Spontaneous selfies? Not really. Hard promotions every single day? Definitely not!
How businesses use social media for marketing is a bit different from the way other users engage with them. Still, that doesn’t mean you should treat each Facebook post or Instagram story as a huge billboard to shove in your audience’s face!
It’s about balance and strategy.
When a whopping 97% of all digital customers have used social media in the past month, you definitely can’t afford to miss out on this effective marketing channel. Let’s just make sure that you do it the right way!
Social media can be tricky if used incorrectly or with the wrong attitude. It takes nothing to go from being the cool kid on the block to the overbearing sales representative that everyone tries to avoid on the street.
Let’s start by understanding how businesses use social media for marketing before learning how to create an effective strategy that makes you stand out from the crowd.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing simply consists of leveraging one or more of these platforms to build and retain an audience, ultimately generating more sales.
Let’s make one thing clear, though. Social media marketing is not about spamming your followers with a hard promotion every day or constantly bragging about your company’s achievements.
Much like your content marketing strategy, your social media plan should focus on creating pictures, videos and texts that bring value to your target audience.
We recommend following the 80:20 golden ratio. Around 80% of your content should entertain and inform your audience about industry-related topics that you’re both passionate about or aspects of your offer that feel relevant to them. Only 20% should be a direct promotion of your business, products or services.
Were you planning on doing it the other way round? Then you might as well prepare a big banner to direct them to your unfollow buttons, as they’ll go straight for them.
If you’d like to find out more about outsourced marketing services, give us a call on 0115 671 3868
Why should my business use social media?
We’re not trying to trigger your #FOMO (or maybe we are), but did you know that 52% of online brand discoveries happen on social media?
Even if you shouldn’t sell all the time, having some social media accounts and a clear posting strategy will still allow you to showcase all the products and services that you offer. This obviously makes it much easier for new potential customers to find out about them and know where they can buy them from.
Have you already got a few personal social media accounts? Then you must have noticed how people love checking in when they visit a restaurant or tagging a brand when they post a picture with their new clothes. Perhaps you do that yourself, sometimes?
Either way, you definitely want other people to do it for your business! That’s some juicy free advertising right there.
Plus, social media can help you humanise your brand and show your customers that you actually want to have a two-way conversation with them.
If you combine that with content that brings them value and helps them educate themselves about popular topics in your industry, bang! You’ve just grabbed yourselves a new bunch of loyal customers.
And loyal customers who feel that you actually care about their needs will pretty much act like active brand ambassadors.
That’s how businesses use social media for marketing purposes! Still, to do that effectively, you need a strategy.
How do I create a social media marketing strategy?
As much as we want you to start harnessing the power of social media marketing right now, don’t just open a few accounts and start posting randomly!
Social media are a highly competitive place and, just like with any other marketing strategy, you need a bit of a plan if you want to succeed.
1. Run an audit on your existing accounts, if you have any…
Did you open a Twitter account for your business and then forgot about it? Maybe your company’s old marketing manager had started posting on Instagram using a tacky yellow filter that now looks terribly outdated?
Before you do anything else, run an audit of your company’s existing social media accounts to see what you’ve already got to work with and what needs to go.
One of the most important things, for both social and your brand in general, is cohesiveness.
In a perfect world, you should aim to have the exact same handle across all your social media accounts (e.g. @yourbusinessname):
- If you haven’t got any social media accounts just yet, check that your preferred handle is actually available on more than one platform;
- If your existing accounts aren’t consistent, try and see if you can change them.
This element of cohesiveness should be reflected in your profile picture, bio and brand tone as well. If, when you run your social media audit, you find anything that looks out of place and no longer represents your business, delete it so that you can start off strong!
2. Do some market research
Grab your hat, sunglasses and trench coat! Hiding behind a virtual newspaper with holes for your eyes, check what your competitors are doing on social media.
This doesn’t mean that you should flat out copy their strategy! It can just give you a little head start by seeing what’s popular in your industry and what seems to resonate the most with your target audience:
- What type of content gets shared the most by your competitors?
- What do their followers never fail to comment on?
- Are there any relevant topics that they tackle, besides talking about their company and products?
As well as analysing what’s already out there and what’s popular, it’s also helpful to figure out if there’s a gap that you can fill with your social media marketing strategy.
Can your products solve a problem that’s clearly annoying your target audience but none of your competitors seems to tell them about it explicitly? Or maybe you’ve noticed that they’re pretty good at pictures but aren’t creating any videos?
