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The ability to leverage social media is essential for promoting your brand and attracting new customers in today’s digital age. If you own a business, you need to be on social media. 1.52 billion people are on Facebook every day, over a billion people are on Instagram, 300 million monthly users of Snapchat, then there is LinkedIn, Youtube, Twitter, Pinterest and specialist sites like Houzz for home renovations and Flickr for photography. Social media marketing takes hard work, but when used correctly it can do wonders for your brand. Using a marketing agency can help you harness the power of social media to attract the right customers to your business.
If you’re looking to start using social media (or improve your current efforts), make sure to follow these top tips brought to you by your marketing agency in Vancouver.
Understand Where Your Customers Are
The first thing you’ll need to decide is what platforms to use. Facebook has the most users and an active community looking to “like” and “share” neat posts. But even though it’s the largest platform, it may not be the most important for you.
Facebook is the largest social network, but it might not be the most important for you.
Are you a B2B company looking to get in front of professionals? LinkedIn will be the place to be. And did you know it’s also rated the top social network for lead generation?
Do you make stunning hand-crafted jewellery or beautiful clothes that are runway ready? Creating an Instagram account would allow you to share photos of your products that words could never do justice. It also has tons of features to promote your marketing efforts.
Are you a local contractor that specializes in building gazebos? Houzz is a smaller social network that helps customers find professional contractors. There are many more social media platforms for different industries out there that can create value for your business and allow customers to find you.
Once you’ve chosen your platforms and set up your accounts, you’ll then need to start posting.
Be Active On Social Media
Setting up an account won’t do you any good if you are not using it. Post regularly. Show your work, create value, share interesting stories. The better your posts, the more shares, likes, and comments it’ll generate, and more people will see your incredible business. If your page looks abandoned with no posts (or worse, an incomplete profile), potential customers are going to bounce to your competition.
Adding relevant hashtags to your posts is an excellent way for users to discover your account. A word of phrase preceded by a hash mark (#) identifies keywords and topics. The post is then indexed and becomes searchable by users.
Once you’ve started posting great content, you’ll want to start engaging with your audience.
Engagement Is Key
This is where social media shines. You can’t interact with fans through radio or television advertising, but social networks give users and brands a platform to communicate with each other. This way you can create a relationship with your audience and start building trust.
When someone gives you positive feedback, give them thanks. If someone is asking questions about your company, answer promptly. But most importantly, if someone is unhappy and posts about a negative experience they’ve had with you, make sure you address the issue. You might even win back the unhappy customer by giving them attention and solving their problem. This is how modern-era relationships between brands and customers are built. Here’s how our marketing agency deals with negative reviews.
Make sure to address both positive and negative comments to win customers.
As an added bonus, other users will witness these interactions, building trust and top-of-mind-awareness. When people are looking for a product or service from your industry, they will think of the positive experiences you’ve created for others.
Have Some Fun
This is your opportunity to showcase your brand’s personality. Let people know who you are and why you are different! Altering the colours, lighting, content, and copy of your posts changes how customers perceive your company. Decide on the direction you’d like to take your brand ahead of time, you don’t want to be confusing your customers with constant mood changes.
Try running contests or working with influencers. Find someone who has sway in your industry and reach out to them. See if they’d be interesting in running a campaign with you. Host an Instagram takeover and let them make posts to your account for a week. Promote giveaways and events you’ll be attending. The possibilities for attracting customers with social media are only limited by your imagination.
Understand The Data
You’ve made your account, built some followers, engaged with your audience, now what? Start understanding the data. Almost every platform has an analytics tool for you to get to know your followers. Knowing who they are and “when” they are, is critical to your success. If your target audience is active on social media after 6 p.m. don’t post at 7 a.m. Your posts will be lost in the clutter at the bottom of your followers feeds. You’ll have to do some testing to gather the data, but then you’ll be able to optimize your scheduling.
Other variables you can test for are:
- The number of hashtags used.
- What the hashtags are.
- Photos, picture carousels, or videos. Which ones work better?
- The written copy. Short, long, with/without emojis.
- Product versus people based posts.
You should be continually optimizing your social media accounts to attract customers. Trends come and go, and you want to be on top of them to outpace the competition.
Social media takes time and effort. Putting all of these pieces together can be quite tricky! Luckily your marketing agency in Vancouver is an expert at optimizing social media campaigns. If you’re looking to grow your cool brand with fresh ideas, give us a call at 604-559-7509 or stop by our downtown office, we always have chocolate.