Social media is a powerful way to engage consumers, promote brand awareness and generate leads. Many large corporations have entire teams dedicated to social media strategy and implementation while small and medium-sized businesses are still trying to create a strong social media presence. Regardless of your industry or business size, there are a few social media strategies that will help your business get noticed online. Let’s take a look at the top five social media tips.
Visual Content Will Rule
Visual content is becoming increasingly popular. Entire social media platforms, like Vine and Instagram, cater to viewers who adore capturing and sharing real life moments. For businesses, these platforms are particularly useful in engaging clients. In addition to video, a recent study showed that one in three social media users made a purchase after viewing images of a product on sites like Pinterest.
Focus on Engagement
While social media has long been used as a customer engagement tool, businesses in 2014 are getting more creative with their engagement campaigns. Companies are harnessing the power of predictive tools to make better social media – and business – decisions. Businesses are focused on using social media to illustrate value in their industry while rewarding engaged customers and brand advocates.
Create Share-worthy Content
Social media is a powerful tool if businesses can produce share-worthy content. Increasing brand awareness, generating leads and creating conversions stems from a business’ ability to create interesting, valuable content worthy of being shared. This means that businesses will need to plan, curate and publish interesting content on a regular basis to keep a brand-centered conversation going through social media channels.
Accurately Target Your Audience
Using social media wisely in 2014 will mean that brands need to spend more time creating buyer personas and accurately targeting their audience with social media posts. Doing so will allow businesses to empower brand advocates to influence others who may benefit from a product or service. This form of influencer marketing has proven to be a powerful source of lead generation for businesses of any size.
Promote Your Brand
Online advertising is much more than PPC campaigns and banner ads. Social media has become a robust advertising platform for many businesses. In fact, a recent study estimates that over 75% of small and medium-sized businesses are planning to maintain or increase their current social media advertising budget. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are popular choices for businesses seeking increased exposure with over 10% planning to invest in advertising through these social media channels.
Keep Google+ in Mind
Google+ is quickly becoming one of the most popular platforms for finding local businesses. In fact, Google+ is in the process of testing an advertising system that may benefit businesses later in 2014. Google’s efforts to increase relevance and value for customers led to the formation of in-post advertising. The idea behind this move is that brands will be able to create quality post content that can be easily promoted throughout the Google Display Network.
Small Businesses Need to Keep Up
Unlike large corporations, nearly one-third of small businesses do not have a website. In a web-driven world, this means small businesses are at a disadvantage and are potentially losing customers by the second. To keep up in an increasingly competitive virtual environment, businesses will need to update their social media strategy with the goal of increasing customer engagement.
Do you have questions about advertising on social media? Are you struggling to perfect your social media strategy? To learn more about 1 Internet Marketing’s services, contact us online today.
