It’s no secret that you need to be on social media whether you’re a B2C or B2B company. But how do you maximize the return on your investment, especially if you have a small team and a limited digital marketing budget? Here are my favorite social media secrets from the experts—industry leaders who’ve succeeded in building brand awareness and loyalty.
Here’s a video recap, if you’re short on time.
Select the Social Media Platform That Suits You
Targeting your audience is essential to a successful marketing strategy. In fact, the deeper you dig to create segmentation, the better. And, of course, you need to identify where your target audience is spending most of its time. But you also need a platform that works for you.
Suppose your personality is more suited to conversations. In that case, you want to be sure that social audio is one of your top digital marketing channels. For instance, Clubhouse is a great social audio platform that enables you to build your brand, thought leadership, and reach thousands. Daniel Robbins of IBH Media says that they’ve created a Clubhouse community of more than 50,000 entrepreneurs within only five months.
On the other hand, if you’re intimidated by talking to unknown people, even if you can’t see them, but love to write, then you might want to focus on blogs, videos, and social media posts.
The point is that you won’t be consistent if you’re struggling with a platform that doesn’t suit your personality. However, since most people are omnichannel, the chances are excellent that you can choose one to two platforms that suit your personality and reach your audience.
Make Yourself Accessible to Your Consumer Audience
This is one of my favorite social media secrets to remember– communication is about having a conversation.
If you post a lot of content on social media channels and move on, you’re talking to your audience, not with them. Gary Vaynerchuk made a point of personally responding to every comment readers left on his post. This habit contributed immensely to his rise as one of the most influential leaders in the business space. People felt that he was listening and cared about what they had to say.
Social media shouldn’t be broadcast channels.
When you converse with your audience, they’ll see that you’re interested in them. An additional benefit is that you’ll learn from your audience. In a previous article, we spoke about the importance of identifying the issues or problems your audience is experiencing. Reader comments on your social media channels can provide valuable information to help you refine your messaging strategy. You’ll be able to develop topics for articles, podcasts, and videos. Furthermore, you’ll secure brand ambassadors who will happily share your brand message with their contacts.
Build a Community Around Your Brand Mission
Building a community is a great way to develop customer loyalty. You may not see the ROI right away, but the investment is worth it. You’ll create brand ambassadors and repeat customers who become emotionally invested in your services or products. They’ll want to see you succeed.
Facebook is a perfect platform for building a community around your brand.
- You can set up a Facebook group and invite your customers to join.
- Be sure the group is moderated and that you post clear guidelines for group members.
- Don’t use your Facebook group for advertising or selling your brand. Instead, create a safe space for members to discuss issues relevant to your brand or service.
- Encourage group members to post and comment.
- Share entertaining and informative posts from other Facebook groups, YouTube, and other channels.
- Host games, quizzes, and challenges. For instance, you can ask your followers to post a photo of themselves doing something unusual or passing a personal milestone, such as making it to the summit of their favorite mountain or finishing a marathon.
There are many ways to turn your community into a site that your members want to be sure to visit every day.
Community forums
A community forum is another way to build a community around your brand. However, forums serve a slightly different purpose. It’s the place to come for tech or product support, customer service issues, and other types of interactions that come before or after purchase.
A community forum allows you to make your consumers feel appreciated. As with everything you do on social media, interaction is the key to success.
Use Your Social Media Channels to Shine a Spotlight on Others
This is one of my favorite social media secrets, too, and one that many brands overlook. Every social media post should not be about you and your brand. Instead, use your platforms to shine the spotlight on others. For example, user-generated content, industry news, interesting stories, moving videos, all kinds of content will help bring positive attention to your brand.
You can even include shoutouts to achievements from competitors. Of course, you might shy away from focusing attention on potential competitors. However, you’ll develop a reputation as a brand that prioritizes informing its audience over issues of industry competitiveness. If you’re a B2B tech company, this approach is an optimum way to build collaborations with others in your vertical.
Create Helpful Content
You’re operating in a very crowded digital marketplace. The global community spends more time on digital media channels today, but they prioritize that time. By creating helpful content, you’ll rank your channels among their go-to digital sources for information, products, and the services they need.
Once you have identified your audience and their pain points, you’ll be able to create content that helps them reach their life goals.
Chris Christoff of MonsterInsights reports that they doubled their engagement after the brand began broadcasting live webinars. Webinars and podcasts are great platforms for delivering helpful content. You’ll build an audience that becomes loyal followers because they’ll learn that your product or service can help them. They’ll share your channels with their network. You’ll grow your brand identity, but more importantly, you’ll develop authenticity and brand loyalty.
Be Authentic and Honest
Consumer trust in brands is low. The global digital world is a noisy place with trillions of data bits racing through multiple social media and website channels. Brand advertising contributes to much of this noise and distrust. Authenticity is key to success. Engage in honest conversations with your audience, whether in live format or on your social media channels.
Customer Success
Last but not least, among top social media secrets is customer success. Consumers take to a brand’s social media channels to ask questions about products or services before deciding whether to buy or make an appointment. If they don’t’ hear back from you, this is a lost customer. Consumers also take to your social media channels to provide feedback on your services, positive or negative. If you don’t respond within 24 hours, you could easily find yourself in a firestorm of criticism that can put you out of business. Entrepreneurs like John Turner of SeedProd LLC use AI and a live support team to improve sales and customer success.
Conclusion
These social media secrets from the pros are a great starting point. I’m sure as you continue in your digital marketing journey, you’ll come up with more. Or maybe you already have some great secrets to share. We’d love to hear them! Use the comment box below and let us know what strategies are working for you.