To prepare a successful recipe for your social media marketing, combine these two ingredients: what’s proven to work and what nobody else is doing.
3. Focus on the right platforms
Would you promote your butcher’s shop outside a vegan restaurant? We hope not.
Similarly, if you want to reach your target audience, you must make sure that you’re hanging out in the same place.
You can—and should—be active on more than one social media platform (don’t put all your eggs in one basket!). However, there’s no point in focusing your efforts on a channel that isn’t really popular with your specific audience.
Before you start creating your profiles, you should discover where they’re actually hanging out, based on their age-group and gender but also on other demographics such as location, income and interests.
To give you a general idea of what you’ve got to play with, the most popular social media platforms in 2020 are:
- Facebook, that, with 1.73 billion daily active users (let that sink in), is still a must for most businesses and is also essential if you want to run ads on Instagram;
- Instagram, the best for influencer marketing and picture-based content;
- Pinterest, which can help you drive traffic to your website and products;
- Twitter, famous for its snappy text-based content and in-the-moment information;
- Snapchat, if your target audience is particularly young, since 53% of people aged between 15 and 25 use it;
- LinkedIn, especially useful for B2B products and services,
- YouTube, to reach more people by producing lots of video content,
- TikTok, a much newer platform but with an impressive growth spurt among Gen Z.
We also recommend being realistic regarding the number of platforms that you can manage.
If you can rely on a large social media department and have found that there are five relevant platforms for your business, go for it.
But, if you’re a start-up with a small team, you might want to begin with the three most relevant platforms. Focus on them excellently rather than trying to juggle too many and ending up with mediocre results!
If you’d like to find out more about outsourced marketing services, give us a call on 0115 671 3868
4. Create content that brings value to your target audience
As we mentioned earlier, you should do your best to stick to the 80:20 ratio. Most of your social media posts and content must bring value to your audience, whether that’s by entertaining them or educating them about something that they already care about.
Nowadays, users are much more conscious about what and how many accounts they’re following. Trust us: trying to have more followers than people you’re following is an actual thing!
If they don’t feel like they’re gaining something by engaging with your accounts, they’re simply going to unfollow them. No regrets. #YOLO.
Basically, as controversial as it may sound, your social media accounts should be about them.
A little trick is to think ‘what can I post to bring value to my audience’ rather than ‘what can I post to promote my business’. If you do that, when you finally promote your products after around four other posts, your followers are actually going to care. Why?
’Cause you managed to get in their good books by showing them that you care about them, too.
5. Showcase your brand’s personality
Let’s be honest: who would want to follow a corporate robot that only regurgitates the same impersonal sentences about their company?
When used correctly, social media can help you humanise your brand and become more than just a name and logo.
How you do that obviously depends on your type of business and audience. In general, keep in mind that people love seeing the ‘behind the scenes’ of their favourite brands and appreciate putting a few faces to their names.
Either way, make sure you showcase your business’ personality and come across as unique. They should follow you because they won’t find the same content and style anywhere else.
6. Don’t forget about the importance of video content
Some social media are mainly conceived around text, like Twitter, whereas others are more picture-based, like Instagram.
However, you shouldn’t overlook the fact that the daily consumption of online videos has been growing steadily over the past few years. It’s been estimated that, by 2021, the average digital user will spend 100 minutes every day watching videos online.
From longer YouTube videos to short but memorable Instagram stories, spice up your social media content plan with some video-based posts. They’re quite useful for boosting your engagement, too.
7. Create a content plan and stick to it
If you post too many times a day, you could overwhelm your audience, pushing them to unfollow you just to stop you from clogging up their feed. On the other hand, if you post too rarely, they could forget about you.
Be consistent!
Create a content plan and be realistic about how often you’ll be able to post by giving yourself some SMART goals.
For example, it’s much better to post only twice a week but do so every single time rather than post every day for a month and then run out of content and disappear for two.
By posting consistently, your audience will know what to expect from you when they hit that follow button.
8. Integrate your social media plan with your content marketing strategy
Do you blog on your business website? We hope you do, because it’s proper SEO fuel and it results in 67% more leads compared to websites that don’t!
Because we’re still talking about content and an overall marketing strategy, you shouldn’t think of your blog and social media as if they were in separate watertight compartments. On the contrary, they should work in synergy!
We recommend sharing your new articles on your social media. This trick will be a lifesaver on those days when you really don’t know what to post, and will also show your audience that you’re passionate about creating high-quality content that feels relevant to them.
Needless to say, this will help you drive traffic to your website, as it provides them with a direct link to the article. Again, for a successful result, you must remember that you’re doing it to bring them value.
