In this day and age of Digital Marketing, business owners and marketers are presented with a plethora of options of available channels that they can use for promoting their brands, products and services. Among the many channels available, Social Media Marketing has emerged as one of the most cost effective options you can use for reaching out to targeted audiences and generate the responses you intended them to do.
As much as 92% of digital marketers agree that using social networks for promoting and marketing your brands, products and services will enable you to get more exposure for your brand and business that will eventually deliver profitable results. This stems from the fact that many online users are spending more time now (one in every six minutes) on social networks
Businesses who have not yet fully utilized the awesome marketing powers of social media is missing out on achieving the full potential of their overall marketing campaign. So, whether you’re a newbie entrepreneur setting up a new startup business, or a more established SME or even a large corporation, you need to boost your social media exposure to create greater awareness for your brand, products and services – and you can start with these tips:
1. Create Valuable Content and an Effective Content Strategy
This has been reiterated and emphasized several times in recent past and might appear quite obvious as a necessary undertaking if you want to boost social media exposure, but creating valuable content is still the main key for an effective content and social media marketing strategy. Many digital marketers fail miserably in their social media campaign efforts for the basic reason that they really do not have something valuable in terms of content that they can offer targeted audiences.
Content with “value” generates engagements and social signals (likes, shares, comments, etc) from targeted audiences, and these are central to social media success. “Valuable” content will also create a positive image on your brand, giving the impression to targeted audiences that you’re really serious in providing them with high-quality and relevant content that they will actually read, view and use. You can begin your journey with this sample content strategy guideline:
- Perform keyword research and use results for your content
- Search for popular hashtags and topics relevant to your business that you can focus on with your content
- Know what types of content your targeted audiences will respond actively. You can get this info through your analytics or social media management software
- Plan content that you can post across multiple channels. If one content type is not applicable to a particular platform, modify its configuration that is more suitable for that platform
- Know the proper times to post or publish content that will generate the most engagement
- Create an Editorial Calendar for this purpose
- Create sufficient enough content that can cover the post dates from your Editorial Calendar. You can repurpose previous content that are popular with audiences
2. Interact with Your Social Media Community
Your social media marketing efforts should not be performed only for the sake of posting something at frequent and regular intervals. Your campaign and your content should be geared towards generating interaction and engagement from your social media community. The following are some tips on how you can achieve this:
- Always remember that social media interaction is like engaging in a dialog with your targeted audiences, so focus on content that will be interesting enough for them to talk about.
- Always have a Call To Action (CTA) within your content. CTA’s can vary according to your intended purpose:
- Click on a link
- Like or share the content
- Join the discussion
- Answer a question or poll
- etc
- Respond quickly to every comment. You simply could not ignore these comments, whether they’re a praise, a suggestion or even a complaint. Studies show that Facebook users expect a response to inquiries within 24 hours. Twitter users also expect the same, but their waiting time is much shorter at 2 hours.
- Respond to negative comments in a positive or constructive manner. Never engage in debates or respond negatively to these types of comments. Direct them to a page in your main website that can answer their inquiries. Discuss matters with concerned people privately but post the resolution to the original thread for others to see how you handled the issues well.
3. Add a Local Touch to Your Social Media Presence
Targeting locally is one of the dominating digital marketing trends for 2015 and should be part of your social media marketing strategies. This is ideal for small and medium business targeting a local clientele specific to a particular area, but these can also be applicable to any businesses regardless of size. The following are some tips on how you can add a local touch to your social media presence:
- Always include local NAP (Name, Address and Phone) details on your social media profiles and main pages. Use maps and other geo-targeting tools available within the platform to tag your business locations
- Create separate websites or at least separate blogs for each of your branches or areas where you conduct your businesses. Each of these sites should have content that is relevant to that particular locality. Localized websites and blogs will increase social media rankings for that particular area or locality
- Create social media pages for each of your locations or branches and tie these up with their localized blogs and websites. Again, each page should have proper local NAP details and business descriptions
- Use local keyword phrases within the content you will use for each of your localized websites, blogs and pages
4. Perfectly Time Your Postings
Even if you have the perfect high-quality content that will truly be epic and beloved by your targeted audiences. If you post them at their off time social media period, no one might be present to see and digest your content. With the rate social networks are updating newsfeeds, your “great” content might just be wasted down to social media oblivion. So, the key here is to perfectly time your postings where targeted audiences are online to view them on whatever device they are using.
There are many contents that state the best times to post on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks that you may be using for your social media marketing campaign. Although these articles might be good guides that you can use, you and your staff are still the best authority to identify the best times as you know your targeted audiences and customers better than anyone else. You might be trying to model big companies that are posting several times per day on their social media pages at particular times within the day, but the post quantity and frequency they are using may not be appropriate to your particular business situation and targeted audiences.
The key here is that you post on a frequent and regular basis depending on your capacity and resource allocation. The more the better might work from you but take note that posting even a few times a week is better than not posting anything at all. Still, if you can identify the best times your targeted audiences are active at social media that would really boost your campaign and get the most in terms of engagement.
5. Make Effective Use of Flash Promotions
One innovative way to generate social media exposure that many digital marketers are not using is to conduct regular flash promotions. These are very effective ways to generate attention to your brand, build a regular audiences, and reward your loyal followers and those who are most active in social media engagement. Online crowd participation is a great element for making content viral and generate greater reach, and you can make use of flash promotions for this purpose.
Flash promotions are also great if you’re experiencing a slowdown in your sales. Not only will they create awareness, they can also generate a sufficient amount of buzz around your products and services that will get existing and new customers interested once more. Make your flash promotions time bounded or limited to a few participants only. Highlight countdowns or timers to particular deadlines for participation. You will notice how consumers will go for such rush – and you can leverage this too in your social media campaigns.
6. Put a Keen Eye Out Towards Mobile Social Media Users
Picture this.
If you’re targeting for a United States audience, you can have the potential of reaching up to 79 million through mobile social media marketing. These people all own a tablet, smartphone or any other mobile device that can connect to the Internet – and these constitute half of the total population of the USA. Mobile Internet, and in this case mobile social media, is truly a staggering phenomena that digital marketers simply could not ignore.
Social media is definitely a strong and dominant force to reckon with in this modern day and age of digital marketing. It is slowly but surely defining how consumers are behaving and businesses have no recourse but to go with the flow and provide these consumers with what they need at a platform they are most comfortable with. As a business owner or digital marketer, it is vital that you have social media marketing as an integral part of your marketing campaigns – and generate great exposure for your brand and business.
Jomer B. Gregorio is a well-rounded expert when it comes digital marketing. Jomer is also known as a semantic SEO evangelist and practitioner. Check out our Digital Marketing Services today and let us help you in achieving positive and profitable results for your business.