How would you rate your brand’s social media presence? Are you a faceless company or engaging with a human connection? Cultivating your brand through a proper presence on the right networks and on a more intimate level. Are you leveraging automation techniques and analytic tools to provide seamless campaigns with a consistent company tone of voice?
There are 4.2 billion active social media users - almost twice as many as there were just five years ago. Those users spend an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes on social channels every single day.
Those nearly 2.5 hours offer an incredible opportunity for businesses to:
- build brand awareness and expand your audience
- enhance corporate and brand reputations
- unique ability to engage and develop customer relationships
- gain valuable insights and feedback to improve customer service
- generate leads, increase web traffic and drive sales
- develop conversions with sales directly within social platforms.
Social media marketing has evolved in recent years to include social commerce – the ability to sell your products directly from social channels. And business is booming, with a global market value of $89.4 billion in 2020. It’s projected to grow to $604.5 billion in the next seven years.
Start with the end in mind
An effective social media strategy incorporates selecting the right networks to reach the most relevant audience to align to your bespoke market offering touch points and map a clear path for driving sales, improving customer service and refining your products and services.
Commence with a thorough assessment of the social media environment to ensure you know how each platform works, what audiences you can reach where to reach your specific objectives. In Hootsuite’s Social Transformation survey, 69% of respondents said social media helped maintain customer relationships during the very different marketing era of COVID-19. And Twitter data demonstrates 70% of people say it’s important for brands to help boost positivity right now. Often a multichannel approach is most effective to broaden your target reach.
A Curation Plan designed with Your Audience in Mind
To generate a social media presence beyond a profile with content requires creating content tailored to the interests and needs of your target audience to establish relationships whilst maintaining a constant presence and consistent voice.
The stronger your presence, the more trust you build and a step closer to earning your audience’s business, before developing a direct relationship beyond this marketing channel.
More than 44% of internet users use social networks to research brands. Part of that discovery is getting to know who you are as a brand and what you stand for.
A comprehensive understanding of your audience incorporates their age, location, gender, goals, likes, needs, behaviours, challenges and pain points which are critical to enable align and social proof your brand and build loyalty. In essence this will determine the type of content you should be sharing and the way you engage your followers.
To address pain points and tangibly improve their market offering, Starbucks uses MyStarbucksIdea.com to collect its customers’ views about improving the company’s products and services and then aggregates submitted ideas on a dedicated website.
There are many ways you can engage with your audiences and execute successful strategies
Broden Johnson – Founder of Yakk Digital “Stand out from the herd”
“Having worked with 100’s of brands around Australia (and internationally) in close to 100 different industries, we are yet to find an industry or business that would not benefit from having a social media presence. There isn’t another platform in the world that attracts the kind of attention social media gets (the average person spends 2hrs 24mins per day!) and what’s better is the amount of information a business can take advantage of to target these users. You can get super specific and hone right in on your ideal client, making it one of the most successful and effective forms of advertising in 2021.”
A picture paints a thousand words …. including videos and automate
Shared content should always be high quality and relevant for optimal returns to ensue. Afterall, effective social media content creation can be used most proactively to lead consumers toward long-term behavioural changes. Research demonstrates video, images and other types of visual content should be prioritised because these are popular among all demographics and all audiences, influencing purchasing behaviour and the “consumer decision journey”.
Therefore post with a cohesive strategy – focus on your client’s aspirations and culture to ensure your brand stands out in conversations directly impacting your bottom line and model future performance to drive continuous improvement. Adopt the S.M.A.R.T. process illustrated below.
Coraggio’s, CEO, Richard Skarzynski highlights,
“Social media relationship building has a number of benefits to confer on your business, but it’s important to put in the time cultivating your presence, connections and engagement if you want to foster relationships to build and gain the trust of your audience.”
In 2013 Mercedes Benz created a highly visible Instagram marketing campaign to reach a younger audience. They hired five top Instagram photographers to each take the wheel of a new Mercedes CLA. Whoever got the most likes were rewarded with a car. By the end of the campaign, Mercedes received:
- 87,000,000 organic Instagram impressions
- 2,000,000 Instagram likes
- 150 new marketing assets (stunning photos)
Learning from customers: PepsiCo has used social networks to gather customer insights via its DEWmocracy promotions, which have led to the creation of new varieties of its Mountain Dew brand. Since 2008, the company has sold more than 36 million cases of them.
Targeting customers: Levi Strauss has used social media to offer location-specific deals. In one instance, direct interactions with just 400 consumers led 1,600 people to turn up at the company’s stores— an example of social media’s word-of-mouth effect.
Automation tools are available which automatically publish posts and schedule posts up to a month in advance. These tools, which include Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buffer, MeetEdgar, and BuzzSumo, which can save you time by allowing you to plan and schedule batches of posts at once, whilst also making it easier to monitor your networks and respond to messages quickly.
Your business however, is unlikely to maintain a competitive edge with a set-and-forget approach to social media if you want to grow socially. You should be proactive and come up with innovative new strategies and campaigns to grow your social media presence.
In conclusion, social media goals will determine the metrics that matter to your business and it’s important to measure these to ensure you’re on the right track with your strategy. Investing time to learn the tools and technologies will meet the challenges of tomorrow and grow a social proof, sustainable business. Memorable brands are the ones who know how to engage with their target audience effectively in today’s digital world.
What is Coraggio?
Being a business owner can be challenging and may include facing unchartered territory. However, it doesn’t have to be lonely at the top. Making the right decisions to future proof your business deserves more than the occasional conversation with a mate. It deserves to aggregate the experience and a shared knowledge of collective awareness from fellow executives to stay ahead of the curve.
Operating a company typically presents complex issues, sometimes on a daily basis. Imagine if you could leverage the experience from an extensive group of industry peers to improve your decision making and social proof as well as future proof a sustainable business, whilst being held accountable?
Also imagine if you gained the peace of mind to seamlessly access these answers and navigate business challenges, simply by connecting with entrepreneurs and gaining knowledge from business leaders? This is the strength of peer to peer leadership mentoring and impactful, meaningful relations.
Coraggio offers a mutual exchange of expertise, ideas and a support system enabling you to capitalise on a give-and-take dynamic amongst advisors who have walked the path before, mitigating risk to your business.
Leading business owners and entrepreneurs join Coraggio to become part of a highly effective business community facilitating leadership, guaranteeing accountability and sharing innovative ideas within a cohesive and confidential national network.
This mutual exchange of Member’s expertise tangibly results in sustainable revenue streams, increased cash reserves and productive outcomes to future proof your business.
Coraggio Chairs are industry leaders, Members are forward-thinking advisors and all Advisory Boards are dedicated to the ongoing success of their fellow Member’s businesses, offering Fearless Objective Advice – that’s the Coraggion Spirit!
Afterall, in the words of Henry Ford “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself”.
Would you like to be a part of this?
Become an integral Member of a confidential group of business owners sharing their insights and experiences for the benefit of your business? Imagine how your business would prosper from connecting with a broader community consisting of more than 400 high performing and driven industry leaders!
Explore Membership today! Find out how our proven program can assist you build a better business and become a better leader.