Automation. Some love it. Some dread it. But no matter which camp you belong to, there is no denying its power to make our lives easier in some ways. One clear avenue for automation success is social media. Today, the width and speed of social media channels has far surpassed the reach and (in many cases) the efficacy of traditional feet-on-street marketing.
Yet, for many marketers, leveraging this growing resource can feel daunting given the number of choices and the understanding necessary to maximise the potential of each channel. But as we’ve learnt through our own experience, if you plan carefully the results can be stimulating and the process a lot of fun. Through this blog, we’ve tried to distil our understanding of everything we’ve learned (and are continuing to learn) along the way.
Understand your choices
With so many options out there, choosing the right one for your business can feel like an overwhelming experience. But, to avoid information overload, we feel the best way to get things moving is by starting small. While the temptation to jump into every platform will be strong, learn to exercise restraint and be selective about which platforms you choose. Also, take the time to monitor each channel to understand whether they are bringing in positive results for your brand.
Let’s take a look at the recommended options:
LinkedIn: The first stop for business targeting
One of the best channels to start your marketing efforts for business-based communication is LinkedIn. When used well, a powerful platform offers multiple advantages. Here are some of the key things you can achieve through LinkedIn:
Acquire new customers through online recommendations
Satisfied customers are often the best source of affirmation to convert new customers. You can grow your customer base simply by asking your satisfied customers to write you a recommendation. This has a dual positive effect since it gets featured on your profile for new customers to read and also gets broadcast to the referrer’s entire LinkedIn network thus multiplying the number of people who hear about your business.
Keep in touch with those who care most about your business
Unlike regular social networks, LinkedIn is not flooded with thousands of micro updates about your followers’ lives. The business intent of the site ensures that you only hear about business updates and vice versa. This allows you to maintain top-of-mind recall with the relevant business contacts.
Outsource services you’re not an expert at
It’s a process most of us resort to when we need expert service; we ask colleagues if they know someone trustworthy. Preferably, someone they have personally worked with in the past. With LinkedIn, you get the ability to tap into a network much wider than just the water cooler and thus multiply your chances of finding the right vendors your business may need. Conversely, you can also offer you services through the grapevine recommendation of your network.
Build your industry network further
The LinkedIn ‘Groups Directory’ feature allows you find relevant industry associations and networks and participate in their discussions. By doing this, you give your business added credibility and in turn, attract more people to connect with you. In addition, LinkedIn also spotlights relevant local business events where you can extend your networking skills in person.
Get answers to tough business questions
As a small business owner, you have to contend with dozens of challenging questions. Trying to scour the web to answer them can be daunting. But with LinkedIn, you have access to a cool feature called ‘Answers’ which by LinkedIn’s own estimate has over 200 unique categories and over 2000 groups dedicated to small businesses.
Convince potential customers of your expertise
By sharing unique blog content, you can elevate your small business from just another vendor on the market to a thought leader in your segment and the go-to brand for advice and service.
Keep a close eye on your competition
With over 150,000 companies having a company profile on LinkedIn, the chances that your major competitors have a company page is very high. These pages offer key statistics on the activity of their business including any recent collaborations or hires. From this info, you can make educated assumptions about the health of their business and the direction it’s headed in.
Twitter: Putting you inside your customer’s daily consciousness
When it comes to marketing communication, few channels are as immersive as Twitter. Born for the mobile web, this channel is always on and constantly being referenced. No matter who your ideal customer is chances are they are part of the Twitterverse. Here are some key tips to maximise your growth from this channel:
Use influencers to put you on the map
The Internet has fundamentally shifted our perceptions of fame by democratising the medium of expression. This has led to a new tribe of content creators who have risen through the ranks to earn celebrity status among their followers. If you can convince them to introduce your brand into their conversations, your brand gets in front of a much larger audience.
Engage with customers even when they aren’t buying
The problem with traditional advertising is the underlying motive of ‘selling something’. But no one spends money round-the-clock. Which means that after a while, such messaging becomes more of an annoyance than a reminder. However with Twitter, you can reach out to your customers every day with new messages (which may not be sales related) without seeming pushy or loud since customers choose to interact with brands on Twitter.
Use it as a feedback channel
The good thing about conversation is that it works bilaterally. If you engage with customers, they respond back as well. This allows you to seek valuable feedback on your products from them. It also allows you to iterate your product or make necessary business changes in real-time and maximise customer satisfaction.
