Marketing via social media

Social media marketing is expensive and, if not done correctly, can result in a low return on investment. Although social media marketing concepts appear simple, setting up accounts that reach the targeted target industry is rather challenging and complex. For success, one must maintain a consistent presence, which takes time, and send forth constantly informative messages.

Unlike prior conventional methods that concentrated on content promotion, social media marketing has thrived since its inception due to its attempts to develop a community, trust, and interaction among its users. Of course, there is time and space for promotions and marketing messages, but there is no reason to limit oneself solely to marketing. Broadening scope quite a bit helps lessen the burden of new creation and make content more appealing.

What contents should a company consider for publishing and sharing purposes?

Make adjacent content.

sssObviously, anyone interested in your offers are following you, and their interests don’t just end there. So share contents/messages related to the company or relevant to it and the audience. For example, ‘Southwest Collision Consulting’ should share content on road safety accident investigations, roadway surveys, government contract consulting for roadway designs, vehicle collision testing, driver training, mechanical analysis, new vehicle testing and research or messages in relation such content are directly about the interests of the audience.

Tricks and Tips

Make the interactions between content sharing and conversations more interesting by sharing information that will improve customer’s lifestyle (Benefits from certain tricks and bonuses from tips) help them in road safety.

Responses

Not a must that shared ideas be original they can emerge from bounced off content which was posted by others. Since social media is mainly conversation just join in it and participate. One can make even such account that relate and relevant to the company and follow them. (Helps spreading visibility of the account attracting more audiences).

Non-promotional company information:

If the company is involved in cooperate social responsibility, social media is the best platform to which to make the public aware of such activities. If there was an awesome Christmas party at the offices or employee’s birthday, make good highlights. This helps in brand humanizing that promote relationship building with the community via normal, acceptable cultural practices.

Job openings:

To ease high quality recruitment of new talent, social media channels are incredibly useful place for finding fresh talented recruits. People seeking employment are increasingly utilizing social media as a means of learning about organizations and their available openings. It’s a worthwhile match worth full utilization. Advertise your listings on the social media accounts and highlight the important roles.

Jokes:

Humor posts are content one need to moderately involve themselves with. They are walking on thin ice for if wrongly utilized can backfire on the brand. Safety first if to be tried. Test out humors first before posting to ensure that they are not offensive to others. If your guaranteed it is safe to post and acceptable make sure its not a bad joke but funny otherwise it could be extremely embarrassing.

Business Goals:

When setting up social media accounts and websites, first identify the company goals. To enable moving forward towards set targets like increasing business awareness, decreasing marketing costs and maintaining customers. The goals must be analyzed keenly to ensure social media is used effectively to realize them.

Most effective method is choosing two primary and secondary goals; this helps you to focus avoiding distracts that may lead to nothing being achieved. Specific goals help in drawing down objectives clearly to easily accomplish them. Also making measurable, attainable, time bound, relevant goals.But as your influence online grows the goals might change, e.g., ROI goals and audience activity and engagement goals.

Social Platforms:

When a company knows its target audience occupation, interests, age, income, pains, dislikes, likes, motivations, problems, obstacles, objections, and habits, then they become easy to target on social media. The target consumer persona and characteristics helps you know where to reach them, at what right time with what kind of a message.

Updating Frequency.

A common question is how often does a social media account need updating? But there is no correct nor incorrect answer to this, no definite best action set in stone. All depends on the appetite of the audience, and what is your message. Researches have been that a company can utilize as a guideline, but the most prudent measure is trying thing s out on your own and coming up with the right method for any media.

But fact is content updates rarely last long, for example, a tweets half-life is 18min. For users. This number indicates that sending updates are not appreciable, but it doesn’t mean you should send update as often because customers move to other content fairly fast. What’s important here is that you monitor how long your users are sharing and engaging which is reflective of your media content.

Even though it depends on what fits your company. For example, organizations such as news pundits are expected to post update often and multiple time throughout the day, where as a consulting firm would turn off target clients with such a rhythm. Don’t post just for the sake of posting. If no new content to add don’t post due to time target constraints. With all that said, one need to ensure that your account has constant update to maintain consumers interest. It’s important they realize they might be missing out on fine new stuff if they don’t.

Examples:

Goals might end up being not so useful if set parameters defining it when achieved are not well set. For example, if the primary goal is to consult on vehicle safety, how many consultations with how many companies do you have to meet to consider that set goals have been achieved.Set objectives for marketing help in going from point A (unreached goal) to point B (attained goal). Objectives can be determined by Locke and Latham’s five principles of goal setting: clarity, challenge, commitment, feedback and task complexity.

Engagement.

Engagement can be categorized in two. One is Responses to user’s questions, mentions and commentary is important for fostering continuous engagements. In the early life of a community growth establishment, it is crucial for a brand to be active and available. This meaning responding to questions and commentaries. The weight of this early stage is considered fairly of manageable for any company.

