lot more mentions, and a lot more users are getting followers.
How to make your marketing effective on this platform?
Try to build engagement by generating conversation. Other businesses do not seem to realize the importance of creating a conversation with other Twitter followers, they just put in some links to their blog and let it run in the emptiness.
Creating content that is mind stimulating is a way of getting responses and retweets. Also, add in question-based posts to encourage Tweeps to join and so you can jump-start conversations that revolve around your business. It is important that you fully interact during dialog as a way of nurturing a community.
Following tweeters that are from your industry or related to your side would let you gain a stream of followers too in return.
Add in some fun to your official tweets and broadcast updates to build brand awareness.
Don’t forget to retweet if a customer says some compliments about you and try to answer every query as possible.
One very important component when doing marketing on Twitter is to understand the rate of posting. Reusing tweets which gained high value to the company is a suggestion that you should take. To pass on important information to a higher percentage of your followers, post that valuable tweet twice in a day. But also make sure to tweet unique content as this platform has become a go-to-place for consumers who are starving for up-to-date information about anything that interests them.
As always and for any other social media platforms, you need to be consistent in your engagement to make all your strategies to work effectively.
Youtube
This site has been the number one place to share and create every kind of video imaginable. And it ranks second to Google as the largest search engine on the internet.
You can just imagine how this platform can offer opportunity if you look at it from a business perspective. That’s because video consumption nowadays is gaining speed. Actually more people find videos more helpful than by just reading article content. So for many businesses who place their strategy by creating “viral” video content (which brings slim chance in actuality), well they should back off from doing for there are more to get in making instructive videos or how-to demos. Aside from that, they will add to the ranking of Google search results for videos.
Below are the ins and outs of Youtube that determines its video rankings…
Algorithms of Youtube see the whole of your channel, from the followers you have, together with the videos they have watched, to the intensity of reactions that ignites from the videos you have. All factors are greatly considered.
- Build a high caliber YT channel
- Create engaging videos that will interest your audience and that has big value to them.
- Give importance to the opening scenes since the more you captivate your audiences, the higher you will rank.
- Design video content that is relevant as Youtube will align it to the search query of the users. Therefore make descriptions that are worthy, keywords dense, and relevant.
- Youtube can be a place where you can do both- content marketing and social media marketing. When doing these both, it is important to send back traffic to your home page site as that is part of your goal for this platform.
If you want a more engaged audience then you can find it on Instagram. With over 700 million active users, still, Instagram offers less competition than any giant social media platforms.
This social media platform is owned by Facebook but it still has its own characteristic which mainly emphasizes visual. If you want your brand to use images to promote your products and services then this platform is a great option.
Unlike Facebook, Instagram has its interest-based algorithm which does not stand in the way of business profiles.
Aside from having a growing number of diverse followers, Instagram has some of those highest engagement rates among social media network.
The use of extra creativity by showcasing your creations will help your posts stand out from the rest.
Use and expand your reach through hashtags. Whether they are campaign specific or general, they are all important for as long as they are relevant.
If you want your marketing strategy to work well on this platform then make use of all the features that are provided by the site.
Google+
Google+ at first, went out to compete Facebook but later stayed as a niche audience. This platform is mostly not effective for others but there are active users here.
Ninety percent of the people in Google+ just lurks and seldom participate. This literally means less engagement in the scene.
But it does have 111 million profiles which means that posting content here will mean maintaining brand awareness – a key aspect of social media marketing.
You can get the advantage of the active usage rate during weekdays with Wednesdays as the best day of all. That is from mid-morning up to lunchtime. Those are the best times to post but you can’t expect them to share your content. At least just bring your brand to them and give them reasons to remember it.
Take the benefit of Google+ circle where you can share information to a limited group only. This is one way of segmenting your followers leaving out others to have access to your exclusive offers.
Now, you can get started with your own campaign and create your own presence.
Solidifying your existence in the lives of your customers is very important and social media platforms are the right place to do that. Leave a comment and let us help you implement social media in your marketing plan. Feel free to contact our experts so we can get you pointed at the right direction.
