Social media marketing tactics provide a wonderful opportunity for your company to connect with customers, reach a new demographic and grow your client and fan base in a way that traditional brick and mortar stores and customer service hotlines can’t. Using social media as a vehicle to carry your message is not only low-cost, but it’s personal and friendly, which can help you stand out against the social noise of cat videos, memes and selfies. What is social media marketing? Read on to find out.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is the process of gaining online attention and raising customer engagement, brand recognition and website traffic through the use of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and more. This is accomplished through sharing engaging updates, publishing fresh and relevant content and connecting with your consumers.
While every social media network is set up differently and has a slightly varied audience that requires different tactics to reach customers, there are similar business uses for each platform. Keep reading for seven ways you can use social media marketing to grow your business.
7 Ways To Use Social Media Marketing In Your Business
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Social media can be used to boost your customer service.
Boost Your Customer Service
Social media marketing is an excellent way to boost your business’s customer service and portray a helpful and friendly face to the world. Encouraging your fans and followers to be online advocates can be a valuable asset in increasing your company’s reach.
If you find it hard to take control of your social media pages because you’re juggling too many other aspects of your business, consider hiring a social media manager or agency who can take the load off your staff. It’s important to have someone assigned to the page in order to identify negative feedback in a timely manner and answer customers’ questions.
While you rarely have an opportunity for face-to-face interaction with each one of your customers, social media sites offer a new way to connect with clients and fans. The individual nature of social networking allows for one-on-one exchanges in the form of messages and comments. It’s important to respond quickly to these types of fan engagement as users likely won’t wait very long for your reply. The average wait time customers expect (maximum) on Facebook is under six hours, while on Twitter it’s only 60 minutes.
- Increase Your Company’s Reach
Imagine you’re standing in front of a crowd with a megaphone, speaking about your business’s new product. It’s hard to get people to care, isn’t it? Now imagine you’re standing in front of an audience that only consists of those already interested in your topic. It’s a bit easier this time. That’s how powerful a hashtag can be when used properly on social media.
Hashtags serve to categorize your updates and make them visible to users searching for those terms. The above example shows how social media marketing can help increase the reach of your online footprint.
You can spread the reach of your campaign even further by hosting contests where you encourage followers to share your content, maximizing your organic reach with images and videos or by taking advantage of promoted posts and advertising options to give the updates some extra oomph.
- Push Shareable Content
Did your company just wrap-up a video about your community outreach efforts? Maybe you created an online webinar designed to help people learn more about your business. These types of shareable content (updates that are timely, include videos and images and aim to educate your fans) are well-suited to sharing on social media. Use your social networks to push this content as far as it can go. A good way to increase its visibility is to use relevant hashtags and jump on popular trends.
- Turn Fans Into Customers
Use social media marketing to turn your fans into customers.
If you have lots of social media fans, but are trying to increase your sales, you can use social media marketing tactics to do so! Turning fans into customers isn’t always easy, but here are several ideas you can try that will endear consumers to your brand:
- Showcase your products or services in action
- Provide “how-to” tips for your industry
- Target your updates using ads
- Create incentives in the form of flash sales or coupons
- Share a behind-the-scenes video from your company
- Encourage them to share their own images and videos using your products or services along with a branded hashtag
- Jump On A Trend
Knowing what people are talking about online and joining in on the conversation is an essential social media marketing tactic. Keep up with popular content and use hashtags to participate in weekly trends like #MotivationMonday, #WisdomWednesday or #ThrowbackThursday; these are perfect opportunities to show your brand is up to date, relevant and comfortable on social media. Remember to always stay positive, upbeat and open to different points of view.
- Make A Name For Yourself
Become memorable through your social media marketing efforts by taking a cue from what these brands did in 2021:
- Share core values with customers — Starbucks: Sprout Social states that, “While traditional business advice has dictated not to get involved in politics or strong opinions, recent data shows that it can be worth it. Our recent #BrandsGetReal survey data shows that 70% of consumers believe it’s important for brands to take a public stand on social and political issues.”
