How to Keep Your Followers From Scrolling Past You
Social media marketing is important for both business growth and brand recognition, especially today. But with so much engaging content on different social media platforms, it can be difficult to ensure your content and marketing objectives are met with enthusiasm. Think about the number of businesses you follow with your social media accounts. Do you interact with these businesses, or keep scrolling?
Much of the challenges of marketing in social media comes from standing out on the user's newsfeed. A constant bombardment of advertisements is a sure way to keep social media from doing for your business what you want it to do most: sell a product or service. Luckily, we’ve done the research and created some helpful tips to keep your social media marketing strategies effective and to help build your brand by interacting with the clientele that’s most likely to buy.
Be Creative
Many social media users are an internet-first type of consumer, getting most of their product information from the web. If you’re not social media savvy, it could be a good idea to hire a marketing person specifically for social media management. You’ll need to be aware of your aesthetic and brand’s online personality.
Social media posts should not be directly advertising pages, all of the time. It’s great to create online video marketing content for some of your social media advertising, but you should also be using these platforms to convey the culture of your company. The most appealing social media advertisements for users who spend a lot of their day online use funny, witty, and sometimes sexy content, which breaks them away from the monotony of both working from home and constant online advertising.
Don’t underestimate the value of brand awareness via social media accounts. Remember that not every post should be about closing a sale, and social media users are very likely to recognize when that’s what you’re trying to do. Instead, use social media marketing to share behind the scenes images and videos of your company, as well as to allow users to share their experiences with your brand to huge online audiences. Bring the “human” element of your business to the world.
Tailor to the Platform and Audience Specificity
Do your research, understand the audience, and how they may be using social media platforms differently. Your followers on LinkedIn might be very different from your followers on Snapchat or Instagram, and your marketing strategy should reflect that. Social media platforms like Snapchat and TikTok appeal to a user base that is very computer fluent, and very used to streaming a majority of their information from online sources.
These are also great platforms for short, engaging video advertising content, whereas your Instagram account might be curated to have a specific aesthetic and convey its culture via slower-paced video content and photos. Your LinkedIn advertisements will be engaging highly qualified potential candidates for future employment, as well as other vendors and businesses with which you may want to network. This platform could be best used to establish what your brand is about, how it operates, and how its culture is benefitting both employees and customers.
The point is that different platforms need to be treated as the different, specific audiences that they are. Make sure you’re engaging each group accordingly, and be adaptive with the type of social media marketing you’re willing to employ for each audience. There are a variety of social media benefits for businesses large and small, especially when you’re reaching the right audience with the right content.
Stay On-Brand
This is a big one. Brand consistency is the secret sauce to marketing and helps build repetition and recall in the consumers hearts and minds. Remember that regardless of the platform or marketing goal, you want to thoroughly establish the personality of your business through social media and the content you share. Although each platform might facilitate different marketing goals, you’ll want to stay true to your brand. Make sure your aesthetic on Instagram matches your professional image on LinkedIn, and both of those advertising campaigns match the wit and humor of your video engagements on Snapchat.
Use each platform as its own opportunity to display different aspects of the brand while staying true to the company's mission, vision, and core values. Again, this is where a creative social media marketing specialist might leverage that expertise and promote parts of your image that can sell products and services in both the short and long term, and potentially help you reach your developmental objectives through networking.
Build Relationships and Interact with Customers
Remember that the benefits of social media for businesses go far beyond being able to market your product or services to individual audiences. Social media is designed to connect people, and your company should remember that social media accounts are a great way to engage and interact with your customer base and potential professional network.
Interactive virtual videos are emerging as a great way to display your product or service while allowing the potential buyer to engage at their own pace. This is also a great space to host live events, update your followers first with news and product releases, and create interactive surveys, contests, and games. Each of these strategies encourages your audience to interact, improving brand awareness, and helping the consumer form an attachment to your brand.
Whether you are promoting brand awareness, networking with other professionals and businesses in the industry, or laying the groundwork for future talent acquisition, the benefits to social media for businesses can be many. Above all else, remember to accurately reflect who you are as a brand and as a brand owner, get creative, and invite the connections that social media was designed for!