When used in the right way social media can be one of the most profitable marketing channels. It can help build brand awareness, connect with existing customers and generate new leads without the need for hours of content production. It’s about careful planning and key messages.
But with a range of social media platforms to choose from, how do you pick the right ones for your business?
Let’s start by looking at why social media marketing is such a valuable tool and how choosing the right platforms for your business will form such an essential element of your overall marketing strategy.
5 reasons to switch to social
1.Build brand awareness
Consistently posting and appearing on your followers’ newsfeeds will help keep your brand in people’s minds.
2.Connect with your customers
Social media is a wonderful way to build relationships with your customers and offers them another line of communication to your business.
3.Boost your SEO
Promoting your content and encouraging people to engage with your posts will drive more traffic to your site, with people wanting to find out more.
4.Capture contacts
Who doesn’t love a freebie? Well, the same can probably be said for your followers. Sharing a freebie to download or competition to engage with is a fantastic way to capture leads and enhance your email list.
Better for business, when used in the right way social media marketing should help towards higher lead conversion and more sales for your business.
So how do you choose the right social platform or platforms for your business?
It all comes down to the type of content you want to share and where your ideal customer is likely to be looking. So, let’s take a deeper dive in to four of the most popular social platforms and look at some of the key areas of each and how they can work for your business and brand.
With over 2.8 billion users, it’s no surprise that Facebook has become one of the best ways to find our ideal customers and grow your audience reach, as well as engage and maintain relationships with your existing customers.
So here are some of the features you could make use of:
1.Facebook groups
A fantastic tool for building a community to enable you to interact with your existing customers and see a better reach. Reach is the % of followers/members who are seeing your posts. You can create a bespoke brand experience, so your customers are getting a fully immersive experience when they land on your group page.
2.Audience size
2.8 billion users, that’s a lot of people. This means that Facebook can work for just about any business, the free features are great for growing, engaging and nurturing your audience organically without the added expense.
3.A targeted approach
Facebook allows the opportunity to run paid ads. This means that you can really target your ideal customer and thanks to the algorithm Facebook is continually building up that audience for you.
4.Facebook pixels
A clever little tool you can add to your campaigns, so when your customer clicks on your website and downloads your content you get a new contact on your mailing list and you can target this user with your ads, enhancing the reach and potential for warmer leads and more sales.
Twitter has a simple yet brilliant marketing strategy: give everyone a voice but limit the ‘noise.’
A much-loved platform, Twitter is a firm favourite with celebrities, journalists, politicians and businesses alike, many sharing stories, news articles or humorous anecdotes every day.
When using Twitter for business it’s important you stand out from your competition. Consistency is key when it comes to engaging with your audience, you can easily add valuable content through your posts.
Depending on your commitment to social media marketing, Twitter can be a powerful tool for building brand awareness and connecting directly with other customers and potential influencers.
The ‘click-to-tweet’ buttons are a popular feature for boosting reach and engagement. This enables followers to reshare key parts or your whole post, so that their connections can see it and your overall reach is enhanced.
LinkedIn was one of the first modern social media sites to really take hold and stick around. It’s become a networking tool exclusively for professionals and has revolutionised the way we seek, find, and get hired for jobs.
In terms of using LinkedIn for your business, users aren’t typically looking for entertainment or online shopping. They go to learn more about their industry, see what their professional contacts are up to and look for new career opportunities.
Here’s a few excellent features that LinkedIn have added to their platform:
1.LinkedIn Showcase pages
Highlight all areas of your brand and share unique content with target audiences with LinkedIn’s showcase pages. This tool is great for creating content specific pages, so you can get more specific with your messaging and encourage specific audiences to engage with pages which are relevant to them.
2.Sales Navigator
Available on both an enterprise and individual level this LinkedIn sales solution enables you to maximise your pipeline potential. Giving you the tools to target the customers you want, with a personalized approach and provide you with key insights and metrics so you can keep on building your businesses sales potential. Take a look or book a free demo here.
3.Campaign Manager
If you want a more analytical approach to your social platform, and let’s be honest who doesn’t, then you need to look at the LinkedIn campaign manager. Create, measure, and optimize your campaigns all in one place. Campaign Manager is the LinkedIn advertising platform that streamlines all your marketing efforts.
The way our audiences digest content is moving more towards video and animation, YouTube is the ideal social platform to help support your business transition to this new way of communicating and fulfilling our customer expectations.
YouTube
Although YouTube boasts 2.3 billion users, its reach extends far past that. You don’t have to sign up to be a user to view content on YouTube and as a result, YouTube has become one of the biggest search engine platforms.
1.Make your mark on your channel
Bring your brand with you, ensure that you make your YouTube channel feel like an extension of your business.
Uploading consistent content with a similar look and feel will help with this.
2.Making the algorithms work for you
Ensure your title, description, and video content matches what the user is searching because these are some of the things the algorithm considers.
If you have used YouTube, you must have at one point or the other subscribed to one channel or the other. This subscription is also a determinant to how high a channel’s videos will rank.
Include calls to action, ensure your audiences journey doesn’t just end when the video finishes by encouraging them to take an action. This could be subscribing to your YouTube channel or clicking through to look at your proposition.
3.Benefits for business
YouTube has a range of uses and business benefits that can complement your other social platform channels.
Demonstrations
Show your products in action with short, snappy video clips and demonstrate your expertise
Personality
Showcase your brand
Events and Promotions
Share highlights of a successful event or promotion with engaging footage
Community
Create a community following by sharing a complete range of content all in one place
So, all that’s left is to decide is which channel you think best suits your business, whether that’s one or a combination. Plus, don’t forget these are only some of the many available, so do your research and have an explore.
Don’t forget to make use of the resources available to you
To help get you started with your own 2022 marketing strategy, we have created a downloadable infographic that can be accessed via the Gamma Portal. Simply go to >> Help & Support >> Gamma Accelerate >> Collateral and search ‘Choosing the right social platform.’
Every Gamma Channel Partner has free access to Accelerate, our online partner marketing portal; a simple and secure platform that’s designed to make it easy for you to customise white-label marketing material, generate new leads and engage with prospects and customers.
To access Accelerate go to the Gamma Portal >> Help and Support >> Gamma Accelerate
