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7 Social Media Marketing Myths, Busted

One of your greatest foes as an entrepreneur is misinformation. There is a lot of erroneous advice online, especially when it comes to social media marketing. Unfortunately, much of this guidance seems reasonable on paper. Without the right research or knowledge, you may end up unwittingly endangering the future of your business. Here are seven common social media marketing myths you need to watch out for.

  1. Negative feedback can be safely ignored
    Social media marketing isn’t just about promoting the positive parts of your brand. It also involves managing any and all negative feedback directed at your business. Ignore those snipes and jabs and they will fester online, convincing consumers to ignore your brand at a time when you need every single customer to help your company grow. When you find negative feedback, answer it — strategically. Respond to all comments quickly. Not only can you tamp down on negative feedback before it gains any ground, but quick responses will show that you listen and respond to customer concerns, even if they are negative.

Matt Broussard, content creator and chef at Spiceology in Spokane, commands more than three million followers on TikTok, and as he shares, “All feedback, both positive and negative, has merit. As a chef, that’s what I live on: how a dish is, what it needs, how I can improve it, etc. I don’t push off negative comments, because that helps fuel how I iterate my recipes.”

  1. Email is no longer relevant
    Social media marketing should not be considered a replacement for other methods, but rather a tool to augment your customer reach. Email still has a role to play in your marketing campaigns, so keep those recipient lists and e-marketing campaigns around. They are still worth your time.
  1. All content represents thought leadership
    Content marketing is an integral part of social media marketing. The social platform is what you use to efficiently distribute content to your users, and the content itself is responsible for perpetuating and developing your brand. However, many entrepreneurs falsely equate all content with thought leadership.

Your best content is what will likely give you that kind of authority over your audience. Some of it will revolve around answering questions or giving the market exactly what they asked for. This is less about thought leadership than appealing to your audience directly. The distinction is important, because without it, you may create content that doesn’t reinforce your brand’s authority and trustworthiness.

Read more: 7 Social Media Marketing Myths, Busted

Useful Tips To Build Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media is an incredible tool that has allowed billions of people all over the world to connect with others and stay updated on the world. It lets you keep up with your favourite athletes or celebrities, as well as make friends all over the world. It allows you to communicate with other like-minded individuals on nearly every topic under the sun.

By Wendy Dessler

In addition to being great for users to get their news and entertain themselves, it can also be great for businesses. Social media marketing can be great for promoting an array of different products and services and can grow companies and brands quickly.

However, building out your social media marketing strategy can be intimidating at times. Thankfully, having to create your social media content strategy doesn’t have to be a nightmare. With that in mind, this article is going to go over a few tips to build a great social media marketing strategy for 2020.

Know Who You’re Trying to Reach

The most important part of any social media marketing strategy is to know your target market. They are the individuals that you feel want or need your product the most and are most likely to convert into customers. When researching your target market, be sure to look at things like their age, their education, their gender, their hobbies and interests and several other things.

Being aware of your target can make it much easier to create content that they will enjoy or find value in. If you simply make assumptions on your target without doing research of any kind, your success (if any) is likely to be limited. You have a ton of data out there at your disposal, so you might as well use it.

Be Aware of the Benefits and Drawbacks of Different Platforms
Next, you need to think about the social media platforms themselves. While your marketing strategy can include different platforms, you need to break down the benefits and drawbacks of different platforms. Some content will surely perform better on certain platforms than others. You need to keep this in mind when creating content for specific platforms.

For example, YouTube and TikTok are likely best for videos, Instagram for pictures and Facebook or Twitter are often the best for text. Also, be sure to take advantage of the certain features included on different platforms, such as Instagram Stories.

Once you know about the benefits and drawbacks of a platform, you can create customized and engaging content for said platform. If you create one piece of content and spread it across all of your different platforms and channels, it won’t be as effective.

Read more: Useful Tips To Build Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

How to Use Empathetic Marketing in Your Social Media Strategy

If you’re like 44% of people worldwide, you’ve been spending more time on social media during the pandemic. Whether you’re catching up on the latest news on Twitter or chatting with family on Facebook, social media has allowed us to stay connected.

But as a small business owner, are you spending more time on social media being empathetic?

While sometimes confused with sympathy, which is feeling compassion for someone else, empathy means putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes.