The other category is as a result of solid, driven data contents strategy. Through considering this such as social conversations and search enquiries one can realize the starting point of a slid data content strategy. While sharing such content seek out responses on how audience is reacting and engaging it. Such feedback is data on how your fairing off. This will help evaluate the update format, timing and structures you should use, e.g., are you making bold enough statements and asking questions. And also what type of media to utilize.

Asking for help.

Its sometimes as simple as asking if you need help from your community. If the company has earned their trust through investing and building in their relationships it can as for feedback on product, users survey response participation, etc. Sometimes you might need help for sharing new content or program. If you’ve been able to make adequate relationship investments, the community will willingly reciprocate the favor.

Keeping It as simple as possible.

Sometimes abundance of option might be no option at all. A road safety consulting company cannot easily utilize platforms such as Pinterest, snap chat, etc. especially if your main focus is B2B One must check out their social media community audience and much them up with their platform preference.

Cross promote to guarantee discoverability.

Cross promote helps your users to be able to easily find your content. There should be a link between your blog and social properties. Try using the same titles, names, profile descriptions logos all throughout cross social platforms (services like KnowEm are very useful for such), also cross promote your social media accounts as this is of importance. But regardless though you should create and sell unique content for individual account. So if user is following you on Facebook give them a reason to follow you on twitter.

Listen and monitor.

As frequently as possible monitor your social channels. Utilize notifications channels that will keep you updated to avoid missing out on conversations that are highly meaningful throughout the social web. Admin stature on various apps usually have this tools of alert set up. But still, there are apps that assist in so, e.g., HootSuite, SocialEngage, TweetDeck, etc. also alerts can be set using Fresh Web Explorer, IFTTT. Genuinely pay attention to what users are telling you as you monitor. Companies and brands will to listen benefit a lot and gain lots of insights on their products and service rendering. Such actions can be your feedback place on product user experience and in time warning system when thing go wrong.

Gamify.

Introducing game kind activities can help motivate users and the community. A good example is foursquare that moves its community through badges and mayor ships positions. You can innovate your ways that will make community engagement more fun to interact and communicate continuously. It is a very useful way in increasing the amount of responses coming from a help thread forum community, and achievement and levels for replying questions and sharing the unanswered. Goals and behavior should be matched up in a reward like system. BigDoor and Badaville are companies that can help utilize virtual system reward. Such actions can help improve your sentiment, social media marketing, loyalty, retention while also reduce service expense, acquisition costs and churn

Conclusion:

Consistent voice and brand

Ultimately your promise to your clients is what your brand becomes even though it might take various elements to create it, visually or otherwise. Amorphous as a concept the brand might seem to be, but put in consideration that the brand adds value to the company especially if managed properly, can be helpful in protecting the companies made investments in time. As of how the brand value is determined is and endeavor considerably complicated.

One can learn a lot from globally branded social media companies.

-how to present your logo

-which colors and fonts to use

-brands fully described and what they stand for.

-guidelines manner, tone, and voice

-elements for structure and topographical (mainly for advert)

That is a good place to start on brand new guideline of development. When ready have a method to transform them to media elements. Colors and logos never change, but you want the developers to have access to any relevant content for creation purposes. Instructive places for more guidance are MailChimp’s guidelines and Cambridge Identity Guidelines. For most small companies this might seem too much, but they are worth it for gaining inspiration and behavior of per current standards. But one can utilize a graphics design team for most of this.

Knowing your audience is important as the correlation of them and the platform for engagement on may alter the tone of your brand slightly as platform very in how they may be utilized. This is why its important to have a clear understanding so that changes are made carefully for adaptation purposes. Consistency is not a must but vital is cohesion.

One of the goals of social media is being human, which sounds obvious. Engaging on a human level is the magic of social media and maintaining this develops a brand that helps craft a voice that is cohesive and also solid, and at the same time, users relate with you building a relationship hence forth. Very Humane.

Campaigns all over the social community should be integrated, helping your brand solidify and your efforts amplify. Utilizing a consistent brand visually helps driving your message home. Maintaining relevance customization to platform.

Social media presence is a twining of your brand, enabling the brand to reach more persons through networking experiences. It can be an opportunity but also risk, that’s why it’s very important to define your social media brand face by taking enough time coming up with the most appropriate brand. Because you don’t want inconsistency that causes disjointed customer experiences or negative impact. Important scenarios to consider include:

Managing Crisis

All companies hope they are never caught in the middle of a crisis, especially if the business has a social media presence. An embarrassing real life incident incident may be magnified by casting a broad shadow on everything you say. Social networks can be used to spread the rumors, as your services and customer relations might be extremely harmed in the proses. But as well social networks are a wonderful method for practicing transparency because clarity is the best method that can be used against such chaos. A good example is a social sharing app Buffer that was hacked in 2013. Utilizing their blog account, they were able to blow away the rumors and benefit from an open social media channel communication.

References

Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2014). Social media marketing. Sage.

Gerasimchuk, E., Palekhova, L., & Shvets, O. (2013). SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING.

Shaikh, N., Siddiqui, M. E., Vasatkar, K., Jagtap, Y., & Sankpal, L. J. (2016). Social Media Marketing.