The Right Mix of Quality and Value
Just ‘doing social media’ isn’t quite as simple as just setting up a Facebook Page or Twitter Profiles for your business and posting. There is so much more you can do, but there are a few things that you really should avoid.
A Major thing to consider is fishing in the right pond. Based on your buyer persona you ought to be targeting different social networks. Identify where your ideal customers are and give attention to these channels. It’s easy to get drawn in by what someone else recommends as a best practice for particular kinds of products or customers. So make sure always to come back again to your personas.
Advice might be to target Pinterest if you are creating an ‘arty’ product. However, if your buyer persona is a 65-year-old female who only really uses Facebook you may be wasting time and effort on Pinterest.
You can help inform your customers and conduct general consumer research by engaging in what we call ‘social listening’. Twitter is an excellent tool for this. By using a third-party tool such as HootSuite, you can monitor individual words, phrases or hashtags. Discover what people say about your brand, your opponent or only your industry. Use this information to inform your marketing or products, giving the people what they want is always a lot better than giving them what you think they want!
Viral content has been in the social media marketing jargon for a few years now. Its popularity comes from our desire to share things that might brighten up someone’s day. This sharing can create a great opportunity to pass on to someone else or a content chain. That’s why business pages and users alike are posting cool videos, quotes, memes, funny GIFs, photographs of adorable cats and dogs on their timeline to spread good energy.
The success of viral content is based on user’s engagement – the shares, likes, and comments. A person or a business page will only publish content, and its followers or network will be the one to do all the sharing. The more engaging the content, the more viral it will get.
Regardless of how popular viral content is, not all local businesses and brands share the same sentiment in generating viral content. Nor should they. Creating viral content is not a realistic goal for companies. In spite of a lot of research going into the subject matter you still won’t be able to guarantee content will go viral and there are plenty of instances of failures that could hurt your brand.
Forget about Viral Content, Focus on Value and Quality
If you created a Facebook business page, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn account and published about your excellent products and services but receive little post engagement, what now? You see, dominating the social game doesn’t really have to be just ‘that’. It’s only an essential contribution in the social world, and there’s more that should be done to gain social media success for your brand.
Social media is for providing your fans and people who aren’t yet your fans with quality content on a regular most basis. A social business profile should be able to provide fans and followers with quality content on a regular basis especially about your niche. They followed you because they’re interested in your brand, products, and services. Or perhaps a follower has been your loyal customer, and they wanted to know your brand’s latest deals and offers. They may not be interested in funny videos since they are many other sources for that kind of fun.
Keep in mind that your brand has a reputation to maintain. Although it’s not all bad to share viral content unrelated to your business from time to time, every smart marketer knows how to keep the feed rolling by providing content that is informative and valuable. As long as the readers find the content shareable even without the artsy and funny content, it can still go viral!
Social media isn’t merely a B2C tool. LinkedIn is the biggest B2B network on the globe and Twitter has a myriad of uses in the B2B arena. Networking with professionals in your industry or target industries can be invaluable. Being a recognized name when people are considering your industry because you are seen as a source of value in your area of experience. Remember that even in this day and age; people still like to deal with people.