Join the Conversation: Social Media and your Brand!
As social media continues to grow in the mainstream marketing capacity, we cannot highlight enough the importance of all companies & brands having an active social media presence to help promote their services and products. There are millions of people all over the world who are engaged on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social media platforms. That means your current and future clients are very likely on social media in one form or another … You want to connect with them, right? The answer should be a resounding “Yes!!”. Unfortunately, the truth is that many businesses are intimidated by social media and hesitant to start such a daunting project.
Those of you who feel you have already mastered social media may be asking yourselves, “what’s so scary about Facebook?” Well, imagine starting your experience with Facebook over, from scratch. You have no friends, fans (it even sounds terrible), wall posts or interactions … you can’t even create a custom URL for your page since Facebook requires a Page to first have 30 fans before you can even consider having a vanity url. So, now what? How do you get those first followers? Some brands probably never had to worry about this. Starbucks, for example, has nearly 31 million fans. Although it is obvious that Starbucks invests a lot of time into its page, evidenced by its strong branding, calls to action, and daily posts; people are eager to hear from their favorite coffee shop. Even if Starbucks wasn’t as active as they are on their Page, they still wouldn’t have an issue of obtaining followers because of their popularity all around the world! Even more so, changes that occur at Starbucks have an effect on a vast population of people and Facebook allows people to stay up to date with the coffee chain.
So what if you aren’t as well known as Starbucks? Or you only serve a small fraction of the population? Social media can be and should be used by all businesses and companies. The truth is, millions of people are on Facebook alone. You can reach out to that audience very easily. Once you add in other major social media players, such as Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and YouTube, you will have the the ability to reach a wide range of your audience in different ways — This means you can position yourself according to the social media channel to effectively target the appropriate population. It takes time and effort to gather a following, but, trust us, it will be well worth it.
Let people know you are on social media! It may seem obvious but a lot of brands don’t promote themselves the way they should. Why not have your employees add your Facebook URL and Twitter handle to their email signature? Be sure to include your social media URLs in all promotional material. You may also want to have an integrated feed of various channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, posted on your website. If you go this route, be sure to not go too long without tweeting or posting a FB status; otherwise, your feed, and in general your site, can look stale and not up to date. The purpose of Twitter is to engage in a constant flow of information. If you are tweeting only once or twice a week just to tweet, people are going to be turned off. It will look as though you don’t really care about engaging with your audience.
Don’t use social media only as a place for self-promotion. Make sure you are posting interesting content that gives your brand a personality. Pictures are popular because everyone will see them while they are scrolling down their newsfeed, unlike a status update that can be easily skipped over. Encourage people to participate on your page- ask questions, run a caption contest, ask your audience to submit photos. Most importantly, though, don’t just post links to your website/blog. Social media is about creating and building relationships.
Consider running Facebook advertisements. This is a great way to reach out to a specific demographic of the population. Our social strategists encourage companies to run Facebook ad campaigns because they can be so perfectly tailored to any group of the population. You can choose from a variety of population filters to specify the target of your ads, such as zip code, gender, age, and even particular interests! If you happen to be a web design company, you can target to people who are interested in web design, graphic design, design school, etc. We also recommend A/B targeting which means running the same ad but targeting it to different interests and demographics and then comparing the results. Facebook ads do not have to link back to your Facebook page. Increase the traffic, and hopefully the leads, to your website by directing clicks to your website!
The point is, companies of all sizes can be active on social media and maintain a solid following. All that is required is the willingness to engage with your audience. This is an opportunity to show your personality as a brand. So what are you waiting for? Join the conversation!
