“I use social media as an idea generator, trend mapper and strategic compass for all of our online business ventures.” – Paul Barron
Social media has become an indispensable part of every marketer’s vocabulary. The number of social media users throughout the world is growing consistently. Around 3 billion people are on social platforms today. With so many people spending their time on social media, many businesses are making it a part of their marketing strategy. However, the full extent of the benefits social media can offer a business still remains unknown and untapped.
Whether you run a small business or a big national corporation, your business needs to make its presence felt on the social media. With social media, businesses can connect with their customer base, boost their leads and conversions, and increase brand awareness. These days, 97% of marketers use social media to promote their brands. Social media is here to stay, and more and more businesses are coming in terms with this fact.
Benefits of Investing in social media
Every business wants their brand to be recognized by the consumers. Customers tend to buy products from brands they trust. This relationship with customers and brands can be built using social media. Earlier, only traditional media such as newspapers and television were used by brands to spread awareness about their business. But with social media, brands can reach a large number of people in a short amount of time. What’s more, even when your audiences are doing something else on social media, they can look at your brand.
Once you manage to identify which social media platform your target audience is using actively, you can build a long-lasting relationship with them. By targeting the right audience with your marketing campaign you can give them a fantastic customer experience. These good experiences build brand loyalty. Customers are more likely to buy again from your brand because they had a good experience last time. Today, 93% of internet users between the age of 16 and 24 are on at least one of the social media platforms WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook. 71% of consumers who have had a good experience with a particular brand on social media are likely to suggest the brand to their acquaintances.
Tool for persuasion
With so many people using social media on a daily basis, businesses are using social media to figure out what customers think about their brand. They are also getting to know about what the customers really want. Marketers are conversing one on one with customers and keeping an eye on their profile to know about their interests. This knowledge can be used to form better marketing strategies that are consistent with customer interests.
Customers now have a lot of information available to them. They are more careful about who they are buying from. Before buying a product from your brand, they will most likely browse your social media handle and your website. If your social media profile is bland and uninteresting, customers will lose their interest in your brand. It is therefore vital to have a robust social media handle that is updated on a regular basis. Making the first impression is very important in today’s volatile world of business, given the short attention span of internet users.
Many brands are using social media to share their content. Sharing relevant content is a great way to get noticed. People on the internet are always looking to read well-written content, so every business needs to create some content of its own. Great content helps you with search engine optimization and establishes you as a thought leader in your domain. You can enhance the reach of such social media content by using proper hashtags or by tagging people. However, your content should be interesting to your audience otherwise it will just be ignored.
Make it engaging
Customers don’t like brands that publish generic and dry posts that are full of information but quite boring to read. They need to come up with a personality that represents their brand. Establishing a signature for a brand is what many businesses struggle with. Once you have discovered the brand personality, let it be expressed in every one of your posts on social media. This creates something the customers can identify with. This leads to more conversions. In a survey, 53% of customers revealed that they are more likely to purchase products from brands that have a transparent social media presence.
Another great benefit of social media marketing is the chance to swing traffic to your webpage or social media handle through a steady supply of quality content. The more your audiences engage with your posts, the more popular they become, which means more and more people will be visiting your website. Social media can also be used to engage with your customers on a personal level. Marketers are discovering new ways of connecting with their target audience. Instagram stories are shared by brands to let customers know what new things are coming up. This keeps them interested in the brand. Video streaming via Instagram TV or Facebook live is also growing popular. Many brands are holding question and answer sessions with their customers to know about what they want and why. 42% of social media marketers have created specific plans for Facebook live.
Marketing is not cheap, and social media marketing provides a good Return on Investment (ROI). Irrespective of the size of your business, you can make your customer base grow by posting ads on social media platforms. As per projections, marketers will spend 8.7% more on social media ads, and in this decade, the spending should easily reach over 100 billion dollars.
Content for Account-Based Marketing
Many Business to Business brands are opting for account marketing, where content is created in a personalized manner for customers. The need is more than ever to provide tailored content that caters to the tastes of individual customers.
With the rising trend in account-based marketing, sales and marketing departments are getting closer. The two teams are often collaborating to create content that is tailored for certain segments of the population.
Promoting the content
A few years ago, paying someone for promoting your content was frowned upon. People simply assumed that you were doing it because your content was of bad quality and that you didn’t have the slightest idea about what you were doing. However, this perception has changed over the years. Creating quality content is not enough. You must promote your content using a channel that allows it to reach many people.
Social media users have a limited attention span. This limited attention span and the growing number of content have turned social media platforms into media outlets. These media outlets are used to target audiences based on their preferences. Although paid promotion was considered a taboo before, now it has become indispensable for promoting content.
Earlier, content marketing was all about the channel. Content marketers were still trying to understand how to make proper use of each channel, particularly social media. Content marketers are prioritizing the quality of the content rather than the channel. Content marketers are more concerned about the consistency and quality of the content.
Improving Social Media Presence
It is hard to predict in which direction content marketing is heading. Audience preference plays a huge role in deciding the direction for content marketing, and the direction is different for each organization and its target audience. In today’s competitive world of business, you need to remember the following things, if you are content marketer:
This is particularly evident in industries like casinos colombia online, where trends and player behavior can shift rapidly. Adapting your content strategy to cater to the specific interests and needs of your target audience is crucial for success in this space.
Choose a Network that suits your purpose
There are so many social media platforms available these days that marketers much choose where they want to make their presence felt. Before taking this decision, one must keep in mind who your target audience are. Facebook is the largest social media platform, and is ideal for generating leads and building long-term relationships with your customers. 89% of marketers use Facebook for their campaigns. LinkedIn is another platform that is used by both business to business and business to customer marketers to build authority and establish trust. Twitter is preferred by businesses that have a younger customer base who like to stay updated about trending topics. 79% of users on Twitter were found to be curious about new things, making it more likely that they will engage with your advertisements. Then there is Instagram – the fast growing platform leveraged by B2C companies.
Build a Strategy
Once you set a goal for promoting your brand on social media, you should come up with a plan through which you can reach your goal. Nowadays many companies have dedicated teams for social media marketing. Each person in the team should be assigned a responsibility so they know exactly what they have to do and where they stand.
Marketers must decide how frequently they are going to post their content on social media. Infrequent posting might lead to users losing interest in your brand, but posting too often might irritate them. So marketers need to come up with a plan and a schedule that would help them reach out to more people efficiently. The plan should outline who the target audience is, what content you have in your disposal, what kind of content needs to be created, on which platform the content is going to be published on, and what are the interests of your audience.
Create content for your Audience
Every marketer must know their audience before promoting their brand on social media. You should create and share content based on what your audience is interested in. The content should be robust and interesting. Marketers should prioritize images and videos in content, as they help in user engagement. In a survey, it was revealed that 67% of audiences think video content is the most transparent. 23% prefer textual content, while 6% and 4% prefer Photos and GIFs respectively.
Conclusion
Social Media marketing is indispensable for marketers today. The incredible growth rate and a huge number of users in social media cannot be ignored. More and more brands are jumping the bandwagon and for good reason.
