The internet has absolutely transformed how businesses operate in the modern age. Today, there is nothing more influential in regards to the internet than social media. With millions upon millions of users, it would be absolutely foolish for businesses to ignore the opportunities social media presents for marketing purposes. However, successfully yielding social media to your benefit is more difficult than you may realize. To help simplify things, below are five must-do social media strategies that can allow you to use your social media accounts to increase your profit margins.
Build a Far-Reaching Network
One of the more important elements of increasing your ability to convert leads on social media into paying customers is expanding your reach into those networks. Due to how social media operates, this requires building a strong network of followers.
Having followers on social media is extremely important. However, just having a high follower count isn’t the only important thing. Certain kinds of followers are better to have than others. You want followers that repost your marketing content from your social media feeds. These re-Tweets and re-posts will act as free advertising targeted at those users’ own followers. As such, having followers with their own large follower lists is the key to achieving the most bang for your buck.
Work with Influencers
You should also consider working directly with social media “influencers.” These are individuals with extremely large follower lists on social media that are seen by many as trendsetters. You can think of them as a kind of internet-based celebrity. Try to work out marketing deals with specific social media influencers so they will bring up your products on their accounts.
The key to such a relationship is not making it that obvious they are advertising your products. Having them give reviews of your product is an excellent choice. Overall, you don’t use influencers to create commercials. Instead, the strategy is closer to the product placement you see in movies or television shows. Today, the most popular social media network for companies looking for influencers is Instagram.
Use Social Media for Business to Business Marketing
Another thing social media can be used for is increasing the success of your B2B, business to business, marketing efforts. Today, almost all businesses have social media accounts. As such, social media can give you far better access to other businesses for B2B transactions than other options like trade shows or other networking events.
Targeting businesses with social media marketing is a bit different than targeting regular consumers. Keep that in mind when developing your B2B social media strategy & best practices. Business owners want to know what you can specifically offer than in a B2B relationship. Gear your social media posts directed at possible business partners in a more professional fashion and use your accounts to really emphasize your expertise in your own industry.
Use Social Media to Reinforce Your Branding
One mistake many companies make with social media is simply handing over the keys to a 20-something social media manager fresh out of college and basically letting them run wild with their accounts. While this can produce some amusing posts from time to time, your branding can easily be trashed.
For example, fresh college graduates tend to be hyper-political neophytes. As such, they may go more political with their social media posting than would be the case with your more controlled marketing strategies. In worst-case scenarios, those social media posts could end up alienating half of your customer base. Overall, social media posts and accounts should never go off-brand. They should, instead, only contain on-brand messaging as would be the case with a television commercial or any other advertisement you would spend your marketing dollar on.
Track Your Success
You won’t know how successful your social media marketing is if you don’t actually track the numbers. You should know exactly how much of your business is coming from specific social media posts. Use a tool like Google Analytics to track the conversion rates, bounce rates, and other important stats produced from your social media activity.
Knowing which posts produced the highest number of sales and which failed at doing so is extremely important information to have. It can help you fine-tune your entire social media marketing strategy to maximize your returns on each marketing dollar spent. Not tracking the numbers like this can mean you’re just wasting a lot of time on superfluous social media posting that isn’t really making a difference for your bottom line.
Today, social media is one of the most powerful marketing platforms on the planet. It can give you a direct line to millions of consumers you would never reach with traditional advertising platforms like magazine ads or television commercials. However, you can also waste a lot of time on social media if you don’t understand how to best leverage it to market your products. Put the effort into using social media correctly. It will pay off in the end.
