5 Things Your Brand Needs to Understand About Social Media Marketing
“Social media is the new future!”
That is a phrase you have probably heard countless times. Well, guess what? The future is here, and it is not going anywhere. A new community, social media, has emerged and virtually everyone is migrating there. It is a wave nobody wants to miss out on. Yet, many brands have not realized how much they can leverage on this tool to reach a wider audience.
Image Credit: hootsuite.com
As a brand that is starting out, merely having a content strategy is not enough anymore. There has to be a clearly laid-out social media strategy. Here’s exactly why?
No communication strategy is complete without social media.
By social media strategy, I do not mean creating a profile and of course the random and oftentimes misguided contents. It goes beyond all of that. Have an in-depth plan that outlines how your brand intends to increase audience engagement. One that revolves around creating a healthy environment that encourages real conversations with the audience you are serving. Keeping in mind all of these, let us look at the things your social media strategy should not fail to get right.
- Find your brand voice and tone.
Start by defining your brand. If your brand were to be a person, who would it be? A funny person? An outspoken one? A daring fellow? Define that identity from the on-set because it lays the foundation for every other brand communication. Find your own authentic voice, then go all out on it with your creative storytelling. Discover the most efficient way to connect with your target audience. However, with different situations and subgroups of your target audience, comes different tones. The tone you would apply on a not-so-educated angry buyer in his mid-twenties, would definitely not be the same with the way you’d handle a much enlightened person in his late-forties.
An excellent example of a brand with a well-defined voice would be Nike.
Now, let me paint a mental picture of Nike.
I see a person who believes that everybody can achieve anything if only we are able to defeat that fearful and lazy voice in our head. A person who believes we should live our dreams even if no one believes in it.
And that has basically been the major drive behind every of their communication; from campaigns to posters and other advertising materials. They approached their audience from an emotive and inspirational standpoint, understanding that humans first of all connect with things emotionally then thereafter, justify it with logic. These days we can tell which ad is Nike, even before we see their actual logo.
That right there is a top-notch delivery of brand voice.
2. Develop a rich content and engagement strategy.
Realising the volume of content that is being churned out on social media daily, makes you fully aware of the fact that it is easy for brands to get lost in the crowd. Hence to stand out, it is necessary to intentionally establish a good content and engagement strategy to continually stay fresh in the minds of your audience. When done rightly, it builds loyal users and ultimately promotes brand awareness through free word of mouth advertising in the long-run.
Brand-Customer relationship just like every other relationship, requires communication to build intimacy and loyalty.
Through the day-to-day discussions, it becomes easier for brands to really understand who their audience is in terms of what they like, what they don’t like, where their interest lies, what keeps them engaged etc. The ability to put all of these into consideration in your content pillar, helps you ensure you are connecting with them in the right way even in your content delivery. However, the question still boils down to what message are you exactly pitching to your audience? Generally, people are aspirational, which makes it essential for brand positioning to grow from a brand message/value point of view other than that of price.
Never position your brand as a low budget one because when you eventually decide to re-position as a premium brand it is going to be a bit of a struggle and oftentimes you might just end up reintroducing a new product for that space. Psychologically, people don’t want to be associated with cheap brands. Truth! They might do so in the short-run but as soon as their purchasing power increases, they will opt for a more luxury brand.
3. Recognize the right platforms for you.
There are over 65 social networking platforms on the internet with each one having its unique advantage over the others. But how do you know which social network you need to operate on? Let us look at these four social media platforms.
Instagram: It is primarily a photo and video-sharing platform that particularly benefit brands that are into product display. Great pictures appeal to the human mind which is why people can stay glued on a brand’s Instagram page for a longer time without even realizing it. Brands that can exploit this space include Business-to-Consumer (b2c) and Consumer-to-Consumer (c2c) brands. Example includes fashion designers, makeup artists, artists, illustrators etc.
Business-to-Business (b2b) brands such as tech firms, advertising agencies, hospitality brands etc, can also use this platform to showcase their work environment, culture and success.
Twitter: This structure of this platform is primarily built for conversations. Hence, it is easier for people to vent here than any other platform. A brand that’s keen on customer service and satisfaction should have an active profile on this platform. Responding strategically to a tweet here might just be the key to stopping your brand from going viral for the wrong reasons. It is a great tool for every brand ranging from the banking sector to Fintechs and other industries at large.
Facebook: Interestingly, a larger number of Nigerians exist on this platform which means that it has a larger database of user information — which makes it easier to run targeted ads. Deeper and more enclosed interactions work pretty well because of the existence of groups and pages. Sales and marketing brands can use this tool to interpret different user personas.
YouTube: A picture is worth a thousand words. Well guess what’s worth a thousand pictures? A video. Unlike Instagram that permits one-minute videos, YouTube allows you upload a more lengthy video. With this tool, brands that have behind-the-scenes videos can conveniently share with their audiences. It is a great tool for explaining things visually. One that will be a good asset for manufacturers, online creators and tutors, media natives etc.
4. Build a balanced team.
Extensively, the role of a team is pivotal in determining the success or failure of a brand. Realizing that your audience is a mix of different personas, makes it even more imperative to build a team that views the world from different lenses.
This balanced team may seem elusive, but here is a tip on the three essential actors that need to be represented accordingly.
- The maven:
These are the enlightened and well-informed ones in the room with a broad knowledge of topics and issues that span across different sects of life. It is safe to say that they can predict and forecast people’s reactions to various information. When everyone is carried away with an insight, they are the ones raising concerns about certain issues that might go wrong in that communication.
Although their feedback can sometimes be a lot to handle (I mean nobody likes when their idea is being shot in the head), no healthy team is complete without them.
- The connector:
They know everybody! Like practically everybody! There is hardly anyone they don’t know or at least have someone that knows them. Networking is one of their greatest assets. Building the right relationships comes natural to them regardless of the occasion. The beautiful thing about this is that they keep similar circle of people as friends. Which means your brand can leverage on them to gain access to a wider reach of resources from prospective business partners to influencers, to media practitioners etc. A partnership that is going to grow your business much faster than your competitors at little or no cost.
- The salesman:
What’s a brand without a salesman? No one does marketing like these ones. They can sell anything and everything. Persuasion and negotiation is the forte of this team member. You are sure of driving leads, closing that business deal and converting your business effort to sales with them on your team.
5. Understand your analytics
You can’t grow what you don’t know. Likewise, you can’t help or influence your audience if you don’t have a clear understanding of their behavioural patterns.
Data is king now! Monitor your brand metrics across each platform you are profiled on and know the real time engagements on your posts.
Engagements do not mean the number of followers you have. It includes the likes, comments and impressions of each content.
Recognize the contents that are doing well, analyze what you did well and then couch more contents that tilt towards that space.
Useful social management tools that you can use to achieve this: Socialbakers, HootSuite, Sendibles, Sprout Social etc.
Additionally, make use of unstructured content and online conversations (twitter is a very good platform for this) to better understand your brand audience in their natural state. Observations from this will give a richer insight to your audience expectation and help you build more user-generated products and campaigns to serve them better.
Major takeout
Social media strategy is one that should not be ignored at all. If your brand can not handle it in-house, hire an expert to do it. But never ignore it. Strategy execution can only be smooth sailing if the foundation has been set right. Understand your audience, build the right team that listens to them then continually grow with them. Find the right social media management tool to help you organize your content better. Then lastly, show some empathy even in your brand tone so as to build a long lasting emotional connection with your audience.
Many thanks to Sope, Feran, Ife and Eniola for reviewing and editing this piece and also for the constructive feedback. I really appreciate it.
