Social Media Can Be Your Brand's Calling Card
Social media has become an almost unescapable part of everyday life. Ten years ago it was just college kids on Facebook and now even your grandparents are posting their family photos. What this essentially means to the online marketing community is that the target advertising demographics are seemingly endless.
The social media marketing landscape is changing as fast as social media itself. To successfully craft a brand’s online presence, you must have two things: captivating messaging and the ability to adapt on the fly.
If your branding is not dynamic, you’re missing out on reaching a segment of users of both emerging social networks as well the older more “established” ones. With that in mind, it’s critical to understand the landscape of social media today, especially if you’d like to see your online branding efforts contribute to your bottom line.
1. E-Commerce X Social Media
With the exponential growth of social media use, the most logical move to make would be to integrate social media and e-commerce. As obvious as that may seem, surprisingly it has only been implemented as of recently and despite being a great monetary asset, the idea hasn’t been universally adopted just yet. Nonetheless, people are now, for the most part, used to the idea of shopping and ultimately making a purchase through the use of smartphones and tablets.
Implementing an e-commerce component to your social media presence can promote sales and engagement as well. Twitter, having added a “Buy” button, is a great place to start. Selling a branded t-shirt through Twitter is a pretty simple way to begin integrating e-commerce on social media platforms. Soon enough, other social networks will follow suit and begin integrating e-commerce as well.
2. The Importance of Adjusting to Trends
This is the information age. With content and information so readily available, it is essential as a web marketer to be able to adjust your campaigns to cater to the newest trends. That’s not only the responsility of the marketing teams, but top level management as well. Corporate management must allow the freedom to incorporate agile marketing techniques in order to remain relevant among the competition.
Agile marketing in a nutshell is the ability to adapt your marketing approach to sudden changes or fleeting topics and trends on social media. Although this may seem rather obvious, it should also be pretty obvious that your consumers will appreciate the effort and are even more likely to engage with a brand that is keeping up to date.
3. Content Over Everything
Online marketing may as well be referred to as content marketing. Content is king and there is absolutely no denying that. While it’s always been an integral part of any online marketing campaign, its value continues to grow exponentially. The content you should aspire to create is the kind that will inspire other users to share via their social media profiles. Whether that be a YouTube video, a Tumblr post, a tweet, a photo, an infographic or any other type of content, it is turning into perhaps the most important aspect of marketing.
Before you dive head first into your content creation, take a moment to observe what’s being shared across the wide array of social media platforms. You can check out a site like Buzzfeed to get a good grasp on how to make content go viral.
Obviously, you’d like your content to go viral. This can prove to be quite difficult when everyone else has the same goal. Pay close attention to what people want to engage with. Even more importantly, consider what people like to share with others.
4. Direct Messaging Versus Direct Marketing
One thing that most marketers have not taken complete advantage of yet is private messaging on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and all the others that offer this feature.
These days, users expect to receive a custom, personalized experience from even the biggest of brands. Fortunately for you, some of the bigger brands have yet to do this. So, here’s your opportunity.
The message doesn’t even necessarily need to be private. A public message catered to a specific user can be just as, if not more, effective. Take the multiple humorous responses in reply to a user. That can benefit you by displaying your brand’s ability to be relatable. People will appreciate that.
These days, if you aren’t active on social media, it is almost safe to say that your brand doesn’t even exist.
5. Mobile Capability & It’s Vitality
More and more users are using their smartphones and tablets to browse the web. In some cases, people do their shopping on these devices. With this in mind, you must make your brand’s presence prominent on mobile devices. That includes an app or just make your brand’s website available and easily navigable on phones and tablets.
If you happen to sell products online, a platform which allows for mobile payment can be an enormous convenience to your consumers.
6. Wrapping Your Head Around Social Media Evolution
The rate at which online marketing, and social media in general, is continuously changing, can make it a daunting task to keep up with. In order to succeed and stand out from your competition, it is imperative that you put your best foot forward and try staying ahead of the trends. Being able to see which trends and new innovations will be the next big thing to go viral could be the difference between a boom or bust period for your brand.
Digital media has made starting your own business simpler than it’s ever been before. With good content, personalized marketing and a good sense of what’s to come next, your brand can ultimately thrive even more quickly than you envisioned.
Quote by Josh Spilker, writer at Brand Quarterly: 4 Ways To Ramp Up Brand Awareness On Social Media
