Measuring the return on investment for social media marketing efforts can be quite a challenge. This is especially true for companies accustomed to traditional advertising models. With the number of consumers using the web as their primary mode for purchase increasing every day, businesses cannot afford to overlook social media marketing.
This involves exploring, discovering, and engaging with all types of online consumers to eventually result in sales on a brand’s website.
Here are some valuable and easy tips to arrive at a sustainable social media strategy:
1. Use Engaging Content
There are various types of content, videos, blog posts, tweets, and conversations over the web. To harness the power of the online world, you need to address customer concerns and fix problems though participative means.
People like to build relationships and interact with brands online. You can cater to this need through social interaction with real replies and product giveaways. This will make your business stand out from amongst others who don’t do so.
Since the consumer is the boss and you exist only because he does, you need to look for proper solutions to hear his voice.
2. Ensure Premium Quality
If published material isn’t of good quality, you’re almost committing social suicide. Use the services of Tumblr, YouTube, and other social media to create strong messages. Understand all rules and follow them. Different networks require different approaches and need to be handled accordingly. For example, Facebook posts need to be differently written as compared to tweets.
Try to post at regular intervals and make your followers feel like a part of your brand family. If you use platforms solely for selling purposes, you’re sure to quickly alienate customers. Hire the services of professionals and resist the urge to use automated platforms as farms for content or automatic feeds.
You can bring value to your audience by posting interesting content which amplifies the positive aspects about your company.
3. Be Genuine
There’s no way you can fake it online. Fakers can be smelled a mile away and if your behavior or content doesn’t reflect brand culture, even die-hard fans of your brand will be the first to point it out.
If you’re in doubt regarding the type of content to use, take help from your community. Experts suggest crowdsourcing of content for in-house articles and interviews. Because fans breathe and live the brand, they bring up better questions than actual members of the organization.
4. Incorporate Real-Time Apps
Try to incorporate social media into every aspect of your business. Using of Twitter feeds, ratings, reviews, and comments on homepages can help increase user engagement and boost site visitor time.
Though it sounds quite simple, the addition of these tools can contribute to the visitor experience in a big way. Consumers feel empowered when they can interact and share content. Regular updating also improves visibility of the pages on search engines as compared to static pages.
5. Try Experimenting
Nothing tried is nothing gained, especially in the context of social media. It’s ok to fail – at least you know what works and what doesn’t. Test out style, tone, and new tools like native advertising which offers sponsored content, Facebook stories and tweets. A large number of publishers today offer native advertising in some form. But you need to be careful; this topic, like many click-bait attempts, sometimes fails to get users hooked.
All these strategies might sound simple, but they can work wonders for your social media campaign. Make sure you try them out.