Don’t beg them for views by asking them to check your latest article, nor bore them with a ‘we’re delighted to announce that’. Instead, when you share your new blog post on your social media, use the caption to tell them what benefit it will bring to them.
9. Engage with your followers and relevant accounts in your industry
Remember when we said that you shouldn’t treat your social media as virtual billboards? This also concerns the fact that you shouldn’t just put out content and then forget about those platforms until you’ve got something else to post.
You must show your audience that you’re on social media to have a conversation and engage with them!
If they comment on something that you’ve posted, do your best to reply to as many comments as you can. Heart them. Thank them. Someone’s tagged you in a picture with your products? Great! Make sure you retweet it or share it in your Instagram stories. Show them that you genuinely appreciate it!
Not only are they going to love you for it, but you’re making it even more likely for new accounts to tag you when they receive your products (people love a little bit of validation from brands!).
On top of that, you should also engage with industry-related accounts that are popular with your target audience.
By commenting on their posts and, perhaps, providing valuable feedback or ideas, you’ll have higher chances of getting noticed by new potential customers who’re already following them but hadn’t heard about you just yet.
10. Promote your accounts and reward those who use them
Some cross-promotion never hurts. If you’ve already got thousands of Instagram followers and have only just opened a new TikTok account, go and tell them about it and add a direct link!
On your website, make sure that your social buttons are easy to spot. You could even add a widget that shows the most recent content from a specific platform or two.
If you’ve got a physical location, have a little print banner that mentions your social media accounts.
As we’ve already established, audience-generated pictures, videos and tagged content on social media are free advertising. So give them an incentive to provide it to you!
For example, you could run a competition offering a free meal to the winner, and all they have to do to participate is follow you and tag you in a picture of them at your restaurant. Or you could give an exclusive time-bound discount to your followers.
11. Collaborate with influencers
Almost half (49%) of consumers rely on influencer recommendations and are much more likely to buy a product if, instead of being shown to them through a generic ad, it’s endorsed by one of their favourite personalities.
The result? On average, a business makes $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. Who wouldn’t want to leverage that?!
Instagram and YouTube are still the most popular channels for influencer collaboration, but make sure you focus on a platform where you can actually reach your audience.
Look for influencers, YouTubers and bloggers that are relevant to your industry and products, share your ethos, and are already popular with your target audience.
This doesn’t only mean that you’ll reach lots of new leads: ads can do that too, after all. The difference is that your offer will be introduced to them by someone that they look up to and trust, virtually ‘greasing’ the sales funnel and facilitating conversions.
12. Consider running ads on your social media channels
How businesses use social media for marketing mainly revolves around organic content. However, you can also use these platforms to perform paid ads and reach more people beyond your current follower base.
After all, 27% of internet users find out about new products through social media ads!
From Facebook and Instagram to LinkedIn and Twitter, most social media platforms offer this option, usually mixing the ads with other organic content when they display them to users.
For example, on Instagram, you’ll find a paid ad every other three organic posts. This means that, when someone is scrolling, you’ve got a fantastic chance to grab their attention!
13. Check your analytics regularly and make changes accordingly
No matter how much market research you’ve done, you can’t have it all figured out from the start. Like any other marketing strategy, your social media efforts are something that you should review regularly to see what’s working and what’s a massive #fail.
- What is your audience mainly engaging with?
- What type of content do they share the most?
- Are there some posts that don’t seem to resonate with them at all?
Your social media should be all about creating content that brings value to your target audience. If they aren’t finding it valuable, there’s no point in spending time and money creating it.
Check your insights, metrics, analytics or whatever name they have on your chosen platforms, and make decisions accordingly rather than just trust your better judgement.
Doing so consistently will allow you to hack the system (metaphorically!) and figure out the magic numbers and recipes that work with your followers.
We hope it’s all clearer, now.
We know, it can take some time to create and perfect such a strong strategy, but the benefits that social media marketing can bring to your business will make it absolutely worth it. If anything, you’ll probably ask yourself why on earth you haven’t started doing this any sooner!
In general, if we had to summarise how businesses use social media for marketing in one sentence, we’d just tell you to create valuable content with your target audience in mind and to always engage with them. Do that consistently, and your occasional promotions will be just as welcome!Want to set yourself up for success with a strong, targeted marketing strategy for your social media? We can help! Get in touch now so that you can start making the most of it asap.
If you’d like to find out more about outsourced marketing services, give us a call on 0115 671 3868
