When working in digital marketing, social media is one of the tools that can really make or break a campaign. There is so much growth potential in a well-planned and properly executed social media campaign that it is truly an invaluable tool. People are linked to their phones for most of the day, so it makes sense that using social media as a way to communicate brand information and attract new potential customers and client consumers is a very smart move.
The average person spends around two hours and forty-four minutes on social media each day. That is two hours and forty-four minutes of a potential customer’s attention that you could easily have! Not utilizing social media to its full potential is a mistake that far too many brands make, including those who work within the realm of digital marketing in some cases.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, people are using social media even more due to being stuck at home as a way to feel connected and less alone. This means your odds of reaching potential clients and customers through a carefully crafted social media campaign is even better since they are effectively broadening your chances of connecting. All you have to do is utilize social media in an impactful way and you are all set!
Let’s explore eight effective pointers that will help you grow your social presence and make use of the amazing tool that is social media while running a digital marketing campaign.
1. Identify and Understand Your Audience
It is easy to make a general, “come and check out our brand,” style post and just send it out everywhere you can but with social media in a digital marketing setting, there is a little more to the process than just posting whatever you want. Strategic posting and understanding your audience is key to the overall success of your brand and campaign.
To understand your audience, you have to take a look at what demographic you are catering to. If you are catering to professionals, offering a professional tone and plenty of resources and interesting industry data could be appropriate. If you are a more casual business catering to younger people, using an appropriate language and theme to your posts could be beneficial, as well. You have to cater to the people you are serving.
You can also target multiple audiences by offering a professional and regular page. If you are a business that offers products and professional services, having to interlinked pages, one for your professional servicing content and one for product details, could help keep things organized. Feel out your audience and see what would suit them best.
2. Choose a Platform
There are a lot of different social media platforms out there that all have their own merits and pitfalls. This ability to choose what platform best suits a person’s needs worked towards individuals having more avenues than ever before to locate businesses and entities that they could potentially work with. Everything from your local plumber to a multi-million dollar makeup brand can be found on the same social media site in just a few clicks.
Choosing which platform to spread your message and content is key in successfully completing a digital marketing social media campaign. From LinkedIn to Facebook, you have a tough decision to make but depending on the tone of your content and what type of work you will be doing, you should choose which has the best audience for your overall posting plans.
You can even choose to use multiple different platforms. There are tons of people who use Facebook but not Instagram and vice versa, so having a face on both can help to make you memorable and remembered by those who view your page and bring in a wider range of potential customers and clients.
3. Use Your Analytics
Most social media platforms give pages and businesses access to their analytics and special features to help enhance their usage of social media in a marketing sense. These tools can provide valuable in identifying your audience by age group and location while also giving valuable insight into what people are viewing and what types of posts bring in the most attention and engagement. You can use these measurements to predictively post based on what will do well and increase the overall interest in your business and its functions.
4. Use Strategic Messages for Direct Content
This is mainly a tip for those who use multiple social media platforms but can provide a little bit of insight for all looking to digitally market through social media. Using strategic messaging can help to get your message out across a wide range of platforms while catering to the specific people using said platform individually.
This does not mean to individually message people, but to use a different style of presentation on different social media platforms. For example, direct business content is great for sites with professional designs like LinkedIn while something a little lighter would be suitable for Instagram or Facebook. Question and Answer sessions are good on Reddit but may not get much traction on Instagram. Offering different approaches modernizes your content and helps to ensure it is reaching the right target people on each platform to help increase interest in your brand.
5. Make a Plan
Having something like a content calendar is key in ensuring you post regularly and are getting the right content out at the right time. Social media on a personal page is something entirely different than a business page, so while you can post whenever and whatever on a personal social media page, you need to have a plan concerning what is going to go on a business social media account and when it will go up.
Creating the content ahead of time and having it lined up for the month or week allows you to not worry about what to post and ensures you have enough content ready to share and engage your customers, clients, and potentially new consumers on a regular basis without gapping. It also works to ensure you do not post too often or post the wrong content, which is beneficial if you plan on running promotional posts or giveaways through your account in any capacity.
6. Use Ad Functions
Running an ad campaign through social media is a great way to branch out to a larger audience without having to seek them out individually. Many social media platforms have options to customize an advertisement and share it with a target demographic. This opens up a lot of new customers who otherwise may have never heard of your business due to not being aware it existed or not being aware they needed your services or products until they saw the advertisement.
Social media advertising is a fast-growing business in itself and has really taken off, with Facebook alone reporting a massive revenue of 69.7 billion dollars in 2019 alone! This amount is absolutely mindblowing but makes sense due to how effective many businesses have found social media marketing to be and the overall beneficial nature of extending your reach to a wider range of customers and clients. Chances are, other businesses in your area are utilizing this tool so be sure to hop on the trend, as well, because it just might dramatically change your engagement and bring in a host of new customers and clients while reminding previous ones you are around to help and provide products or services.
7. Look at Industry Standards and Legalities
With any advertising, what you say matters. You have to be honest and upfront or else you could end up in legal hot water. Keeping up with the industry standards and current legal expectations for advertising will save you a lot of headaches and ensure you can continue advertising effectively without legal hindrances.
There is an expectation for disclosure and honesty, especially with products and services, so be sure to always be accurate in the information you present while using digital marketing techniques. All of these laws can make it tricky to advertise how you would like but are in place to protect consumers and ensure they are adequately informed to make purchases and service decisions that they are comfortable and confident with. It is better for everyone to adhere to these laws and work to be compliant in every way while using social media marketing and digital marketing in general.
8. Be Adaptable
Things rapidly change online. That is part of existing in this fast-paced digital age where there is an endless array of information available at your fingertips at any given moment. Due to this, you need to be flexible and adaptable in order to succeed when using a digital marketing campaign.
Researching the current market and industry can help you to decide what types of content to post and what will be well received. There are a lot of variables that go into creating a piece of viable content so working to see what is popular within the industry at the time of your posting can help you greatly in ensuring you are getting the right media to the right people, thus creating a successful campaign pathway that is more likely to provide fruitful results.
Similarly, you need to know what social media platforms are popular with your target demographic. Social media trends are fickle, so while mainstays like Facebook, Instagram, and professional pages are all great to have, engaging with audiences on other applications can help, as well. Right now, for example, TikTok is very trendy. Despite the media portrayal of TikTok as a children’s application, there are a lot of adults who use the app and a lot of brands who choose to market on it. Making an account on TikTok opens up a new audience and offers the ability to play into current social trends to make your brand seem more modern.
While this last idea is not feasible for every company, if possible, playing with current trends is a great way to connect and make yourself memorable, especially if you have the ability to do something outlandish or otherwise shareable and enjoyable. Having something go viral can be lifechanging for business owners and work to really launch a business off of the ground.
Modern Marketing for a Modern World
When marketing, there are a lot of things you have to consider. This is true for both traditional and digital marketing, alike. The main difference is that with digital marketing, you have the opportunity to reach thousands of people in mere moments thanks to the power of the internet. Once post could change the entire path of your business and really kick things off.
Due to this, you have to treat social media marketing as a real and viable way to market your business and reach customers and clients. It is a powerful tool and, when used carefully and properly with a well thought out plan, it can be incredible for branching out and making a really big move towards being a big player within the industry.
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