Social media marketing is one of the most powerful tools for digital marketing. It has a wide reach and is a great way to interact with your customers.
Businesses use social media marketing to create awareness of brand identity, increase customer engagement, and drive traffic back to their website. As of January 2023, 4.62 billion people – more than half the world’s population – around the globe use social media, with 424 million new users joining social media since this time last year.
If you haven’t tapped into social media to market your services, then now is the time. With so many people online every day, you can build your brand and enhance your business’ reputation as an authority.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing is a form of internet marketing that uses social media platforms – like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter – to promote products or services. It’s a modern way to engage an audience and bring their attention to your business.
The goal of social media marketing is to create content that attracts attention, builds trust, and persuades potential customers to take action. The main types of content created for social media include text posts, images, videos, memes, and polls.
Research your target audience
The first step in any social media marketing strategy is to research your target audience. This will help you find out what they want, what they like, and how engage with them.
Identify the best social media marketing channels to reach your audience and start using them. This can help you to connect with your customers, build reputation and brand awareness, create customer loyalty, and sell products or services.
For example, consumers today expect businesses to have a Facebook business page. Facebook is perfect for collecting reviews and engaging directly with your audience Twitter, on the other hand, is fast-paced, and better suited to posting updates and sharing links. LinkedIn, the largest business online social network, should be your go-to social media for engaging with B2B prospects.
Researching your target audience can be done through surveys and questionnaires, social media monitoring, or interviews with potential customers.
Engage your audience
Engaging with potential customers will help spark interest in them that may bring more leads to your website. This is done through regular social media posting – not just about your services and products, but touching on the human aspects of your business, such as posting a photo from a staff lunch or recent training course. Engaging your leads means appealing to their emotional side.
One of the difficulties in utilising social media is the temporary nature of posts: people scrolling through their Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram feeds only take a few moments to register each post before moving on. The key lies in how you engage with your leads.
Simply posting some text isn’t enough. Images are better, but the top engagement posts are the ones that allow people to interact with you, which begins building that bridge between you and your potential customers.
Interactive posts include anything from quizzes and polls, to forms and giveaways. If it’s something that makes leads stop scrolling and click on your post or even leave a comment – that’s valuable data you can leverage.
Lastly, don’t forget to respond to your customers – turn on post and mention notifications so you’re alerted each time your post receives a comment, or someone mentions you in one of their own social media posts.
By engaging your audience, you can build a relationship with them and become an authority in their eyes.
Creating your social media marketing strategy
In any social media marketing strategy, you will want to create a plan that fits your business goals. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different tactics; this will help you discover what works best for your business, what engages your customers and leads, and how to make the most of your chosen social media platforms.
Your social media marketing plan should include:
- timeline of events
- budget
- key messages for each platform
- timeline of posts
- action items for each platform
- keywords or key phrases to use
Your social media marketing plan should be based on:
Content
The content that you post in social media should be interesting and engaging, be based on your brand values, and reflect the personality of your company. Keeping up with the latest social media trends will also allow you to work popular fashions, jokes, and topics into your content. Utilise current digital marketing trends within your social media posts to create more engagement and conversation with your leads.
Creative
People see dozens of ads and social media posts every day. You need to stand out from the crowd, so get creative with your content. Interactive posts like polls and quizzes will engage your users; people love to share their opinions and experiences.
Distribution
You need to ensure you maintain an active presence on your chosen social media platforms. Keep your content consistent, and respond quickly to anyone who comments on your posts or mentions your business.
Measurement
Measure the results of your social media marketing campaign and track the performance of your team to continue creating effective content. You can collect the results by monitoring lead interaction and sales generated from your posts on a regular basis, which will further help you determine what exactly is engaging leads.
Execution
You need a clear strategy for executing your social media marketing campaign. For example, if you are planning to approach your competitors on Twitter, you need to know how to use hashtags, when to tweet, and what trends or formats will engage your audience.
Turning leads into customers
Social media is a strong lead generator for your business. The more people you engage with and the more content you share on social media, the more likely you are to convert visitors into leads.
However, generating leads from your strategy is not enough to ensure that your business grows. You also need to create a strategy that will help you convert those leads into sales. To do this, you must focus on your target market, make sure that you’re using the right mediums for your audience, and create content that will attract people to your brand.
The marketing strategists at LeftLeads can help you develop, implement, and grow a social media marketing plan from scratch, customised to your business goals and needs. Talk to them today about what you want out of your social media, and start generating more leads.
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