By empathizing with your customers, you can better serve them.

Here’s the Merriam Webster definition of empathy: “the action of (or capacity for) understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.”

It’s important to take an empathetic approach in all of your marketing materials, from your website copy to your social media strategy.

Because social media offers such a great way to interact with a large audience, you should be willing to put in the time and effort to ensure your communications are not only engaging, but empathetic to what people are going through.

According to the Braze Brand Humanity Index research, around 65% of people were more loyal to brands they felt a human connection with.

So to help you get—and stay connected—with your customers, here are four ways a small business owner can build a social media presence with more empathetic content marketing.

Create an empathy map.
This can be a good first step to put you deeper into the mind of your customer. Originally a tool used in the design and agile development worlds, empathy mapping provides a deeper understanding of your customer. It’s usually split into four quadrants: says, thinks, does and feels.

With your target customer’s persona in the middle, you begin to brainstorm questions, like:

  • Why do you need my product?
  • How does using my product make you feel/think/do/say?
  • What are some stressors/fears in your life?
  • How does my product help you reach your goals?
  • Write out your customer’s thoughts the way you think he or she would express. Their needs, wants, desires, hopes, fears, goals and dreams will start to be more clear, and you’ll be able to build a social media presence using messaging that resonates with your followers.

Tap into your customers’ emotions.
I’m not talking about playing on their fears to sell your products, but rather, thinking about how your product makes them feel.

Here’s a way that a brand helped ease their smallest customers’ fears. Philips invented a miniature version of a CAT scanner called the ‘KittenScanner,’ which doctors use to educate kids about the MRI process and put them at ease. Children can try it out with toy animals, taking the focus off of their procedure and onto fun.

It was created back in 2004, but it still gets mentioned on social media, in videos and in health journals as a way to reduce the need for sedation. How could you position your brand in a helpful, stress-reducing way for your customers?

Read more: How to Use Empathetic Marketing in Your Social Media Strategy

5 Mistakes You Might Be Making in Social Media Marketing

Social media is one of the best ways to market your business, no matter what industry you belong to. This is because platforms like Facebook and Instagram have millions (or even billions) of active monthly users, and you can easily reach out to them by sharing relevant and interesting content.

That said, here are 5 common mistakes you need to avoid in social media marketing.

Overlooking Branding
There are thousands of large and small businesses posting on social media, so you need a unique brand image in order to stand out. Use various components, particularly the color palette, communication tone and language, and an attractive logo.

When you share images and videos on social media for marketing, make sure they include your company logo, making your brand more recognizable and memorable. If you don’t have one, use a professional designer or freelancer. You can’t use a machine to create a logo, even though these services can be affordable. Only a graphic designer can understand your brand requirements perfectly.

Buying Followers
It’s clear that social media and influencers are changing ecommerce by affecting the very dynamics of marketing. However, do you know that most social media celebrities have tons of paid followers? Many brands and influencers purchase followers, and there are many easily accessible platforms for that.

If you’re considering this step, stop right there. Most platforms have advanced algorithms that can detect accounts that have paid or fake followers, and you could be banned if you’re found to be engaging in this practice. Also, you won’t be able to generate actual interest for your brand online as these fake followers won’t interact with your shared content. So, it’s better to get as many organic followers as possible.

Ignoring the Comments Section
One of the biggest reasons brands are active on social media is to be able to interact with their target audience in a relaxed, comfortable environment. If you want the best results from your social media marketing campaigns, it’s important to interact and engage with your followers on a regular basis.

Responding to comments on posts is a great way to improve your social media engagement. Whether you get praises or complaints, addressing them promptly and professionally will ensure your customers are happy. You can also register their feedback in order to avoid doing things that upset them in the future.

Read more: 5 Mistakes You Might Be Making in Social Media Marketing

4 tips to elevate videos for social media marketing

Most social media managers know they must incorporate visual content into their plans.

Dynamic videos and video clips are increasingly becoming part of this strategy, too. Now, 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool—up from 63% the previous year—according to HubSpot. With video content becoming an integral part of an organization’s overall marketing strategy, it’s more important than ever to make sure it’s executed seamlessly, professionally and in a way that will drive a return on investment.

