Social media marketing requires both strategy and creativity.
While it may seem overwhelming, its importance cannot be overstated.
Need to that many marketers use social media and that not a bad number of salespeople are outperforming their peers using social media for their business.
Plus, its benefits extend far beyond increasing sales.
But, not all companies are aware of the benefits of social media marketing.
In fact, many small businesses do not use social media to promote their business.
Even more disturbing is that many people don’t plan to use social media in the future either.
You’re about to learn how social media marketing can help build your business.
You Can Get Acquainted With The Brand
One of the most important benefits of marketing for any business is gaining brand recognition.
This is because consumers want to buy the brands they know. Social media allows easy and effective branding.
Social media has benefited traditional media because it can bring your brand to people more quickly and easily.
Moreover, it makes your audience look at your brand even when they do not think about your brand or product.
Tip: Pay attention to your profile and cover photos. A great way to create branding is to place your logo often strategically.
You want to make sure it’s not overwhelming or distracting. Make sure your visuals are well represented.
Check out Nike’s Twitter page. Nike keeps its Twitter profile neat and clean.
They put their distinct logo on their profile picture and cover photo without being snooty.
The cover photo is especially effective because it connects the Nike logo to the idea of running.
Create A Conversation About Your Brand
A strong social media marketing strategy will create a conversation about your brand, products, and partners.
Take this example from PlayStation. Post a simple post saying congratulations to Naughty Dog (the company behind the new video game Uncharted 4) on its success, prompting reactions to the game.
By doing this, they received a large amount of feedback about their product.
They also got people talking. Fans were having real conversations, all facilitated by social media.
Tip: Interact with your audience when they comment on your messages on social media.
Ensure they feel there is someone behind the brand, so make sure they don’t feel like they’re talking to a robot. It will give them a better perception of your company and make them feel like a valued customer.
Focus on sharing content that naturally creates conversation. Some of these methods are:
Channel your shout out to other companies your network does and work with.
Ask for feedback about your products.
Ask open-ended questions, then allow the audience to respond to engage them actively.
It Makes You Connect With Your Audience Through Social Listening
Social listening is the process of observing social conversations about certain topics.
It helps you understand what is important to your audience and identify your target audience’s trends.
You’ll get to know their struggles, which can help you create content that addresses these pain points.
You can also specify the tone and language your target audience is using.
Check out the Burger King on Twitter. They use the same slang that smaller audiences on Twitter use to represent themselves in a comedic way.
If you’re not sure how to match your audience’s tone and style, social listening can help.
Tip: Make it part of your daily routine to do some social listening and see what people say in your industry.
Enables You To Collect Data From Audience Research To Improve It
Audience research is like social listening. It researches the keywords your audience will use but focuses more on your specific product.
You can use social media to collect this information.
Tip: Both Facebook and Twitter allow you to view the reach and stats of all your posts.
To display the ideas on your Facebook page, go to the page you manage, and it will be next to your cover photo.
Twitter will have an option to display the insights for each Tweet you post at the bottom of each Tweet.
Provide Exceptional Customer Service That Keeps Your Followers Happy
Customers now expect companies to handle their requests through social media.
A strong investment in customer service can build meaningful relationships between your company and your customers.
With social media, the customer service challenge remains as demanding as before.
Social media allows for instant interaction and customer comments. Businesses can also respond to their customers instantly.
With nearly half of US customers using social media to ask questions about products or services.
Having a customer service strategy on social media is crucial.
Take this example with HuHot, a popular Mongolian grill chain restaurant in the upper Midwest.
A customer inquired about a time-sensitive situation, and the company answered her question within hours.
Build Customer Loyalty
What could be better than building brand loyalty for free?
Clients follow and engage with brands they enjoy. But what’s interesting is that 53% of customers who follow your business are likely to be loyal to your business specifically.
It’s a straightforward link: if customers follow you, they’re more likely to choose you over your competitors.
Moreover, if they are loyal customers, they will increase traffic.
Tip: Make sure to keep your loyal audience engaged and happy. Here are some ideas:
Offer promotional codes to get discounts via social media to your followers (subject to Facebook promotional content guidelines).
Ask open-ended questions that allow your audience to respond.
Direct Referral Traffic To Your Site or Blog
Direct referral traffic to your site or blog Social media marketing can help send customers directly to your site.
It’s unlikely that all your traffic will come through the search engines.
Social media channels allow for more diverse inbound traffic flows.
Although social networks are great for driving traffic to your site, you not only need to think about what you post but how often you post.
You don’t want to be that bullying marketer, or you will stop your customers.
It’s a good idea to follow a set schedule for publishing your content.
This will help you ensure that not only is your content published in the most effective time, but it will also give you time to edit your content to help you with SEO.
Tip: Use bit. to shorten your links and place them in your posts and profiles. Short links will save space and won’t seem overbearing to an audience.
Social Media Can Help Build Relationships
Social media can have an indirect effect on SEO.
For example, let’s say you got 1000 posts on a blog post because it contains powerful content.
Some followers who see your post may write similar content and link to your original post as a source.
Search engines will then pick up that your content has linked back with a good amount and (hopefully) will rank your post higher than your competitors.
Google and Bing also display Tweets in search results. This feature is more relevant to popular topics.
Tip: Using a social media scheduler like CoSchedule can help you plan your social media posts. So your content can be found and linked to.
You Can Retarget Your Audience Using Social Media
Retargeting is a great social media marketing tool.
Generally speaking, only 2% of customers will buy something actual during their first visit to your site. Advertising can help reach that other 98%.
One way to do this is to run retargeting ads.
Retargeting works by maintaining a list of people who visit your site and placing anonymous “cookies” in their browser.
When they visit a social media site, the retargeting service displays ads. This allows your business to be in the eyes of customers only after they are on your site.
Tip: Some great retargeting tools are easy to use. Check out these tools and find the one that works best for you.
Use them to promote your product. But remember not to annoy your customer.
Leading Conversions
Traffic is just traffic. Not exactly. What really matters to you is the amount of converting your traffic.
Here are four great ways to increase conversions using social media.
Adding calls-to-action: A call-to-action is useful because it motivates your customer to do something.
They feel empowered to sell your product. You can also design your social media messages to entice customers so that they want to take a specific action, such as buying your product.
These ads can be placed anywhere on social media and can direct a customer to your site.
The trick is to ensure your site maintains enough customer engagement that they want to keep buying the product.
From call to action to final sale, the whole process should be attractive enough that the customer does not hold back.
Contests: Contests, giveaways, free stuff. It’s all the things that no business really wants to do, but it is helpful.
Anyone would be more forced to sell a product from a company from which they already received some free items.
Many companies will post pictures to encourage people to post their content to spread the word.
This post is a great example. To be eligible for the reward, you must follow three steps, including:
Republish the image
Tagging friends
Follow the original label.
All these steps will get people who follow your business to visit your site.
Conclusion
Social media is one of the best and easiest ways to keep your customers updated about your new products or upcoming events.
If your business makes a huge advertisement about a new product or exciting event, it will capture people’s attention and excitement.