Set up micro-shopping experiences
Just because you’re trying to keep a conversation going, doesn’t mean you can leverage the power of Twitter for sales. In fact, the platform gives you an added advantage. Since it costs nothing to send out a tweet, you can create micro-shopping experiences in the form of flash sales, discount days and even use it to push specific stock out the door through exclusive Twitter-only offers.
Promote hard to find products
If your product line has small batch items, Twitter is a great way to let customers know about it and how they get their hands on it. Also, if you produce limited edition items, this would be a perfect place to show it off and get pre-orders for them.
Ride the wave of popular trends
Most sellers restrict their cross-promotional activities to the standard retail events calendar (Spring sales, Christmas, Boxing Day etc.) But rather than have to shout to compete with much larger brands during these hectic periods, you can scan Twitter to see what’s trending on a daily or weekly basis. And if you fit a product message while joining the conversation on these topics, you have a higher resonance with customers and increase the likelihood of a sale.
Facebook: The social marketplace to be present in
While many have tried to replicate their success, none have succeeded in offering the depth and simplicity of connectivity of Facebook. With such a close bonded network, it can be hard for sellers to enter into the circle of trust. But if you take the effort to focus on the message and not intrude into users’ personal space, you can turn customer friendships into rewarding experiences. Here are some of the basics you need to follow to get the most out of marketing on Facebook:
Aim to reach a targeted audience
Just because there are 1.19 billion Facebook users, it doesn’t mean they all want to ‘Like’ your business page. In fact, it would actually be pretty useless if everyone did like your business page because only a tiny percentage of people who actually engage with your posts. Instead, by choosing the specific type of customer you’d like to target and limiting the target distance to about 15 kms, you can be sure only relevant people are being exposed to your business.
Grow your business with relevant insights
Unlike traditional advertising; you can get real-time feedback from every single ad you run on Facebook. Plus, for Facebook business pages, you get the advantage Facebook Insights, which give you in-depth information and are easy to understand even for non-technical people. Through Insights, you can get access to a variety of useful information ranging from simple things such as number of page likes and the reach of your page to more complex information such as the reach of each post and overall engagement of each post, demographics of your fans and overall engagement of the page itself.
Use the channel to build brand loyalty
Today people don’t just look online for a place to buy but actively search for a brand whose tone they can relate with. And to do this, they turn predominantly on social media. This means if your followers see you as being active in an engaging manner and responsive in a relevant manner, they are more likely to choose you to do business with. Plus, if you consistently provide valuable & entertaining content, your followers will stay loyal – even when you make the odd marketing mistake.
Let your page divert traffic to your site
If all you’re doing on Facebook is getting engagement on your posts, then you’re really just an entertainer, not a marketer. Instead what you should be doing is mixing in a few link posts to drive traffic to your site. These link posts now come with a full-width thumbnail and because they draw more attention, these wider images are more likely to be clicked and thus increase your site traffic.
Learn to spy on your competition
While you cannot infiltrate your brand’s Facebook page to get the inside scoop (that would be cheating) what you can do is use Facebook’s ‘Pages to Watch’ feature which makes suggestions based on the competition in your area in the same (or similar) niche. The default is 5 pages, but you can add more if you wish. Once you’ve added the relevant pages, you get a real-time ticker showing you just how many likes your competition has received. And if you see a spike in the number of likes, you can simply hop over to their page to study what they did right that week.
Pinterest: Where one picture is worth a thousand words
The old quote about pictures being worth more than words has never been truer in the age of Pinterest. Starting out as just a hobbyist platform, it has now gained serious traction for small businesses too. Here’s how:
Showcase your work in your own style
Visually led businesses such as artists, photographers, interior designers and fashion designers are perfectly suited for the visual canvas of Pinterest. However, even if you are just a seller of goods, you can create interesting storyboards to showcase your work. You don’t have to stick to a template – instead you can use your creativity and personal style to give your brand a unique tone of voice.
Transform it into a research tool
Pinterest can also be used to conduct market research on relevant information such as what colours people are drawn to and what products are being re-pinned. This information can create inspiration for additional product development and helps in determining interests, marketability and popularity.
Leverage the stickiness of the platform
Pinterest users are willing to spend time on the platform with engaging content. On average, users spend more than an hour and a half on the site every month, sharing and re-sharing content. When you build content for the platform, remember to account for the time people are willing to spend and then adjust the width and depth of your content accordingly to gain maximum face time from a user.
