How Well Do You Really Understand Social Media Marketing?
Social media…the new go-to medium for advertising in today’s digital age. Social media is no longer considered a passive platform, but instead operates simultaneously as a dynamic workspace and an effective marketing tool where companies and consumers interact with one another. It allows you to create strong, personal, long-term relationships with your consumers and understand their behaviour on a deeper basis than traditional media.
Okay so we’re all caught up on how social media is a valuable tool when it comes to boosting your brand’s online presence but how do we optimise its effectiveness? The number of social media channels available are so diverse and plentiful how can you possibly decide which ones to concentrate your efforts on? Don’t panic! Here at Digital8 we’ve put together a list of the most popular social media platforms that work best for marketing and differences between each of them.
Facebook is an amazing platform that works best at achieving marketing goals with minimal effort required due to the intuitive nature of most of its features. You can schedule content for the upcoming week/month, create events to gather a rough estimate of interested attendees, use paid advertisements to promote content to specific demographics, and even utilise organic word-of-mouth advertising through page reviews, check-ins and likes! Ensure that you also boost your site connectivity by liking and interacting with similar pages in the same industry to boost your content to fans of those pages and expand your reach.
Instagram, whilst not necessarily as intuitive as Facebook, is another highly effective platform for marketing, especially when it comes to reaching younger demographics. Instagram is better suited to highly visual and aesthetic content and can be very effective in reinforcing branding imagery for your company. You can also utilise the reel and story features to promote higher levels of audience engagement and run polls to further understand the types of content your audience would like to see more of. Reels also allow you to share extended video content if you so desire. Another massive factor to consider when exploring advertising on Instagram is the power behind influencer advertising. Consider exploring paid sponsorships with highly popular influencers in your field in order to gain even higher levels of exposure and brand advocacy.
Twitter functions very differently from Facebook and Instagram in that its platform design encourages a less-text heavy, fast-paced, informal messaging style. You should aim to create relatable, behind-the-scenes content that will create a personalized bond between you and your audience in order to increase brand advocacy. By aiming to create relatable content, you also open up the opportunity for your brand to achieve earned media aka. the ‘online buzz’ that follows relevancy and trending topics. Twitter also has a high affinity for visual content so be sure to include pictures and gifs wherever possible in order to increase engagement rates.
LinkedIn operates primarily as a professional platform through which companies can expand their professional network, publish content that they have been working on to build their profile, and advertise job openings for recruiting purposes. Some recommended content ideas for this platform are inspirational stories about workplace difficulties and how your company overcame them and re-sharing interesting articles that are relevant to your field of work.
Overall, you should strive to isolate communication purposes across your social media channels whilst maintaining consistent branding in order to achieve the maximum effectiveness. This allows audiences to better locate the types of content they prefer and will subsequently increase engagement rates.
Social media is constantly changing and can be confusing and stressful to navigate the ever-changing digital environment but here at Digital8 we can help you revolutionise your online presence! Give us a call now and put your mind at ease knowing your brand is in the careful care of professionals.