Our Short Answer: Social media rocks our world by opening a direct window to finding, analyzing and talking to possible leads. Instead of needing to search for info, people share their ideas, opinions and interests on social media without thinking about it, making our job easier, and makes their idea of us as less annoying and more human.
Social media used to be a platform that was primarily used to share our lives and stories with friends and family. Today it is the ‘ace in the pack’ in every inbound marketing strategy. Social media is a vital part of our everyday lives. It influences how we feel, how we think, and what we share with the world. Without it, we’ll feel like we are lost on a disconnected island.
Today, brands all over the globe recognize its power to increase their visibility and reach; opening a direct window to interacting, engaging with, and building long term relationships with customers.
So how has social media rocked the digital marketing world?
It Amplifies your Brand Awareness
Social media is also cost effective. It doesn’t cost a penny to share a piece of content. Every time someone likes or shares your post, brand awareness increases. If one of your customers comments on a blog post, their network will see it.
Rapidly the raindrops of likes, shares and retweets can become a waterfall and before you know it - more people are talking about your brand. It just takes a few hours a day to generate l engagement on any one of numerous social media channels. Over 91% marketers found that a few hours every week made a difference to their clients’ brand awareness.
How you represent yourself matters
When people talk about your brand on any social channel, others listen. That’s why how you represent yourself matters. You want customers to see the human side of your brand and how you are different from your competitors.
Constant engagement on social media with people that follow your brand helps to promote. As the saying goes “Build it and they will come”. The more work you put into your social marketing efforts, the more people will seek your advice as a leader in your industry.
Social Media tips to boost your brand awareness and reputation:
- Creating posts with hashtags are a great way to extend your reach and get people talking about your brand. Campaign hashtags create a buzz and sometimes even go viral.
- Post consistently on your social media channels and answer customer’s queries, and respond to their comments in a timely manner.
- Some recommendations when using hashtags: are to use specific ones; use #USOpenfinals, rather than #finals.
- Connect with the audience you want to target, not just with the goal of getting more likes or shares.
Social media platform growth
There are 3.48 billion active users of social media users around the globe. People spend an average of 135 minutes online (that’s over 2 hours!). That presents a huge opportunity for owners of any business. The most prominent social platforms are Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Businesses can show their friendly and helpful side to anyone that wants to engage with them on social media. Ensuring your business is active on social media enables you to connect to people in meaningful ways, showing compassion for your customers’ problems while providing solutions.
The days are over for generic advertising, the focus is now building personal connections with others which is crucial to your company’s growth.
Build trust through Social Media
Before social media was born, the go-to place for increasing awareness of your products and services was traditional marketing channels. There was huge spend on television and radio commercials and print ads. Today, companies can connect with their customers for free.
You can be less selective with great ideas. You don’t have to choose one or the other because it won’t cost you a thing. You can share whatever you want, whenever you want to and it’ll reach the network. Social media is far more strategic, effective and precise than television and television adverts which are more of an interruption.
People tend to not trust an advertiser on television boasting, “buy this product, it’s superior to everything else. These days, advertisers and marketers have to gain customers’ trust. One of the ways of creating trust is through sharing informative and valuable content that has a target audiences’ “interest at heart”
Advertising
Although you can engage your crowd of followers for free on social media, there are also paid advertising options. For any business that wants to grow, paid ads need to be a part of their marketing strategy, or at least they should give it some thought.
Your budget will play a role in the amount of advertising you do, but paid social ads have come on in extraordinary ways.
Paid advertising can be tailored to a specific audience and you can find the ideal time to reach out to them. Your business can target users based on their interest, demographics and online behavior. You can also target them based on what they do for a living, their yearly income and via product placements.
More options with social media ads
All social media channels offer numerous options for paid ads, this enables you to tailor your campaign to suit your goal. These include conversions, brand awareness, video advertising campaigns and more.
Social media has changed the face of how businesses engage and market to their customers. Unlike traditional media like television ads, you’ll have the advantage to monitor your ads at any time while accessing how they perform based on your campaign’s objectives.
You can view specific metrics like conversions, engagement and link clicks by viewing Facebook’s Business Manager. This enables you to create richly detailed reports. This is a great way to optimize your ads.
Facebook is only one of the numerous platforms that you can advertise on. For example, for more visual ads, Instagram is the best option.
Like Facebook, Twitter offers a pay for performance plan. No matter what your goal is, you only pay for an ad when a user takes an action that achieves your marketing goal. This could be more traffic to your website.Compared to other social platforms, LinkedIn, offers greater potential to reach a professional audience.
For more information on social media ads click here
Testing and Refining campaigns using analytics
Analytics are a staple of any paid ads campaign. Before the digital age, how many sales you made was the metric that success was measured. The problem was that there was no way of seeing what worked and what didn’t.
Today with the rise of social media marketing, analytics show what caused a customer to purchase a product. You can even trace each step of their buyer’s journey.
Customer service
Social media has changed the way business customer services functions. Using social media, customers can engage with their favorite brands and get a quick reply. This has changed the way businesses relate to their customers.
Customers can now communicate openly with companies, and at the same time, businesses can learn more about their customers through their questions, comments or concerns. This data is used to customize future campaigns that benefits the long term future of any business.
Customer Reviews
One of the places that customers look for customer reviews is social media. Research shows “that 97% of customers looked online for local business reviews. What is more important is 84% of customers trust online reviews as much as getting recommendations from friends and family”.
These can affect your sales and your brand reputation. Customers will tell you if they don’t like your products and explain why too. By using social monitoring tools to hear public opinion businesses can improve their products and services.
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