Social Media Marketing, you have heard the term, everybody says you need to be doing it but what is it? What about SEO, PPC, and traditional Marketing?
Well, let’s take a look at what Social Media Marketing is and what it means to you and your businesses.
Social Media Marketing defined; you use “social media websites” or website that people use to engage socially with each other to engage your target demographic. Reasons you might want to do this is to increase your brand awareness, boost customer loyalty, or run a campaign.
What not to do.
Many Marketing Specialist will tell you that being invisible is the worst thing you can do in the social market, I think that is only partially true, I think being dormant is a worse case scenario, to have a social media account with nothing on it is far more damaging in my opinion, a bunch of unanswered post for help will only push customers away. Equally damaging is having a social media account and using it to advertise to your customers who followed you, most social media platforms have advertising platforms attached to the social media platform if you try to use your social media account to advertise you will find folks unliking or unfollowing you.
How does it work?
Develop a plan
know your end goal and plan accordingly and you will get further than trying to wing it. Determine your end goal for your social media campaign. Are you trying to develop a following for your brand? Are you trying to promote a direct sale of a product or a service? Are you looking to boost customer loyalty? These are some goals that you may have and know your end goal and plan accordingly and you will get further than trying to wing it. Determine your end goal for your social media campaign. Are you trying to develop a following for your brand? Are you trying to promote a direct sale of a product or a service? Are you looking to boost customer loyalty? These are some goals that you may have, knowing this is going to determine how you want to proceed with your campaign.
Know your limits
You will need to look at your situation honestly. Are you able to devote the time to work on your campaign or do you have someone in your company you can assign the work too? Have you budgeted to hire a firm or other outsourced resources to manage & complete the work for you? If you have the time, you can always learn to do it effectively yourself saving a bunch of money, that said you have to ask yourself if this is the best use of your time. No matter what anyone says, there is no secret sauce, marketing is teachable, learnable & has not really changed much over the years. You can compete with the big brands if you know what you are doing.
Know your demographic
Know your customer, use social media outlets to engage your customers and learn even more about what it is they want and how best to serve them. Like I have said many times “if you want to make a bunch of money, quit focusing on how to make money and focus on how to serve your customers better” the money will come from happy customers. Engaging your customers on social media will allow you to get to know your customers and how you can serve them better, which will give you a better customer experience which will boost your word of mouth advertising turning your current customers into ambassadors for your company or product. Happy customers like to tell people about their experience.
Content is King Queen (written content is Queen)
You have always heard that content is King, well it still is really, it is just “Video Content” has overtaken written content You need to create content worth reading or viewing, you need to be able to engage your customers with things that are interesting to them or they will not continue to interact with you and your brand. Once you know your demographic you will be able to give them things that they find interesting. Are your customers interested in current events? Can you write good copy about your products pointing out things that it can do to solve a certain problem or you can do a quick video showing your product in action, or ask influencers to do a review of your product? Sure you can always sprinkle in a sale or two from time to time, but you need to engage with your customers not “sell them” sharing your story, what makes your company different or showing you are a real person, something that your customers can identify with.
This will get you started and we will touch back on this in a bit….