In 2021 social media should be an essential part of your marketing strategy. We know now that social media isn’t a magic bullet — alone it can only do so much. But when integrated into your company’s omni-channel experience, social media can impact how prospective customers discover your brand, how current customers engage with your brand and how the influence of others can shape your brand’s reputation.
Social media is an important touchpoint along your customer’s journey — but it isn’t the only one and your social media marketing strategy needs to reflect and support that.
Let’s start at the beginning.
By now, you probably understand why social media matters to brand marketing.
Recent data shows that 91% of businesses use social media. And that how brands use use social media can impact their audience’s behaviors. In fact, we know the types of actions that are mostly likely to motivate followers to become customers — they include:
- Responding to customer service questions in a timely manner 47%
- Demonstrating an understanding of what I want and need 43%
- Creating more culturally relevant content 39%
- Creating educational content about their product or service 31%
- Engaging directly with followers 27%
Source: 2021 Sprout Social Index
Furthermore, when consumers follow brands on social media they are likely to connect and engage in the following ways:
- Visit the brand’s website or app 91%
- Buy from the brand 90%
- Choose that brand over a competitor 86%
- Visit the brand’s physical retail store 86%
- Buy from that brand more often 85%
- Recommend that brand to friends/family 83%
Source: 2021 Sprout Social Index
These stats demonstrate the need for brands to have a cohesive and well-thought out social media strategy, so that they can reap the benefits of being socially active online. However, after more than a decade immersed in social media, many companies and their brands still don’t have a strategy that works at keeping followers engaged, while generating value for the company. There’s a lot of time and money wasted trying to make social media work effectively.
How can you efficiently and effectively create, manage and measure social media campaigns that add value and get results?
Why are you on social media?
If you can’t immediately answer this question your challenges with social media aren’t necessarily the result of an underperforming platform, but rather because you don’t know why you’re using social media in the first place.
- Do you want to drive traffic to your website?
- Do you want to sell more products?
- Do you want to increase brand awareness?
- Do you want to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry?
- Do you want to engage customers and facilitate conversations?
These are just a few of the ways social media can help your business, but unless you’ve clearly articulated your goal for being on social media, it will be very hard to measure your success. If you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish, you can’t develop a strategy to help achieve it.
Different platforms can serve different roles in your marketing strategy. LinkedIn can help you demonstrate your company’s leadership in the marketplace, while Instagram gives you opportunities to show off your product visually and go behind-the-scenes. Twitter allows you to answer customer queries in real-time, whereas YouTube allows you to educate your audience through tutorials and long-form content.
Articulating your objectives for social media is the first step. When you can align business objectives with your social media presence, it’s much easier for you to develop a strategy that supports the outcome.
In order for your strategy to be most effective, it needs to match your bandwidth for supporting it.
Great! You want to drive traffic your website by using social media.
Did you know that on average, social media accounts for just 6% of traffic?
Getting people to click on links on social media is hard. Algorithms don’t want to make it easy for users to leave their platform. Organic click through rates aren’t high, because unless your website is considered an influential source, social networks will not go out of their way to show your content in users’ feeds. And even if you pay to promote a post, motivating a click through is still not guaranteed.
All hope is not lost, though. We know that compelling, engaging content drives traffic.
So if you’re using social media to drive traffic, you need to invest in content that can convert. That means blog posts that help educate consumers and tell your brand story. It could also mean short videos that go behind-the-scenes or show your product in action. It might also mean going live for Q&A and Ask Me Anythings (AMAs).
All this content requires a commitment to creating, producing, and publishing it on a consistent basis. If you don’t have the time, tools or expertise or don’t have a team that does, executing a content strategy designed to drive traffic, for example, is going to be nearly impossible.
Consider what you have time to do before you establish your social media goals.
Want to use social media to support customer questions and conversations?
Most consumers expect a brand to respond in the first 24 hours, but depending on your industry, more than 39 percent of social media users expect businesses to reply within sixty minutes.
Do you have the time to respond to customer queries quickly? If you run a global, national or regional company, that means making yourself available when it’s convenient for your customers and not just you!
Most businesses are unable to generate success from social media because they lack time and resources to commit to it. It becomes an exhausting task. When we don’t like doing something, we tend to avoid doing it.
Let’s make social media fun!
The best social media experiences are ones that speak to the passion and enthusiasm of the user. It’s like going to a cocktail party — no one wants to hang out with the person who is boring and uninspired. We’re captivated by interesting, outgoing people who make us laugh or give us new perspectives to consider.
What do you love most about your brand?
- Does it have a fun back story?
- Is there something that makes your products different or unique?
- Who are the people who run the business? What’s their story?
- How does your product or service help others?
- How does your company support its community?
If you’re excited to answer one or more of these questions, that’s a good indication that’s what you’re most passionate about. Let’s start there.
When we get to talk about things that excite us, creating content becomes fun — not a chore. Chances are a bunch of ideas popped into your head. Write them down. Organize them from the easiest to create to the hardest. Then note what you’d need to create them — A smartphone camera? Time to write the blog post? Access to product photos? A social media intern?
Add them to your to-do list — commit to creating and publishing content every week. Share with you audience — cross post to different networks. Add interesting captions and use your authentic voice!
When social media becomes a part of our regular schedule, it becomes more integrated into our habits. When it becomes a habit, we start to change our behaviors to accommodate it — we give it more time, dedicate more resources and start to become better at it.
How will you know if it’s working?
Go back to your social media objectives. Now look at the content you’ve been sharing. Is there engagement? Are people taking notice? Is it doing what you wanted it do? How do you know?
Look at the cold, hard data. What are your insights indicating? Look at the individual platforms’ insights dashboards as well as your Google Analytics for your website. What’s the story that it’s telling? Do you notice any trends? Things to pay attention to:
- Impressions
- Engagement
- Click throughs
- Page views/website visits
- Time spent on website
- New users v. Returning users
- Social Networking source traffic
Observe. Who are the people engaging with your posts? Do you recognize them or are they new followers? Are they liking your content, commenting or sharing it? If you have a physical store — ask your customers if they saw the posts.
Evaluate your own investment. For how much time you’re putting into creating, posting and managing content — is the return a validation of your investment? Notice your own emotional reaction to the data — are you frustrated? Are you excited?
Look for new opportunities. Are there things you can do to make your social media strategy run more smoothly? If you don’t see the results you want right away, don’t give up. Refine. Where are opportunities for improvement? Don’t work harder — work smarter. You know more now than you did when you started. Maybe it’s improving a call to action or maybe it’s asking your network to help amplify your content. Over time, you’ll start to see what’s working and what isn’t. Keep what is working, stop doing the things that aren’t.
Integrate experiences throughout the customer journey. Social media isn’t the only touchpoint for your customers — so don’t limit the content and conversations to these platforms alone. If a consumer finds your website first or hears about you from a friend, make sure the experiences are consistent. The same excitement you bring to social media should be recognizable in an email, on the phone and in person.
As you’ve probably noticed by now — there isn’t an overarching formula for success on social media. It would be nice if there was a solution that worked for everyone. Yet, it’s actually kind of nice to know that there is more than one way to win at social media.
For most, it’s still necessary to understand who your audience is, the platforms that are most effective for reaching them and the message that you want to communicate.
Beyond that, social media is what you make of it. If you hate being on social media, there’s no amount of being on social media that is going to make it better.
If you want to enjoy social media and get something out of it — don’t work for social media; make it work for you.
This blog repurposes content featured in a webinar I presented on behalf of the Hub for Brand Innovation and Advertising Technology and the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising in the College of Media at the University of Illinois.