What’s not to ‘like’ about social media marketing?
In our multi-device era, no marketing plan is complete without a social marketing column. Social media platforms are the tool that keeps on giving. Ubiquitous and ever-expanding, they offer brands the strategic possibility of piggy-backing trends, unlimited sharing, and the de facto creation of brand ambassadors.
Today, creating and building a brand-consistent social media presence across social media platforms has become critical to online success. Blue Water can help you better understand the tools available to you, the benefits of each platform, and most importantly, help you plan and execute a social media strategy accordingly.
Target Your Audience — When you join a social networking site, you will gain access to customer profiles. These contain valuable information about their wants and needs as consumers. Many networks also allow you to target specific demographics.
Dialogue with Customers — At the heart of every social networking site is communication. Traditional marketing focuses on “one-way” communications. Social networking is the best way to develop a dialogue with your customers. This “two-way” communication will give your company greater insight into customer perceptions, satisfaction, and needs.
Promote Brand Loyalty — With a presence on a social networking sites, customers can glean information about your company through photographs and more. Your brand will also show up in the “Likes” and “Pages” sections of users’ profiles, essentially providing free advertising.
Publicize Promotional Events — Publicize, and invite contacts to promotional events by utilizing the “Events” feature on most social networking sites. When people RSVP to a Facebook event, for example, their attendance is published in their news feed, which is visible to others.
Increase Brand Visibility — Sometimes the difference between winning and losing is simply showing up. Creating and maintaining active social network profiles increases the chance that potential customers will discover your brand, and strengthen your Internet presence while exposing more people to your brand. Some of the sites we recommend enable contacts to become fans of your company, causing your company’s name and logo to appear on their profile.
Drive Website Traffic — Communication is at the heart of all social networking. By posting links, offering incentives, and creating topics of interest, you can drive more customers to your website, funnelling them one step closer to making a purchase.
Gauge Customer Interest — Customers you interact with on social networking sites are often your most loyal and engaged customers. Their willingness to help allows you to conduct informal research on customer interest in new products and services. You can gain insights that improve your products while making them feel valued and appreciative at the same time.
Contact us today to find out how Blue Water can help your brand grow its digital marketing footprint through social media.
Social Media Management
Blue Water will help you select the social networking platforms that are most relevant to your brand and target audience, and create profiles, taking care to maintain your established brand identity.
With social media campaigns in place, Blue Water will develop and maintain an editorial calendar that maintains regular messaging and themes across the social media platforms. By engaging with your target audience and influencers, we can also help you build followers, as well as develop, execute, and optimize paid social media campaigns as necessary.
Primary Social Networks
There are many social networks to choose from, but for clients looking to grow their digital marketing footprint, it is recommended to start with a small handful that have particularly large audiences.
Facebook
Facebook needs no explanation. With millions of users, it’s the top social networking site on the web. As a free-access website, it allows users to join a network (such as city, region, workplace, or school) and create a profile. This lets them connect with friends, send private messages, create affinity groups based on common interests, write on their own and other users’ public “walls,” “like” products or brands, upload photos and videos, and promote events. All activities, in turn, are published on a public “News Feed,” which is visible to that user’s Facebook “friend” community.
Demographically-speaking, Facebook delivers on a broad range of target markets. It is used internationally by people of nearly all ages, ethnicities, interests, and walks of life, and a plethora of ever-evolving features leave no shortage of ways to creatively market your business.
Twitter
Twitter is what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now. With around 500 million tweets dispatched into the global Twitterverse every 24 hours, and over 55 million visits per month, Twitter has emerged as the third-most used social network and micro-blogging site on the planet. It enables users to post “tweets,” or text blurbs of up to 280 characters, and comment on other users’ tweets.
LinkedIn
With over 467 million users as of 2017, and averaging two new members every second, LinkedIn is the world’s largest social network for working professionals. Users create a profile with relevant personal and work-related information, and then link to current and former colleagues and friends, known as “Connections.”
Beyond it being a great tool for recruiters and equally so for candidates, LinkedIn is a powerful platform for doing business. More than 1.5 million unique publishers actively use the LinkedIn “Share” button on their sites to send content into the LinkedIn platform. Business owners worldwide can find, connect and build relationships with their target market regardless of industry or location. Media exposure is critical for raising brand awareness and positioning your brand in the market. It goes without saying that fostering strategic partnerships is a powerful way to grow a business.
YouTube
YouTube is the most visited video-sharing website globally. It allows people to easily upload and share video clips on the site and across the Internet. Anyone can watch YouTube videos free of charge. It has high interest levels as it runs the gamut of content.
YouTube has a range of uses and benefits for businesses that can complement those offered by other communication channels. Companies can demonstrate their products-in-action. Or if they have a following or are part of a community, they can use the platform as a way to share and engage with customers. In addition, YouTube lets brands embed video in their website, saving companies bandwidth on their own sites.
For marketing and content marketing, YouTube offers great leverage. Pre-roll ads alone are a new and brilliant way to target audiences.
Snapchat
Snapchat started out as a disappearing photo-sharing platform. Photos and videos taken with the app are called snaps. In 2017, Snapchat launched a set of new editing tools and camera features, as well as Snapmap and Snap Publisher. Marketers are increasingly adding Snapchat to their social media marketing arsenal owing to the platform’s ability to show a more authentic and unpolished side of social media.
Pinterest
Pinterest is social platform with more than 150 million active users that allows people to collect and categorize images from around the web onto labelled “pin boards.” By its own admission, Pinterest is on a charge to connect everyone in the world through the things they find interesting.
With 87% of users citing Pinterest as the reason for buying a certain product, and 93% of Pinners have used the site to plan for a future purchase, it’s not hard to see why Pinterest is fast becoming part of any smart marketing strategy.
Contact us today to find out how Blue Water can help your brand become socially-active and successful.
