Social Media matters

This is before you factor in the additional Facebook platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, where 2.5 billion people are using these services at least once a month; Then there are other social media platforms such as SnapChat, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Weibo and more platforms that are used on a daily basis. Those are massive numbers for your business to potentially reach. We should be clear though, it's not enough to just sign up on Facebook, set up a business page and hope people flock to it in order to buy your products or services. In fact, there is a lot more involved in order to maximise the benefits of social media for your business. 

The first step is understanding what you are trying to achieve using social media. Is it to encourage people to buy from you? to call you up and make an enquiry? or just to enter into conversation and discussion with you?. All valid goals for social media. Next, you need to identifying the audience you want to target and establishing their additional interests through research. You will also need to consider you currently clientele and what interests they have. By looking into and identifying these, you can begin to test the findings of your research in order to solidify that your target audience will be interested in you.

The next step involves ensuring that your content is varied on your social media platform. Audiences, regardless of interests, like to see fresh and fun content. If your timeline is full of sales ads, your audience is likely going to be turned off as no-one enjoys the hard sell. The key is finding the right balance. If your business is having an event, you could live stream the event, take pictures of staff and customers involved or make a short fun video.

This will complement the sales adverts and blogs that you do post on the platforms making it a softer sell that people are more likely to engage with.

Finally, it’s time to develop paid ad’s and start building a community of followers and fans who will help build your brand and your presence on social platforms while actively becoming an influencer for your business. Start to get into the habit of crafting a content plan (download a content plan template here) for social media that balances different types of content that you can both boost or use as a paid advert.

It won’t take long before you start to see the results. By tracking your adverts regularly, you can amend them, adjust them or turn them off and replace them with new adds. Review the results on a regular basis means that you can maximise your results through dynamic management to better suit your target audiences. The best thing about utilising social media in your marketing strategy is that no matter what your business, product or services, there is an audience on these platforms for you to tap into. This is why social media matters to marketing your business.

Of course, you could get social media experts such as ourselves involved such to help develop, manage and curate your social media objectives into your existing marketing strategy. Contact us today for a chat to see how we can help you get started and make social media work for you.