Informative

4 Things to Consider With Social Media Marketing

2.82 billion or 2,820,000,000. That’s the estimated number of people that are and have been using social media in 2019. An insanely large amount, that is - So why am I throwing this out here? In this blog, we'll be going over some of the things you should know when it comes to social media marketing as a beginning business today. Check it out!

Angelina Natividad

Online Marketer at The Next Ad

Dec 3, 2019

Over the last decade, social media has become an essential part of digital marketing and customer service for almost all businesses around the world. It has helped many companies to engage with their customers on a more personal level, to improve brand awareness and in some cases to scale their business on an international level. 

Now considering the 2.82 billion social media users, it’s easy to see why marketers want to leverage from all of the opportunities the industry has to offer for their business. Although we often like to believe we already know all that needs to be done in this area, the truth is: Social Media Management can be quite overwhelming if you’re not sure of what you’re doing or if you’re not using the right tools to help you. 

That’s why in this blog, we’ll be going over some important things you should know about regarding social media marketing: Let’s dive in!

Being present on the right platforms

In order to set up a solid social media strategy, it’s key to identify which social platforms are important and relevant for your company to be present at. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to this, it’s fairly safe to say that creating an account on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter has become sort of a must. 

Again, this may not apply to every business, but it’s surely worth looking into! Some other platforms that you could consider are, for instance, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat and Youtube. Since there are quite a lot of social channels you could end up managing, using one platform to control them all in one is no unnecessary luxury!

You might not be equally as active on each platform, but sometimes it’s better to be present just in case you had to be. 

Let’s take Twitter for example – Your brand probably exists on Twitter, with or without you. Even if you determined that Twitter is not the most important platform for your company to be on, it can still function as a great place to listen and observe what your customers are saying about you or to stay updated with what your competitors are doing. 

Important to know: The platform is regularly used by consumers to talk about great customer experiences, but it’s also a popular medium for venting about negative experiences and complaints. You’ll want to be there to interact with both types of tweets!

Findable for the right reasons

While I could write another entire blog about the importance and benefits of content marketing alone, I won’t this time. So I’ll be keeping it short: Putting out content that is relevant to your audience will help improve your business’ online findability and qualitative lead generation efforts. 

Social media is a great way to share your content to a specific group of consumers, without having to spend your entire marketing budget on getting it out there. In addition to this, social channels can provide consumers with a more personal feel than regular company web pages, allowing you to give visitors a better taste of your company’s culture and personality too!

The content you share on your social networks could consist of (but is not limited to) blogs with expert knowledge about your specific industry, customer success stories, insightful or entertaining images/videos, company updates or maybe just fun posts for your followers.

Whatever it may be, getting the word out about your company is key in making your business more findable and visible, building brand awareness and improving your credibility online!

Schedule in advance and save time

Alright, imagine having to post all the types of content we’ve just discussed. Are you going to wait for the right moment to create and publish everything, every day? What about posts that would perform the better outside of traditional working hours? And do you want to post everything manually on each separate social channel, and at the same time?

These are just some things you’ll normally have to think of when planning out your content planning for social media. As you probably can already tell, doing all of that is going to cost you quite some time. Valuable time. There are many other ways you can spend that time more effectively, so wasting it on manually posting your content would be a shame. 

Using social media content calendars is the best way to organise and plan your upcoming content in a fast, efficient and easy manner! Not only do they help you stay organised during busy periods or allow you to effortlessly customise your posts for each social channel and track content performances, but they also enable businesses to have teams publish content from one centralised platform! 

Customers as your strongest sales team

In order to pursue an effective and successful customer service strategy nowadays, it’s vital to be at the same places your customers are. Now, we’ve already briefly mentioned why you should always make sure you know what is being said about your company (either positive or negative). However, this element is so important that it definitely deserves its own part. 

Social Proof – Online Social Proof

While social proof isn’t a new concept, it’s surely something you should know about – even more so if you are an entrepreneur or a small/beginning business owner!

‘’Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behaviour for a given situation.’’ This means that customers like to feel safe or confident about the decisions they make, by following the behaviour or confirmation of others.  

This can apply to testimonials on your business’ website, reviews of your products or services on other sites, customer success stories and, thus, the engagement on your social media channels. 

If you manage to get your social media game up to par by posting awesome and relevant content and interacting with your followers -and if it shows-, new visitors will be more willing to start engaging with your content and stick with your brand.

Wrapping it up

There you have it, four things to consider when merging yourself into social media marketing! Of course, there are many more things that go into it, but learning about a few of the basics is a good way to start out. If you got curious about what effective social media management and social engagement management could do for your company, just take a look some of the awesome features we offer here at The Next Ad!

What are some things you think are definitely important when talking about social media marketing? Sharing is caring – let us know your thoughts in the comments below!