Currently, 2.46 billion people are regularly active on social media. By 2019, the number is expected to swell to 2.77 billion.
As rightly put by Howard Shultz, “Social media is a bullet train, and it’s not going to slow down any time soon”, more than 80% of businesses are seeking refuge under social media for unabashed digital marketing success, and we can’t agree more.
Each day, something new is being launched. Innovation is at its peak. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, SnapChat, Foursquare, Instagram, Pinterest – are some of the scene stealers for now, because we don’t know what’s coming the next! A constant buzz about new platforms is resulting into a lot of commotion among marketers. New trends coupled with increasing audience strength are adding more bedlam to the mix.
To break the back of the beast, your business must be empowered with a powerful social media strategy. And for that, we are here. Let us help you get started:
Dream Big or Go Home
Know your purpose well. Before starting strategizing social media campaigns, give a thought to your purpose. What is the main goal of your company? Set the priority of the day, regarding your business. Once you know these, you can start off with aligning social media with these goals, and walk towards achieving brand success and overall improvement for your company.
Remember, the goals of businesses vary. To start with, a startup firm may have a goal to build a brand’s identity. A second goal may hover around establishing a strong customer base. And thirdly, the business might be aiming to launch a handful number of products at the end of the year.
Now, comes the big question– how can social media help you in branding your business?
With billions and billions of users on social media, partnering with a famous social media influencer can help you establish your business online and reaching out to the masses. It will help you in expanding your customer loyalty base. Social media also suffices to be a fabulous platform to launch new products. Create campaigns and target niche audience.
Hit the Right Tip: Be Precise
After establishing a purpose on social media and calibrating your business goals, it’s about time to give attention to develop specific marketing strategies.
The most important marketing goal would be to enhance brand awareness. This falls in line with your company’s objective of nurturing a brand identity and harnessing a good customer base. The second goal would be to boost brand engagement – it will help in luring new customers and retaining old customers, while keeping absolute focus on building brand identity. Lastly, your company may be in dire need of some research and know more about its user base. As a result, you will get the perfect opportunity to know your customers well and understand which customers to tick, what products will serve their needs and in what ways to reach them for better impact.
Social Media: Not Just Impress People but Impact Them
Now, that your marketing goals are perfectly integrated with your business goals, let’s see how social media is doing its job of creating brand awareness.
Nowadays, each social media platform comes with its own search engine, making it easier to find answers, discussions and conversation threads for specific products and services. Sit with your marketing team to scour through numerous platforms, especially the ones that have the highest number of potential viewers. Build an engaging profile that is in congruence with your brand’s services and character.
Then strike conversations with your users on the site. Register in consumer forums and discussions. Mind it, social media is now the new-wave word of mouth. Use good content to back up leads and start building brand engagement.
Ask the Right Question and Analyze
After all this, it’s time to start with the process of analyzing your site performance. Several analytic software tools, like Buffer, Google Analytics, Hootsuite and Crowdbooster help you determine whether your social media strategy is up to the mark or not, and how well is it working. Through these tools, you can track conversion rates, traffic generation and total number of customer leads. Also, they will provide crucial insights about how to utilize paid versus organic social media, along with devising great product launch campaigns for your business. But above all, analytics will make you understand the importance of well-conceived social media strategy, as your business evolves with time. Moreover, it will nudge you if your social media schemes are working, and illuminates about ways to adapt.
As parting thoughts, hopping on the bandwagon of social media is not as intimidating as it may seem in the beginning. The crux lies in making a place of your own on the solid ground, before you take the big leap. What’s more, social media is going to evolve, as always, your strategies should also never stop growing. Keep these in mind and pop onboard!