- User-Generated Content (UGC) – Apple and Zoom: According to Sprout Social, “User-generated content refers to unpaid or unsponsored social posts that people across every network share when they’re using or raving about a product or service. When your friend posts a Tweet about a fantastic experience they had with a hotel they stayed at, that’s UGC. When your favorite brand reposts Instagram Stories from customers at an event they hosted, that’s UGC. When someone shares a video on TikTok about finding the best lipstick they’ve ever used, that’s UGC.”
- Entertaining challenges — Pringles and Getty Museum: As Sprout Social states, “Everyone loves a good challenge and 2021 was full of them, to say the least. Many of the social media challenges or ideas originated from users themselves and some came from brands. What also helped the influx of challenges was the rise of TikTok’s popularity. A platform that became popular based on its ability to engage with others quickly fueled many challenges and memes that spilled out into other platforms.”
- Tell A Story
It isn’t enough to simply share about your company’s values or mission on social media; fans aren’t likely to be very interested. Instead, you should craft a story that is shareable and relevant to their lives. A strong story has four elements: theme, plot, structure and characters. You can think of them this way:
- Theme (Know Your Industry)
- Set the tone of your story by knowing the ins and outs of your industry; every story needs a solid foundation.
- Plot (Know Your Story)
- Determine the main message you want your audience to take away and make sure it’s front and center.
- Structure (Present Readable Content)
- Present your message in a readable format; for example, if you have a lengthy piece of research, break it into main points and share it via multiple social media updates.
- Characters (Include Your Audience)
- All good stories have solid and genuine characters. Make your audience a part of yours by inserting them into the narrative!
Once you’ve figured out the story you want to tell, it’s time to share it! Video marketing is excellent because updates with video receive increased organic traffic. You can post customer testimonials or success stories, share behind-the-scenes footage or show how your product is made. Learn more about video marketing here.
Avoid These Social Media Marketing Mistakes
Avoid these common social media mistakes to have a successful social media strategy.
While social media marketing can be very valuable and helpful for your company to incorporate, it can also be detrimental if done incorrectly. Avoid these 12 common mistakes:
- Not having a strong social media strategy. Without a social media marketing strategy, you’re likely to find yourself posting just to post with no return on your efforts. Every business, no matter how big or small, needs to take time to develop a social media marketing strategy.
- Posting irrelevant social media content. If your content doesn’t speak to your audience, it will be largely ignored. Every piece of content you post should bring value to your audience.
- Not utilizing social media analytics. Pay attention to engagement, impressions and reach, shares, referrals and conversions and response rate and time. These factors combined will give you an overall view of your social media performance, and you can use them to guide your next steps in your social media strategy.
- Thinking each social network is the same. While you want your brand voice to remain the same, you will need to personalize your content to the style and tone of each platform.
- Not targeting your social media audience. Make sure your posts are written with your target audience in mind. They’ll be more likely to engage with content they care about.
- Too much brand promotion. Eighty percent of your social media content should be useful and helpful to your audience, with only 20 percent self-promotional.
- Not actively maintaining your social media accounts. Post at least once per day and keep your social media content up to date and informative.
- Not returning the engagement you receive. Respond to comments and questions on your social media! People love to interact with brands, and it helps to build brand loyalty.
- Not including a call to action in social media posts. Give your readers clear instructions on what to do next.
- Unedited social media content going live. Have someone else proofread your copy before you post it on social media. People remember mistakes, and even a simple one can make it seem like your brand is careless.
- Concentrating on social media quantity over quality. Focus on quality content that your audience will care about. If you spam them with posts that are uninteresting or irrelevant, they will likely unfollow.
- Not posting on a consistent basis. Post consistently to build credibility and loyalty with your audience.
Need Help Creating A Social Media Marketing Strategy For Your Business?
Creating a social media marketing strategy can be difficult. If you’d like help, Three Girls Media is here for you. Contact us for a complimentary 30-minute consultation to see what we can do for your business. Our team of experienced marketers is here to help you take your business to the next level.
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