With it being World Social Media Day, it only seems right to tell you why social media is worth your time, money and efforts.
It’s 2017 and if you’ve not already set-up social media accounts for your business, then do it now! According to eMarketer, one-third of the world use social networks on a regular basis. It’s a huge missed opportunity for your business if you do decide to avoid it. Maybe we can change your mind.
As a social media executive, my life revolves around Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube, so of course I’m going to promote it positively, but I’m not the only one – 92% of marketers say that social media is important to their business. Here are just a few reasons why.
Brand Loyalty
One of the first things that people do now when they discover a new brand is see if they’re on Facebook or Instagram. If they’ve not got any social accounts or lack in following, it’s likely that the person is going to have a lower trust for the brand for its lack of transparency. Consumers do judge a brand on their social media because every brand uses it now. It appears odd and sometimes even lazy if a company isn’t using it.
With most social media accounts, you can also get your accounts verified, which also makes you easier to be found and trusted. This is often seen as a blue tick next to the accounts name.
On Facebook and Twitter, there are a few simple steps to getting your page verified, whereas Instagram only offers this to some of the top brands out there. There are still some social networks that don’t offer verification, but I’m sure it won’t be long before they jump on the bandwagon and start offering this option.
Gain Insight into Your Customers
Social networks are a great way to know your fans and potential customers. Within your accounts insights, you can find out all sorts of information about your customers, from what time they’re most active online, to where they’re living in the world.
There’s no need to spend days conducting consumer research, as it’s all automatically collated for you.
With this information, you can then plan your marketing and social media strategies to your followers and future followers. This kind of data may even help with the decision of where your next store is going to open.
From this you could create personas, to pick out your key different consumers and how their consumer journeys and habits may differ. Find out more about personas and other methods of getting to know your customers.
Drive traffic and conversions
Social media is a key driver of traffic and conversions for many brands. As social media is all digital, there are ways that you can make the consumer journey easier to drive them to your site or to buy that item you’ve been promoting.
On Facebook, you can create product tags, so that whenever you feature a product in an image, you can tag it with the product details and link it straight to where people can buy it. On all the social networks you can add website links in the bios, and on most you can feature links within the posts. Instagram is the only one you can add links within posts. It is slowly launching Instagram shopping, to make the consumer shopping experience much smoother through their app.
Alongside the organic free methods of driving traffic and conversions, you can also do this through social media advertising and this follows onto my next point.
Super targeted advertising
Social media has opened up super-targeted advertising. This is far more effective than many of the traditional methods, for example, posters, TV, newspapers. Why is it so much more effective? Because you can reach exactly who you want to, rather than it being an open book of who walks past your sign.
You can target by location, age, gender, job title, interests, income, shopping habits, competitors they like and more. You can also make it so adverts on go out to those who follow your brand already, or vice versa, to those who don’t follow you. This allows you to play around with copy and imagery variations to talk with current customers, and to encourage potential future customers.
There’s also loads of different types of campaigns that you can run to achieve different outcomes. These include brand awareness, page likes, lead generation, and more. Find out more about getting started with Facebook advertising.
The targeting and campaign options vary from different social media networks, so it’ll be a matter of diving in and seeing what works for you. They are also constantly developing, opening up new advertising options to better your social media advertising.
Talk to your customers and build relationships
With everything else I’ve already talked about, social media is of course, all about being social. It’s a place where you can be talking to your customers. Before even starting to talk to your customers, make sure you know your tone of voice. You’ll want this to follow through on all your accounts, so whenever someone goes onto your channels, they flow consistently.
Talking to your customers means you can get to know them better, know what they respond to, what they don’t and find out what they want from you. You can also respond to those who are talking about your brand, like bloggers and brand advocates. Acknowledging and interacting with them will help you build relationships and bring a positive light to your brand.
It’s also important that you’re prepared to use your social channels as a customer service platform. Consumers are fed up of the lengthy process of customer service emails and phone calls, they want answers fast – that’s why they jump to social media.
If you’re yet to set-up social media, not sure on how to use it to its full potential, the thought of attempting social media advertising baffles you or you simply don’t have the time to fully manage it, let us handle it. At Fifteen we offer social media management and marketing services, tailored to your brand and objectives. Get in touch with us today with your enquiry.