Are you marketing via social media yet?
Or, did you try it and gave up because you got no traction?
Let’s look at the basics of social media marketing for one simple reason – it’s an excellent way to elevate your business.
From getting seen, growing your list, selling products/services and interacting with joint venture (JV) partners, social media has something for every online business owner. It’s simply a matter of learning about it and taking action to find out what works for you.
Social media marketing is when someone shares content on social media networks to promote a brand and accomplish marketing goals. It could involve posting short texts, pictures or videos that bring publicity and attract potential customers to the business or products themselves.
- You provide good quality content that attracts viewers.
- Focus on listening and do less talking. See what people have to say and join conversations with helpful comments.
- Be a specialist. People will trust and believe you if they see you as an expert in your niche.
- Avoid being repetitive. If you post the same thing all the time, people will grow bored and stop following you.
- Be useful and fun. Social media users love funny things, and expect useful information. If you can provide at least one of these two, you’ll do well.
- Publish regularly. Providing content on a regular basis will help you to stay top of mind.
- Connect with online influencers in your field. If they happen to share your content, you can significantly broaden your field of prospects.
- Answer comments about your products, even if they’re negative. Don’t engage in back and forth arguments, though, respond politely and remain professional.
Here’s a list of the many popular social media networks. Of course, many more may pop up, and, indeed, some may disappear, depending on when you read this post.
Digg – This is a news aggregator with a curated front page that selects stories specifically for the Internet audience. Use it to get business news that directly impacts your business. Digg also supports sharing of content to other social media platforms such as, Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook – Facebook is still a popular social media website, boasting more than 1.5 billion active monthly users. This platform is particularly great for online businesses that are looking to advertise products, services, or events.
Foursquare – Foursquare is a location “check-in” service that allows customers to tell everyone they are in a certain place of business. This is a must use platform for local businesses.
Instagram – Here you can highlight your products and services in a visual way. This platform is one of the fastest growing, with over 600 million global users and is the place to partner with influencers that can scale your marketing efforts.
LinkedIn – This is your online resume. List your business history, core objectives and skill, as well as recommendations from customers. An excellent LinkedIn profile could win you incredible business offers.
Meetup – With millions of users, Meetup is a powerful local networking and organizing tool for individuals and small businesses.
Periscope – This is a live video streaming app. Use it to advertise your products/services, announce them, or collect feedback from viewers.
Pinterest – Pinterest is a visual sharing platform with over 250 million users and growing at a rapid pace. Pin clickable images that lead back to your website.
Quora – This popular question and answer platform allow you to shine as an expert in your field. Offer consistent, credible answers backed by facts and you’ll see an influx of traffic to your website.
Snapchat – Snapchat is an image processing application where you can share promo codes, demo your products, and also partner with influencers as a strategy to increase your brand awareness.
Tumblr – Tumblr allows you to post videos, photos, chats, audio messages and quotes. You can also reblog your favorite posts.
Twitter – This is where you have the greatest chance of your posts going viral. You can use the platform to post your business updates, recent news and more. Hashtags play an important role in giving your posts momentum, so ensure you use relevant hashtags.
WhatsApp – This instant messaging client can work as a customer service tool. Use it to quickly pass on internal communication, or, create a group to advertise your products or services.
Yelp – Yelp is the king of reviews with more than 140 million active users.
YouTube – The second largest search engine and owned by Google. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the phrase to remember, since your videos could appear on Google’s top search results. You can also use it also as a feedback platform.
Here are several of the best third-party apps that enhance certain features of social platforms and make social media a more lucrative experience.
Social Media Tools For Marketers
Agorapulse – content scheduling and message tracking, along with in-depth analytics and report-creation features.
Animoto – allows even inexperienced marketers to create eye-catching and stimulating video content for their audience.
Buffer – lets you queue posts for various accounts.
BuzzSumo – allows marketers to quickly determine the popularity of different types of content and adapt their marketing strategies.
Canva – for visuals and graphics, Canva contains numerous design tools, tutorials, templates and more, so users have the materials to create almost anything for their business.
Grytics – gathers a wealth of information from the posts and members of specific groups in Facebook. It then displays these statistics for businesses to manage these groups, or tailor their strategies to better suit audience interests.
MavSocial – management tool that focuses on graphics and videos for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Tumblr.
nTuitive.social – combines detailed data analytics with refined publishing and scheduling tools to ensure brands can consistently provide interesting content.
Oktopost – powerful data analytics, post scheduling, content curation and discussion tracking, the application allows businesses to increase their productivity, while at the same time pinpointing any glaring weaknesses.
Quuu – hand-picked curations based on interests in 300 categories.
Sendible – great for teams managing social media for a lot of different clients.
Storyheap – tailored for the Story feature, allowing brands to manage their Story straight from the web.
SocialDrift – an Instagram marketer’s best friend. The platform automates Instagram interactions, which help to organically increase follower count.
TweetDeck – allows businesses to schedule, monitor and queue up Tweets remotely. The app ensures that marketers can discuss certain content and analyze audience tastes to release Tweets best suited to their followers’ interests.
Unsplash – a database of gorgeous, high-resolution, watermark-free images that are free for use.