Aim to go viral
Pinterest is a hugely viral medium with more than 80% of content consisting of re-pins. This means users are willing to actively promote your company for you. In fact, users themselves and not brands generate 70% of brand engagement on Pinterest. So if it means sounding a bit quirky or pandering a bit to what users want to see, indulge them because it might just lead to a whole new flock of brand ambassadors.
Use it as a second online catalogue
With Pinterest; you get the advantage of a second online catalogue, which is separate from the one on your site, thus increasing your online presence. By pinning the images of your key products found on your site to a board, Pinterest users can click directly to your store through those pins.
Multiply your content creation ability
Pinterest, as a platform, doesn’t prescribe a format. This means you can experiment with many different themes, competitions, activities and ideas. Plus, you don’t have to restrict yourself to one board either. By setting up multiple boards running various activities concurrently, you can boost reach and inspire even greater interactivity and engagement with your brand.
Let users see behind the brand
Pinterest lets you take your users ‘behind the scenes’ into your company. Here you can introduce them to your team (if you have one), tour your production process and even give them a sneak peek into upcoming projects. By allowing users to look behind your brand, they get a chance to personally identify with it in ways that perhaps couldn’t be achieved via other channels.
Instagram: Filter your way to success
We’re all drawn to pictures but someone just when it seemed the humble photograph couldn’t do any more for us, along came Instagram to blow that perception right out of the water. With its ever-growing array of filters, it has become a way to not just visually document our lives but enhance its look. This level of micro engagement with the minutiae of our lives is a great place for brands to be because it allows them to enter not just the consideration set of users, but their daily consciousness itself. Some of the ways to achieve this include:
Use it to increase engagement
Depending on the quality of the post and the flow of content for the day, branded updates on Facebook and Twitter can sometimes be overlooked. But if you have an active Instagram account, and if the content is useful and interesting, the spike in engagement is significant. In fact, the latest study by Forrester showed that Instagram content generates 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook and 120 times more engagement than Twitter.
Build trust and show off your personality
Since Instagram users are already comfortable and conversant with handling daily streams of micro-moments from their communities’ lives, it is easier for brands to do the same and not come off as pushy. Instead, it helps a brand build trust by exposing their day-to-day lives to their followers. Also, people don’t buy from brands – they buy from other people. This means when you choose to show your personal side to your users, you get them to relate better with you and thus increase the likelihood of a sale.
Use it to increase traffic
Although you can’t add clickable links to every Instagram update you publish, Instagram can still prove to be a powerful source of traffic. And since it already has higher levels of engagement than on Facebook and Twitter, you can get more site visibility from even the few posts that have clickable links.
Reach your target market faster
Rather than build a bridge and try to convince people to cross it, with Instagram all you have to do is stand on the bridge that already has thoroughfare and start getting noticed. With over 37% of Millennials using Instagram currently, you can be assured of targeting the right market when you choose this platform for your marketing efforts.
Learn to plan carefully
Choosing the right social media avenues for your business is only half the battle. If you want to win the war, it is critical to establish a plan outlining how you will use your social media resources to their full potential. Here are some key metrics to bear in mind before you deep dive into your campaigns:
Start by defining your goals
This may sound like a no-brainer but given the number of options available, you have to cherry-pick the ones most relevant to your brand. Ask yourself what you want to achieve through social media. Then examine how you plan to use social media to promote your business. For example:
You may use it for general branding purposes
You could use it primarily to interact with your audience
You could use it for promotional sharing of coupons and offers
You could use it to drive traffic to your Web site
You could use it to market a new line of products
To simplify and streamline the process, try adopting the ‘SMART’ approach to goal setting. This method was described in Paul J. Meyer’s 2003 book ‘Attitude is Everything’ and operates on the following principles:
Make your goals Specific: Your goals should state exactly what you want to accomplish. Without a clearly defined goal, it is almost impossible to know if your business is making any progress or not. Specific goals are designed to address:
Who – who will be involved in reaching the goal?
What – what is it that I want to accomplish?
When – what is the timeframe for reaching the goal?
Where – what is the venue for accomplishing the goal?
Why – what reason or purpose do I have for accomplishing the goal?
Which – any requirements and constraints
Make your goals Measurable: By setting a measure for your goals, it is easier to track and know when you’ve met the goal. Without measures in place, you are more likely to reach burnout or boredom without ever accomplishing your goals. In social media, your measures can include number of comments, followers, retweets, Likes or website visits achieved in a specific time period.
Keep your goals Attainable: Now, this doesn’t mean setting the bar low simply to reach a level of progress. But rather this refers to keeping your goals reasonable. Even if you have big plans for the future of your company, it is important to set small yet challenging goals to get a sense of progress and accomplishment, all while chipping away at the bigger picture you have in mind.
