While social media rapidly continues to change and your brand with it. Social media algorithms prioritize content and the types of content users view when browsing, popularity of certain social platforms, brands need to recognize that businesses on social media are still built on communities and genuine human interaction.
Additionally, social media looks very different now than it did back in the day when chat rooms were the only factors of classifying a platform as a social one. People use social media for a few reasons, either to engage with our people/friends/family, stay informed, browse new products, get inspired and a HUGE factor is entertainment...or in other words escaping reality for just a bit.
With all this being said, being successful on social media requires humanizing your brand or anything you are selling. It always beats acting solely on a advertising mindset and your soul purpose is to sell. This logic will likely only become more important as social media shifts from mass communication style to focus more on one-to-one engagement.
Set goals, especially SMART ones for your brand.
If you are not familiar with this term, we made a great article that gives great tips on how to use social media for added business and SMART is perfectly used in the article. In this article, we will need to use it in a different context!
Now I need you to ask yourself a question. Why are you on social media? If you answered "because everyone uses it now for their business", then you might have to re-think your approach to this.
SMART goals has been around for a good time now, and they are very crucial to your social media brand today. In short, brands should set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
An example of a good SMART goal for social media marketing would be something like “We'll increase our Instagram engagement rate by 30% by the end of the year.”
Specific: We’ve specifically identified the social channel (Instagram) and a measurable goal (engagement rate)
Measurable: The engagement rate can be simply measured from your Instagram analytics via your business account.
Attainable: We didn’t make a very hard to reach goal such as, a 75% increase in 5 days.
Relevant: Our goal will have an impact on our overall social media brand, making it very relevant.
Time-based: The goal has to be met by the end of the the year. This is a huge one, try to segment these goals as much as possible. "Shoot for the stars", you might not land on it but you will be very close.
Building connections and leveraging relationships.
By connecting with smaller brands or influencers on social platforms, brands can tap more into word-of-mouth marketing, which goes further in an era where people trust businesses less and place more emphasis on what individuals say.
Having a huge amount of followers can be great for appearance, but how many of your followers engage with your brand or content. Many people buy their followers, which can be a great thing in the short term, but when it comes to long term... it is a sure fire way to kill your brand reputation.
That being said, having 200 followers who regularly engage with you and your content is so much more valuable than 100,000 that completely ignore you.
The importance of social media is that you can form relationships in an instant with followers from just about anywhere and everywhere. This will allow for you to engage with potential customers brands have never witnessed before. Especially established brands. These types of brands have a hard time engaging with their customers, and this can be a huge void that needs to be filled.
Once you see the power of huge brands actually engaging with customers and on lookers, it can bring an enormous impact for not only your brand but your revenue.
Help and sell at the same time.
While social selling being on the rise, rarely should your social media presence be about just pushing out content just to sell your product or service. Sure, if you’re in e-commerce it makes sense to push offers and deals to your followers. What is most important is answering the questions of followers, connecting with different brands or people, encouraging and uplifting a post, and being a positive part in
the social sphere.
If your followers ask a question, you should respond as soon as possible. This makes them feel appreciated and heard. And if your followers seem to be complaining about a persistent problem, you should create content that speaks directly to that problem and address it.
By offering solutions to problems instead of just pitching your products all the time, you’re providing value while building authority and potentially earning a lifelong customer.
Use your website to promote your social media accounts ans visa versa.
If you’ve gone through all the work of establishing your social media brand's and website presence, you need to let the world know what you are doing.
There are various ways such as; homepage feeds to icons on your site footer or email signature, anyone who comes in contact with your brand should only be a click away from being able to engage with your brand and ultimately boosting it.
Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram feeds can all be easily integrated into your site. This will allow other individuals to see your brand has a social part in today's world and that can take your brand a long way. Make sure these icons are visible!
Being active on your social media accounts
Inactive social feeds are a bad look for brands.. Rather than let your Facebook or Instagram become stale, you need to capitalize on the modern day way of promoting your brand, which is via social media. Sure, you can definitely get by using Google ads, Microsoft Ads and straight SEO tactics but why not add ANOTHER stream of eyes going to your brand. It is clearly a win win situation.
The only draw back we see our clients getting flustered about are TIME and MONEY. In this circumstance, you can only tackle one. Our advice if you do not have any time to partake in social media efforts, we highly suggest hiring an agency to do all these time consuming tasks for you.
Some simple tips to help you stay active include:
Implementing social media content scheduling and automation to save time and energy.
Picking and prioritizing your social networks based on your audience location.
Finding ways to curate content so you are not always stuck making content from scratch.
Through scheduling or blocking out 10-20 minute chunks throughout the day, you can post content and respond to audience without wasting your valuable time.