Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing in general is a relatively new marketing phenomena over the last 10+ years. This evolution has been one of the fastest developing forms of marketing seen by businesses in the past 100+ years. By comparison, it took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users. Verses television which took 13 years. Compared to Facebook which took 3.5 years. Countered by Instagram which took a half of a year.
This has since created an increasingly congested space, that is constantly grasping for everyone’s attention. With this in mind, the only way to win is to participate, but participate with patience and strategy. In order to do so, let’s start by looking at some initial key considerations.
Developing your voice
It is important to have a general idea of how you want to portray your brand on social media. Do you want to be a thought leader? Do you want to be witty, or funny? Are you trying to attract customers to buy your product?
Chances are you can do all of these. However, if you at least understand your goals for your social media marketing plan you can accomplish a few key items. Fundamentally you want to come across as authentic and the best way to do this is just be yourself. Understanding at the same time that the only way to win in social is to be active and continuously evolve your strategy as you learn.
Deciding on what platform(s)
A theme you will continuously hear when discussing social is that you have to be active. So with that, I always suggest to organizations pick what you consider the “easiest” platform and get started. Typically after getting started in one platform, it is “easy” with a little upfront strategy to pick up on another platform.
However, if you are at ground zero – start with Facebook. As of the second quarter of 2018, Facebook had 2.23 billion monthly active users on the platform. Now sure, you can’t go anywhere without someone saying that “Facebook is dying” and “users are leaving at an alarming pace.” However, at the time of this post the data simply does not support that…YET.
Besides to shear volume of monthly users, Facebook also offers many different tools (or mediums) to post your content. You are able to post long form content (60k+ characters), you can post pictures, you can post video, etc… If you compare this flexibility to other platforms, some offer all of these capabilities but they come up constraints. Case in point, the 288 character limit of Twitter.
Lastly, don’t take this information about Facebook and think, “Awesome, so I just need to master Facebook and forget the rest.” Wrong, I am only suggesting to start with Facebook. From there learn your social audience. Only then do you strategize your next move to YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Snap, LinkedIn, etc…
Understand your audience
This concept will undoubtedly taken the longest to get dial in, and I briefly introduced the concept when discussing Facebook. Even the most developed companies using social media would likely tell you they are still constantly experimenting, learning, and adapting their strategy. So what does that really mean?
In order to truly find lasting success, you must develop your brands formula of speed, timeliness, depth, and voice as you begin posting on any platform. Likewise, you cannot assume that you can find lasting success on all platforms, simply posting the same content out everywhere. What you will find over time is that your content on Twitter may not hit the same nerve with users on Instagram. Developing native content for each platform takes more time, but in the end it will result in longer term success connecting deeply with your audience.
Whats next?
I hope this simply gets your thoughts going. Social Media Marketing is such a complex, and ever changing topic that simply writing a 700 word blog post will not do it justice. If you have questions, if you want more info. Reach out today and start a chat with Rauch Digital about how you get connect with your customers on social media.
