It seems like these days everybody is constantly plugged into Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We just love finding content and sharing it with friends. But for businesses, social media is an opportunity; just as revolutions in communications were before it.
In fact, there’s reason to believe that social media marketing is actually better than other modes of communication. Firstly, it’s way more engaging than telephone or email. In those models companies initiate a one-sided interaction where they effectively beg for business.
But under the social media model, the interaction is two way. Customers might find a product or service they like and link to it on their social media. Or they may find they like a particular advert or idea from a company and link to that. In other words, social media users are a conduit through which companies can spread their message.
Plus, social media can be managed so that it is far more effective that cold calling. You can subtly place links with potential customers. Or you can take advantage of a social media interaction by suggesting your product at the right time. Perhaps somebody is struggling to find out where tickets for a local gig can be bought and that’s what you sell. There’s your chance.
Of course, this is all very time-consuming, which is the downside to social media marketing. But social media management companies can take a lot of the strain out of the process and generate leads.
Whatever you choose to do, you need to make sure that you have great accounts across a wide variety of social media platforms. You want to set up your accounts so that you have a concise description of what your business has to offer. Because Twitter limits you to 140 characters or less, it helps keep the description of your value proposition short.
Regularly posting and sharing also helps to get people engaged in what you’re doing. In order to get likes and retweets, you need to post content that your audience is actually interested in. It shouldn’t just be about your business activities like “just completed an order from the supplier.” It should be about the issues that people care about.
Once you’ve got great content, the next step is to find out who your audience is. Not only will this allow you to target the right people, it will also inform the type of content you choose to include in the future.
Then it’s just a question of optimising your content. Social media marketing can be a dead end if the content itself is good, but the marketing of the content is poor. Always choose titles for your articles that generate a bit of interest. They don’t necessarily have to be controversial, although this may help, but they do have to engage. In other words, stay away from the sort of titles you might see on PubMed.
Often great content is not enough, which is a shame. So back it up with something that’s going to create a bit of a buzz. Competitions and promotions can help do this, but you need to be creative.