Keep your goals Relevant: This involves keeping your goals consistent with other established goals and timely for your business. A goal that is only relevant if it matches your other efforts and is worth pursing at this time. Take time regularly to ask yourself, “Does this goal matter?” If your answer is not an immediate “yes” then maybe, you need to park this goal and move on to something else. And when you come back to it, if the goal is still not 100 percent relevant, consider dropping it completely.
Ensure your goals are Timely: A goal should always include a deadline for completion. Without a deadline, it is no longer a goal – it’s just a wish. And your business has no time for dreaming. For example, saying “I want to have 100,000 Twitter followers” is just wishful thinking but saying “I want to have 100,000 Twitter followers by the end of the second quarter of 2016.” Is a clear, measurable and actionable goal!
Once you have these points addressed, you will be in a much better position to move on to the next phase of planning your social media campaign which includes planning for the right level of resources, content and personnel available to sustain your social media campaigns.
Fine-tune your communication frequency
For those brands still testing the waters with social media; you need to be careful not to flood your networks in irregular bursts. Here are some key tips to bear in mind when planning your communication frequency:
Stick to the 80/20 Principle as Much as Possible
We recommend the 80/20 principle for social media in which 80% of your activity is ‘being friendly’ through retweets, comments and other participation. The remaining 20% is your addition of new content. This way, you are an active participant and seen as a brand engaging with your audience, rather than turning social media purely into a soapbox for your own promotion.
Check Social Media Profiles Daily
Social media is not a set it and forget it strategy. Even if your plan dictates that you will send two tweets each week, you still need to log on to your Twitter account each day to see what’s going on. Have you added followers? Have people retweeted your messages? Are there any comments? Learn to keep a close eye on your account activity. This allows you to respond immediately to any user interactions and helps you adapt faster to any changes.
Respond to Direct Interactions
If someone takes the time and effort to engage with you and your business, it is not only polite but good business to respond quickly and to every single one individually. Interactions might include Facebook messages, posts to your Facebook wall, Twitter direct messages (DMs) and Twitter @replies.
Even if you the direct message is negative, you must reply with something (even if just to thank them for reaching out). Responding rather than ignoring negative posts demonstrates to the community your customer service skills and your willingness to learn from criticism.
Actively Find New Followers
Small businesses should be proactive when it comes to finding new followers. One way to set aside time every week to find and follow Twitter profiles of your industry’s authority figures. You should also follow that person’s followers because they may automatically follow you back, thereby increasing the number of followers you have.
Adding connections on LinkedIn is another way to find new followers. Review your existing connections to find other people (their connections) with whom you would like to connect. You might also consider joining and participating in LinkedIn Groups that are relevant to your business and target audience.
Try to Search for Branded Terms
A brief search for your business’s branded phrases can help you find conversations between people that you are not yet connected with. If you can find these mentions online, you can proactively respond to potential followers and potential clients.
Aim to keep messaging relevant
As a part of your social media engagement strategy, it helps to step back at regular intervals and evaluate whether your efforts are having the intended impact. This is an important step because the social media landscape is evolving at an ever-increasing rate. And along with it, so are public perceptions. If you only keep churning out content without evaluation, you might be lagging behind current social trends and burning more money than necessary to stay relevant with your audience.
Remember to maintain an eye on security
While it’s fine to be enthusiastic about your social media campaigns and be eager to share your brand’s messaging and new ideas with potential customers, just don’t do it at the expense of digital security. When it comes to the safety of your social media accounts, the first step is to use appropriately complex passwords – a random password generator is advisable – and to establish a regular schedule to change your passwords. You should also break this schedule and change passwords immediately in case you outsource your social media management and find out that a member of their team (who had access to your accounts) has left their organization.
Remember to have fun
Despite all the heavy information you’ve just been handed, social media should not bog you down or leave you feeling apprehensive. Instead, you should be excited about being a part of it. After all, this is the closest you come to a customer online. That’s why when you speak on social media, let your enthusiasm show and strive for a unique voice, which grabs attention and gives people a reason to keep coming back.
In conclusion, remember that in order to make social media a little more digestible, you need to research before diving in, plan your approach, and keep content fresh and relevant… and always protect your digital assets. How are you using your social media channels? Tell us in the comments below.
Also, if you’ve made any promotional products using the Ponoko Personal Factory, let us know in the comments and we’ll discuss the best way to promote them socially.
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