Over the course of this article, we will be looking at what Social Media Marketing is, why your company needs to use it and how to implement a successful Social Media campaign. Many try, and unfortunately fail at this for various reasons so I hope this article will prove to be a good resource for anyone about to embark upon such a campaign.
Why should you invest in Social Media Marketing?
Social Media makes it possible for your company to create content, position the content on the Internet where it can be indexed and found by your customer. The advantage here, compared to traditional marketing is that when your potential customer is looking for a product they can find it. At this point they are also a warm lead because they are already thinking of buying the product.
You’ve tried Social Media for Business and it doesn’t work?
Social Media Marketing, if your not careful can take up a lot of your time without any results. This is the main reason why many give up.
Where many go wrong is they try to use Social Media to sell, but this is not what Social Media is good for. If used correctly Social Media is very good at taking users from Social Media onto your website and this should be the primary aim of your campaign.
A successful Social Media campaign cannot be run overnight; it is a long-term commitment and can take 12-18 months to build a good Social Media presence.
How often should you post on Social Media?
You should post on your social media no less than once per week. Leave it too long and your customers will forget about you. However, over post and you risk being cut off. The aim is to build good quality content over a period of time.
What type of content should you create?
Firstly, it must get their attention. The content you create for your Social Media campaign should be interesting, useful and relevant to your customer. The type of content you create should communicate your expertise, your authority and your values.
Expertise
Communicating your expertise to your potential customers is key to a successful campaign. What we mean by this, is your posts should keep to your core area business to make it useful and relevant.
Authority
Your authority is gained from the opinions of others around you. If other sites are linking to you, if people are recommending you or giving positive feedback, this contributes to building your authority.
Values
Communicating your moral and ethical values can show potential clients that you are a professional and build their confidence in your business.
How much time should you dedicate to you Social Media campaign?
A business needs to be consistent and continuous with it’s online marketing. It is all too common that companies embark on a marketing campaign, which drives sales. During this busy sales period, marketing gets forgotten. Inevitably, 3-6 months later the lack of marketing activity catches up, resulting in the feast and famine cycle.
A marketing campaign needs to be planned and scheduled so that it is continuous throughout the year.
Who should you be targeting?
Before you begin your Social Media marketing campaign, you need to understand your customer. Who is he, how old is he, where does he live, how much does he earn, is he married, does he have children, what are his interests, what needs does he have. This is your buyer demographic and it is important to have a clear idea of who he is so you can target him correctly.
Having this information will help you to reach the right people at the right time on the right platform.
Which Social Media platform should you use for your campaign?
There are 6 main social media platforms and which you choose to use as your main platform will depend on your target audience. The user demographic for each is constantly changing but below you will see a rough outline of the current state of their user profiles.
Facebook has the largest user base and is used mainly by people with family and friends. The user demographic is about 40/60 split between men and women. Although it’s not as popular with younger users as Twitter and Instagram, approximately 85% of 18-29 year olds still use Facebook on a regular basis.
Linked In
Linked in is the proffered choice to make professional business connections, leading many to believe it is used mainly by older generations. However, recent studies have shown usage to be the highest for 18-29 year olds.
Twitter is tends to have a young user demographic, and is also used by a lot of special interest groups to build communities. 36% of 18-29 year olds use Twitter where as only 10% of over 65’s use it.
Instagram is popular with photographers and young people, however its user demographic shows that it is starting to be used more and more by older generations. The main gender using it is still women between the ages of 18-30.
Google+
Google+ is a less know social media platform, used mainly by creative, business and marketing people. It allows user to combine and use all of their Google services in one place. Used by around 70% of men and 30% of women, this platform is still growing and is likely to increase it’s user base in the coming year.
Pintrest
Pinterest is well liked due to its lifestyle content and it has a large number of female users, 45% of women compared to just 17% of men. Also seen as a young person’s platform with older generations slowly adopting its use.
What are you selling or what are they buying?
It is important to consider not what you are selling, but what your customer is buying. What we mean by this is; what problem is your buyer trying to solve and what solution are you offering?
How can you turn Social Media posts into sales?
The first thing to understand is that Social Media posts should not be aimed at selling, but building a relationship. Most people will not buy from you on their first encounter with your business. Firstly, you will need to get noticed and encourage them to click through to your website. Once they are on your website, you want them to sign up for your newsletter. This is the start of them engaging with you and opens the sales opportunity.
Your posts should contain a clear call to action to encourage interaction and take the user to your website.
Why do most Social Media campaigns fail?
Most businesses setting out do not have a plan. You must outline what you are trying to achieve and how you are going to do it. Building a successful campaign takes time, usually 12-18 months, so it is important to understand this, stick to the plan and not give up. Schedule your posts for when you think your content is most likely to be seen by your target audience, and set aside time each day to check and respond to posts.
Set short and long term goals and track your progress regularly. Most importantly, do not be disheartened by slow progress, if you have a well thought out marketing plan and have stuck to it, you will achieve Social Media Marketing success.
Read our blog on SEO to find out more about increasing your website traffic: https://tygermedia.co.uk/improve-search-rankings-on-google/