Each week, the average adult spends a day looking at their mobile phones according to one report on eMarketer.com. It’s not surprising that people are getting more involved in social media than ever before. As of this moment, Facebook remains the most popular social media platform, topping YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. Plus, Facebook is the platform of choice by a majority of online brand managers according to the 2019 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Michael A. Stelzner published in May of 2019.
If you choose a social media platform such as Facebook for your marketing campaign, you get the advantage of requiring fewer resources and effort compared to traditional marketing campaigns launched on television or radio. Also, GlobalWebIndex claims that the internet makes up 57% of global media consumption. This means people are spending more time on the internet rather than watching television, listening to the radio, or reading printed media.
So, if you plan on launching a brand on a social media platform, you must have a well-thought-out marketing strategy. Otherwise, you’ll just end up posting on your brand page just for the sake of posting. Understanding what your goals are, knowing who your target audience is, and knowing what they want are some of the keys to success to get some positive results.
Read on to find out what you need to know before you start marketing yourself on social media.
1. Why do you want to put your business on social media?
First and foremost, you must ask yourself why you want your business on social media in the first place. Are you on social media to promote your products? To drive traffic to your website? Or to serve your customers? You need clear answers to these before you get started. Once you have a clear picture of what you want, then its time to set up some goals. These goals could be any of the following:
- Increase brand awareness
- Divert web traffic to your business site
- Generate new leads
- Build a community of followers around your business
- Listen to your followers and provide customer support
- Increase sales
You may have one or a few more goals in mind and that’s perfectly fine. If you run your own business by yourself, you would want to focus on a few goals at a time until your business grows. Then you can hire a team to help you with long-term goals.
2. Who is your target audience?
Now that you have a clear idea of why you chose social media as your marketing platform, you will have to figure out who are you going to sell your brand to. For instance, travel and lifestyle brands are very appealing to those who enjoy going to new places and share photos of themselves at these locations on social media platforms such as Instagram. But your brand might not be about travel, so we need to figure that one out!
Knowing who your target audience is necessary for you to market yourself correctly. You can identify who they are using this simple process:
- Who are they? (job title, age group, gender, salary, location, etc.)
- What are they interested in that your brand can provide? (entertainment, educational content, little things that go with your product/service, etc.)
- Where do they hang out? (could be Facebook, Instagram, or other niche platforms like Reddit and so on)
- Why do they consume content? (to give them an edge at their profession, health and beauty tips, dating, etc.)
- How do they consume content? (reading social media posts, watching videos online, etc.)
Grab a piece of paper and answer these questions. Don’t be afraid to use your imagination! Once you’re done, you’ll have a rough idea of who you need to target when you start marketing your small business on social media.
3. What are you going to share?
A simple way to do so is just posting relevant and original content. It could be photos of your products or anything related to your brand. But the secret to standing out among your competitors is creativity. You could take the simple strategy we mentioned up a notch by creating a “theme” surrounding your brand. This theme could change from time to time and could depend on factors such as the seasons, new trends, current events, and so on.
Don’t over-promote though—variety is key. You might want to mix it up by…
- Offering incentives or promotions for people who follow you on social media
- Educating followers about things relevant to your brand to build authority
- Getting attention with conversation-starting posts by asking questions or creating polls
- Showing appreciation for your customers and top fans by featuring them
- Entertaining followers with a little humor relevant to their interest
These are great ways of getting attention and likes. You can keep your content relevant and interesting without being monotonous, and get your followers engaged by interacting through your posts.
Once you’ve got a clear idea of what you want to share, don’t create your posts last minute! Get organized and create a social media calendar so you can plan high-quality posts ahead. With a calendar, you’ll be better able to meet any strategies or goals you set beforehand. Plus, you get to track all your posts and how they’re doing. Your social media content calendar should contain:
- Posts
- Links
- Images
- Hashtags
- Videos
- And other content
Follow these tips to help you get a clearer picture of what you want to do with marketing your brand on any social media platform. With these in mind, you’re off to a great start. Now let’s get social!