Yotpo – collects posts relevant to a brand and helps these businesses contact users for permission to use their posts in advertising.
The Future of Social Media Marketing
In one word: Video.
Video marketing is the future of social media marketing. Both online marketers and local businesses are quickly moving into video because its what people want. Video marketing is interesting, easier to remember, conveys so much more than written words, and stands out to users when scrolling through an endless news feed.
How big is the digital video marketing industry?
A study by Statista, revealed that video marketing revenue reached $27.79 billion in 2018. With nearly 28 billion dollars in revenue in 2018, video marketing is well on its way to becoming one of the most lucrative global industries.
This is by far the number one upward trend in social media, and video marketing will grow even more in years to come.
A 2020 article in Forbes cites that, 71 percent of B2B marketers are using video marketing, while 81 percent of total businesses use video marketing.
Any business that use video will stand out from those who don’t, so if you’re not using video, you’ll struggle with those who are.
Is Video Marketing Growing?
– Mark Zuckerberg expects that Facebook will be primarily video content by 2021.
– Based on traffic, YouTube is the #2 website online.
– More than half of all video viewing takes place on mobile which makes sense. Many people interact on social media from their mobile devices. This makes it incredibly important to optimize social media posts, blogs, and company websites for mobile consumption.
Share Videos Organically and Promote Them
If your business has a large following on social media, then posting your video content organically may be a good tactic. But, organic reach from social posting is becoming far less significant. Roughly 5-15% of a business page’s social following ACTUALLY see the post. It can be well-worth it to promote your videos on social media.
To quote social media expert, Jamie Turner… “Don’t Be Afraid to Spend Money.”
You spend time and money creating great videos, so why not invest in promoting them. This is what successful marketers do. Every platform has its own advantages, and only some of them will be right for your business. But, guaranteed, if your platforms use video, then you need to use video, too. So, go ahead and promote those videos and get them seen.
Video Marketing Stats
85% of all internet users in the United States watched online video content monthly on any of their devices (Statista, 2018).
Studies show that 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support (HubSpot, 2018).
A 2019 report shows that 87% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool (Wyzowl, 2019).
Videos are a consumers’ favorite type of content to see from a brand on social media (Animoto, 2018).
Video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year (Optinmonster, 2019).
93% of marketers say they’ve landed a new customer due to a video on social media (Optinmonster, 2019).
88 percent of marketers say they plan to do video marketing on YouTube (Wyzowl, 2020).
Users spent a weekly average of six hours and 48 minutes in 2019, watching online videos (Limelight, 2019).
By 2022, it’s estimated that 82 percent of the global internet traffic will come from video streaming and downloads (Cisco, 2019).
Use a good social sharing plugin such as social warfare to get website visitors to share your content. This can easily double the number of shares you get.
- Use a visual storytelling tool such as Easil to create visual content you can use to promote your core content.
- Don’t be afraid to pay for social advertising – it can be a good investment.
- Use your call to action on each one of your images.
- Make video a part of your content strategy. It gets maximum engagement on Facebook and it’s easy to create videos using Facebook’s own advertising tools.
- Once your social media marketing gains traction, managing your accounts is going to take up much of your time – unless you use a tool with a unified social inbox. Sendible works well for this, and you can see who you’ve replied to and who you need to reply to. Don’t forget the archive button, it’s a huge time saver.
- Stick to the fundamentals of advertising. You don’t need to know any magic formulas to make it work.
- Use Ad targeting to send your ideal prospects from social platforms to your landing page.
- BE yourself. Followers and advocates are attracted to people who are honest and genuine. They can sniff out fake in a heartbeat.
- Focus on relationships. Remember, social media is about people. Offer inspiration and value to help others achieve their goals.
- Piggyback on trending news – inject your ideas into a breaking news story to generate media coverage, get sales leads and grow your business. Avoid sensitive news.
- Use GIFs. Facebook has added the capacity to add animated GIFs to Ads. Wordstream reported they tried it, and on the first day the Ad with the GIF outperformed any other live Facebook Ad they ran.
You’ll want to get up-to-date and stay up-to-date by reading the blogs of experts in the field. Here’s a few to get you started…
Hubspot Marketing Blog – breaking news and actionable how-to guides on every social network
Scott Monty – read his social media articles.
Social Media Examiner – one of the top blogs for social media
Social Media Explorer – a strategic services agency and a blog with some of the best social media and marketing experts.
You might also want to take courses through learning sites such as Udemy, futurelearn.com, or invest in an online course – many marketers offer courses on social media marketing.
Just bear in mind that social media evolves so fast, no course is likely to be totally up to date. But you can learn the foundation elements and deal with the ever-changing details later.
Finally, the last way to learn social media marketing is to simply do it and don’t forget to have fun. If you’re having fun, your followers will pick up your vibes.
And always think before you post. Examples abound of people and businesses who didn’t think before posting. The backlash to a post deemed inappropriate can be swift and stunning.
Nonetheless, provide extraordinary information and service to help your customers/clients.
© Cherry-Ann Carew
Cherry-Ann Carew is an Online Business Coach, who supports emerging business owners simplify their start-up journey and helps existing businesses scale, so that they can earn uncapped income and live life on their terms.