Communication nowadays takes effect in many forms for businesses that are looking to connect with the target market. Incorporating social media into the communications and marketing strategy of a company is seen as one of the effective ways to engage with customers in more a personal way (Cleary et al., 2023). This article will outline the reasons why businesses should invest in social media marketing.
Social media goals
Social media is an effective way to reach new audiences with engaging content, however, to realise this success there needs to be clear goals when embarking on this journey. Zuhdi, Daud, Hanif, Nguyen, and Shankar, (2019) stipulates social media marketing goals as (i) to increase brand awareness, (ii) to acquire leads and convert them into sales, or (iii) website traffic.
Deciding what is important for your business will determine the direction to take and to effectively evaluate the success of social media marketing. Setting key performance indicators will aid in measuring the success rate.
If the goal is to enhance brand awareness; when it comes to evaluating the success of social media marketing – the focus should be on the number of impressions, likes, how many people are resharing the content, and how many new followers have been gained. Likewise, if the goal is on lead generation, then effectiveness should be measured through analytics tools that indicate website traffic and new email subscribers.
Finding an audience
After establishing the goals that an organisation aims to realise by adopting social media, the next step will be finding an audience to communicate to. How can a social media manager find a relevant audience? The following approaches can be implemented:
- Speak like your ideal customer.
- Use the same language, phrases, insider terminology, etc.
- Think of social media as an ongoing engagement, keeping and creating repeat customers.
Once an audience has been acquired, it is important to grow that audience. Ways to do that is to consistently post content. As an organisation, you should also consider coming up with a few company-specific hashtags and include them regularly in your posts to help establish branding technique. (Chambers, Morehead & Sallee, 2020).
It is important to remember that the content being shared does not always have to be about the organisation. Chambers et al. (2020) highlights that sometimes one will realise that the best-performing posts are not always company-related updates. Therefore, is it crucial to mix up the content by sharing content from other people.
Social media channels and the buying process
There are four stages involved in the sales funnel and they are awareness, interest, decision, and action. For each stage, there are recommended channels to use.
Awareness – Twitter and Instagram are ideal. When using these platforms, one needs to create a need for the audience to want to buy a product or use their service. The content needs to be inspirational.
Interest and trust – Facebook and YouTube are the best platforms to obtain interest and gain trust. These platforms help with growing brand loyalty as well as drive website traffic. On these platforms one has more space to post blog links, videos, etc.
Decision and action – Pinterest and LinkedIn. It is reported that these platforms have a high success rate in driving website traffic and sales. Only on these platforms the audience expect to be advertised to as opposed to Instagram or YouTube.
Image credit: Freepik
Content guidelines per platform
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Twitter
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LinkedIn
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YouTube
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Instagram
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Videos, GIFs, and images.
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Corporate updates.
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Customer testimonial.
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Square photography and short videos.
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Make use of #hashtags.
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Educational videos.
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Tips and how to.
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Any content type is recommended.
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Blog posts and statuses with an image attached.
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FAQs.
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Trends and industry news.
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Social media listening
While it is important to be constantly pushing out content on social media, it is equally important to listen to what your audience has to say or pay attention to how they are consuming the content. Social listening can be achieved in the following ways:
Responding to comments or complaints.
Ask questions in your posts.
Polls and other engagement-based features.
Image credit: Freepik
There are several benefits of social listening including:
Keeping on top of mentions of the brand.
Get to know your target market.
Good customer service.
Higher repeat buys extend lifetime value or customer lifetime value.
Keep up to date with industry news.
Monitor your competitors.
Measuring success
Considering the effort that went into investing time and resources to establish the presence of the organisation on social media, measuring success is key. Success can be evaluated by generating two types of reports depending on the earlier identified goal.
To be able to generate these reports, Google Analytics (analytics.google.com) should be plugged into the back end of the business website. This way it will be easier for the social media manager to pull the report by following the below steps.
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Type A report – increase traffic, leads, and sales
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Type B report – improve branding and exposure
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When creating a report, the first step is to go to
REAL TIME, AUDIENCE, OVERVIEW, then set a timeframe (1-30 September 2023).
Next step – go to ACQUISITION OVERVIEW, SOCIAL, then
select a timeframe.
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Step one – go to AUDIENCE, DEMOGRAPHICS OVERVIEW,
this will show you the type of audience that has been engaging with the
content.
Next step – go to ACQUISITION OVERVIEW, SOCIAL, then
select a timeframe.
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