Social media has been at the heart of digital marketing discussions for sometime now. Many consider it to be the be all and end all of their marketing activities whereas others see at as little more than a distraction from more pressing marketing tasks.
But are people right to question the social media boom? Keep reading and you’ll find out if social media really is all its cracked up to be.
Is social media a viable marketing platform?
Put simply, yes! Over the past 12 months the major social networks have made great strides in improving their advertising platforms to give advertisers more freedom and ability to get the most out of their experience. The social media cheat sheet designed by The Pink Group sets out the clear platforms that can be used and used effectively to acquire business.
Facebook alone has over 1.5 million active regular advertisers and the fact they come back each and every day to spend more money on the platform shows that they are receiving a healthy return.
The key thing to understand however is that social media plays different roles for different businesses and industries. E-commerce businesses will be able to measure success much more easily as they market on social media because they can directly track sales.
However, high involvement service based businesses may struggle to directly track the success of social media. It could be that social media doesn’t directly generate sales for a business but that isn’t a reason to deny the value of social media entirely. People will interact with your brand multiple times before making a purchase and social media can play an important part in those initial stages. If you were to discount it completely you could well notice a sharp decline in sales as prospects fall off at earlier stages of the marketing funnel.
If you are looking for a helping hand, these 20 tips from social media experts are a fantastic place to start.
Making a success of social media
Social media is something that you can’t do half-heartedly, it’s so easy to write a quick status update but it’s much harder to write one that is engaging and will drive sales.
Make sure your profile is in order
The first thing you need to do is make sure that your profile is accurate and in order. Have you included your contact details, crafted the perfect cover photo and included a link to your website? This social media cheat sheet will help to get you started.
Post engaging content
Think about content that your audience will be interested in. If you are in a niche that can be considered boring, put your marketing hat on and think of a few ways to spice up your content strategy. Nobody said marketing was easy, but if you can crack social media before your competitors you will reap the rewards.
Use ads
The unique part of social media is the ad platforms. You can use targeting metrics that delve far deeper than any other platform and if you design your ads appropriately you could greatly increase the exposure of your business.
Build relationships
Social media is a two way street, make sure you communicate with your audience. If someone comments on your post, respond! People will be far more likely to engage with you if they can see that you will respond to their comments.
A company that does it well
One company that seems to have cracked social media is The London Helicopter. When you look at their Twitter page you can see that they focus everything on engaging content. It is a widespread fact that pictures dramatically increase engagement and London helicopter regularly share pictures of the breathtaking London skyline to encourage engagement on their page.
You’ll also notice that they respond and retweet most of the mentions that come their way. As we said earlier, building relationships is key and The London Helicopter encompass this feeling by making sure that they always interact with others.
Remember that engagement is key in social media. If your content isn’t of interest or unique, you can bet that people won’t bother engaging with your brand. Without people to engage with you, you are just wasting time. Make sure that you make a conscious effort to implement the above suggestions and you’ll see a noticeable difference in the results you receive from social media.
