A Useful Guide to Social Media

A Useful Guide

We’ve put together a useful guide to social media for those who need to start making headway with their social media campaigns. It’s not an exhaustive guide but it will help you make a start on capturing interested customers & have them knocking at your door.

The best way to draw in customers and get ahead of your competitors is to build your own personal media brand. How do I do this I hear you ask?  Well the answer is simple – you must show your customers that you are an expert in your chosen field.  You can do this in a number of ways i.e. offering e-books full of useful information or having a go-to source for online advice by posting regular blogs and tips. Demonstrating that you are an expert in your field works much better than claiming to be a number 1.  Customers will then turn to you as their most valuable source of information and guidance.

Social Media Is King

73% of all internet users use social media, so whether it’s Instagram, Google +, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn or Twitter social media is king.  So it’s vital that you put together a social media strategy which engages your customers.  You need to start by considering the demographics of your customer base and which social media platforms they are likely to use.  For instance, if you’re an automotive company selling business leases for cars then your best platform would probably be LinkedIn. However, if you have a local gym then Facebook may well be the best channel to get your messages across.  Then you need to generate a list of useful content for your readers to engage in.  You may also decide to put some money behind advertising projects too.  Below we have just covered two platforms and the ways in which you could potentially drive messages across:-

LinkedIn – Useful as a B2B Advertising Platform

Follow Company Ads

Basically you set up a number of display ads to target other professionals or potential customers to generate awareness of your Company Page and what you offer.  If done correctly you should end up with lots of engaged followers to your Company Page.

Presentations via Slide Share

 These are an excellent way to engage LinkedIn members directly about a topic that is close to your expertise / business. With LinkedIn’s Slide Share, a social media website you can post PowerPoint presentations, infographics, documents, and articles.  You can also post the same content within your LinkedIn profile – to showcase your individual expertise.

Self Service Advertising

This solution allows you to create and place ads on prominent pages and page locations on the website. You specify which LinkedIn members view your ads by selecting your target audience: by job title, job function, industry, geography, age, gender, company name, company size, or LinkedIn Group.

Content ads

These are essentially mini-websites that let you display multiple ad messages in a sidebar.

Sponsored InMail Messages

You also have the ability to create bespoke sponsored personalised messages and target these to a very specific audience or membership profile.  As these messages are so targeted they have a high open and click through rate of up to 20%, which is higher than the industry norm for email marketing.

Featured Company Ads

These ads are very similar to Follow Company ads. The main difference is that this ad is only associated with your Company Page and it allows you to display links to showcase your products or even jobs available on your Company Page.

Facebook – Useful as a B2C Platform

Create a Facebook Business Page the obvious way to start promoting yourself or your products. Make sure the page is lively, engaging and clearly gets your message across.

Promote your Page off site – Add a ‘Find us on Facebook’ & “Like Us on Facebook” button to your website, email marketing communications and even printed brochures, so that people know you’re on there.

Create Sponsored Facebook Ads – You can create various sponsored Ads which engage with your audience and ask for participation such as competitions, quizzes, and online games.  Competitions should be done through an online app such as Short Stack which takes out the complexity of engaging potential users and capturing vital data from participants for re-marketing purposes.

Interact with Facebook Groups – Why not look to see if you can join some relevant Facebook groups or pin point those Facebook Groups that may have customers who would be interested in your product / service.  You might also consider setting up one of your own Groups to invite users to.  Linking to Groups is also a great way to showcase your brand / product and to build up your fan base without paying for any advertising. Check out your intended audience and which social media network they are using and adapt your content to suit.

Go YouTube – Did you know that YouTube is the second most popular search engine? So using video will definitely increase your chances of featuring on a page on Google’s search by up to 53%.  It’s also predicted that YouTube will account for 90% of web traffic by 2018. However, do make sure that you post quality professional content to boost your visibility, brand and image.

Short Form micro-content is the way to go!

In order to quickly engage your audience then sending out short-form micro-content is the way to go.  This may take the form of photo’s … a picture speaks a thousand words, memes, GIFS or picture text messages. Tit-bits of information can be deployed to grab the attention of your readers & to encourage them to seek out further content. Did you also know that articles with images get a whopping 94% more views than those without?  Try using PicMonkey or Canva when creating your micro-content as it makes the whole process so much easier.

Remember

  1. Always determine your advertising / social media marketing objectives before you start any campaign, the channels & content that you will use.
  2. Determine how you will monitor your return on investment & whether or not the aim is to increase brand awareness or get more conversions.  You may even just want to rack up click through rates or increase the number of video views etc.
  3. Take the time to narrow down your target audience to ensure that your ad appears where your customers are searching.
  4. Rotate your ads regularly so that it keeps up acquisition rates and avoids customers getting bored.

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