SOCIAL MEDIA

Getting Social Media Marketing Right

While Social Media can be an extremely effective method of Digital Marketing, it’s useless without a solid strategy behind it. Tackling Social Media blind is a dangerous and pointless approach. In order to approach Social Media properly, you must carefully consider a range of things – obviously each case will be specific to the business.

Now, social media marketing is not the most effective strategy for all businesses. Which is why at YDS we sit down with you and identify the best approach for your business. The better we understand your business, the better we can cater our services to you, set goals and get you, results. Once we have a solid understanding of your business, and we believe social media is right, we can begin developing a social media strategy to put in place. We evaluate and analyse this strategy over time in order to examine what is working or what could be improved.

Generally speaking, when considering Social Media Marketing, a clear and attainable strategy must be developed. The strategy must involve, both short and long term goals for each platform (goals which must be S.M.A.R.T – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely), the appropriate type of marketing relevant to the business (video, images, posts, memes, offers, personal posts, funny posts etc), which platforms to target, how often to post and setting up a Social Media database where you can log and compare results.

Each Social Media platform is unique in its own way and while they’re all social in nature, there are differences in functionalities and features. As well as appealing to your audience, you must appropriately appeal to each platform as well. Below you will find a break-down of each platform and their underlying purposes and requirements in relation to marketing:

Instagram

Instagram comes in at 6th place for Social Media platform popularity world wide. Originally this platform was purely a microblogging platform predominantly for photography and videography, so the aesthetic nature of it makes it quite “arty”. Instagram has recently risen as an exceptionally effective marketing channel for businesses. Like any platform though, you must appeal to it appropriately in order to be successful. To discern whether Instagram is worth your ‘marketing’ time, consider the following:

In terms of demographic, the most common Instagram users are between the ages of 18-29. Therefore, if you are appealing to an older demographic, Instagram may not have the desired effect.
Due to Instagram being a blogging platform, user interaction is minimal, therefore this platform can only really facilitate the display of your brand on your account(feed), stories and through paid advertising. The “message” feature isn’t as advanced as Facebooks. So, if you require a platform which has strong user interaction, Instagram isn’t going to deliver.
Typically, ‘sharable’ content on Instagram has to be aesthetically pleasing. So, accounts which are beautiful, funny or inspiring fundamentally get the most followers. The following are examples of trending themes on Instagram: pets, food, memes, flowers, art/photography/videography, fast fashion, beauty products, vintage buys, celebrities, travel, inspirational speakers/quotes, fame, luxury, the environment, music, sport, interior decorating/architecture and movies. So, if you have a concreting business for example, we wouldn’t suggest Instagram as the right platform for you. However, in saying this, an Instagram account is free to set up, and if you have the time to spare, it’s always useful to cover all bases (the more platforms you market through, the more chances you have at growing and gaining customers.

Facebook

Facebook is the most popular Social Media platform worldwide. Unlike Instagram, Facebook is popular among a larger demographic as well, therefore facilitates to a wider variety of business types. Facebook’s ‘messenger’ makes instant communication easy, and from a customer service point of view, allows businesses to connect with users on a deeper level than what a post offers. Facebook Ads are also extremely popular, however, can be slightly tricky to manouvre without professional insight.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has been slowly growing as a strong marketing platform for quite some time, but has not quite yet hit top 10 most popular Social Media platforms. However, LinkedIn is a professional business networking platform which makes it perfect for marketing businesses. The nature of LinkedIn, means that people are typically on LinkedIn forming professional connections and discovering different businesses.

Twitter

Twitter is a short messaging Social Media platform which has popularized the word Hashtag. Twitter seems to lag behind as a marketing platform as tweets typically regard latest news or trending topics. Twitter users can tweet about their products/services on the site, however, when it comes to interacting with users or customers, it’s almost impossible. The main disadvantage of Twitter is that when a new topic trends, people start following it and forget about earlier topics. The fast-paced nature of twitter and lack of brand management and progression makes it an extremely difficult platform to build a following on.

Social Media Strategy:

When first developing a Social media Strategy, ask yourself the following questions to get moving in the right direction.

Why do I want to market my business on Social Media?
Who is my Target Audience?
What should I share online/what aspect of my business is interesting/funny/informative?
Which platforms would best suit my audience?
How often should I post? (keeping in mind there’s a fine line between annoying followers with too much posting and followers forgetting you due to a lack of posting.

How to Successfully Market through Social Posts:

Planning
You may be tempted to simply start posting whatever pops into your mind, whenever it pops into your mind – but stick to a strategy and it will end up easier in the long run. Break down the different aspects of your business which you can regularly post about. When you find content to post about it, mould and reshape it into a number of different posts so you get the most out of each topic.
Consistency
Post once a day, once a week, twice a week or once a month but whatever you do keep it consistent. We don’t suggest posting any less than once a month, otherwise you can’t really develop a sustainable or strong presence.
Photos & Videos
Ensure with every post, you include a photo or video (video is even better but not as easy). Photos and videos are better for the algorithms.
Stand Out for the RIGHT Reasons
It’s important to stand out and be memorable, but ensure not to be inappropriate, rude or offensive as this will quickly decrease your following and ruin your online presence.
Appeal to Your Audience
Above all else ensure to appeal to your audience in the right ways, research your audience and analyse your competitors online movements.