Although the social media world is ever-changing and requires innovation and experimentation daily, social media managers and corporate video editors can keep in mind a few best practices to drive results, foster engagement and increase followers. Here are four for managing video content marketing for Avid’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts:

Optimize for mobile.  Brightcove’s Global Video Index found 53% of global video views begin on smartphones and tablets, siphoning market share from desktop computers. On top of that, social media platforms have been redesigned to cater to mobile. Instagram, for instance, doesn’t make it easy for everyday users to upload content in its desktop version. CNET details how users can bypass this problem so they don’t have to transfer images from their computer to their phone. CNET notes Instagram’s adoption of a mobile-first mentality. Failing to optimize for mobile is a crucial misstep when you’re creating videos for social media channels. If you’re uploading content that’s suited only for horizontal versus square formats, followers probably won’t bother to watch it.

Read more: 4 tips to elevate videos for social media marketing

4 Top Social Media Marketing Strategies to Drive Your Brand

In the entire realm of digital marketing, social media marketing strategies have exploded as one of the most popular methods of sharing information and offers with your audience on the Internet today. It takes more than signing up to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms and posting random information or an advertisement every day if you want your business to succeed. With the help of a professional marketing team and your understanding of the strategies outlined below, you can create a simple yet effective plan to make the most from your social posting efforts.

Audience Targeting Is Essential for Social Media Marketing Strategies

Before you post anything, take time to fully understand who your target audience is and how you can connect to them most effectively. This also answers the question about why you want to be on social media anyway. Of course, most of the connected world visits one of the top platforms every day, so it makes sense that you should market there, too. However, if you do not know your audience, you will waste time on the wrong platform or delivering the wrong type of content.

Effective social media marketing strategies require target research. Different age groups, geographic locations, and overall demographics use different platforms. For example, even though Facebook remains the most popular social media site in the world, more young people flock to Instagram these days. You need to know where your audience is, so you can attract their attention.

Read more: 4 Top Social Media Marketing Strategies to Drive Your Brand

How To Choose Perfect Social Media Platforms For Marketing Your Business In 2020 

In your daily routine of running your business, it is very difficult to make time and be active on all the social media platforms. Shrinking down the choice of the platforms will help you focus and be efficient. It will get the best result on time and money for your investment. But now is not your daily routine. Most of you are stuck in lock-down due to COVID-19 with minimal time to do your regular business activities. This is the perfect time to work on your Digital Marketing Strategies. You can now think about taking your business to Social Media Marketing in this Social Distancing Scenario. Now the question is which Social Media Platform to choose for your business. Well don’t worry, this post is specifically designed for you by the team at Accetrix – Digital Marketing Company in Ahmedabad, India.

Here are the important steps to determine which platform is perfect for marketing your business. Where people go beyond ordinary ways and use different ways to connect online for all kinds of reasons.

Step 1: Recognize your target audience and budget for marketing?
This is very crucial. Be as specific as possible, as it will be easy to create your marketing campaign.

Jot down the answers to the following questions and any other relevant questions related to your business industry. In array to help you build your target audience and the budget for the campaign.

  • What is your target demographics?
  • Are they male or female?
  • How much do they earn?
  • Their education level
  • What are their Hobbies?
  • What are your brand image and message?
  • How much are you willing to spend?
  • What is your campaign goal?

Step 2: Define and describe your Goal
Once you have identified the goal and budget for your social media campaign, you need to define the goal for your audience.

As a businessman, your prime aim is possibly be to boost sales by attracting more customers.

Read more: How To Choose Perfect Social Media Platforms For Marketing Your Business In 2020

The Difference Between Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing (and Why You Should Care)

Many people use digital marketing and social media marketing interchangeably. They believe that engaging in different social media platforms is digital marketing, but this is just a part of it.

Digital marketing is an umbrella term that encompasses all types of marketing activities that a brand performs digitally, both online and offline, to promote their services or products. Social media marketing, on the other hand, is one of the channels of digital media marketing. It involves marketing on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

What is Digital Media Marketing?

According to the dictionary, marketing is the action of promoting business’ products or services to make them more noticeable to the people and drive sales. The addition of the word ‘digital’ to marketing means utilizing digital media channels to promote your products or services.

Digital marketing is about the implementation of a variety of customized digital media marketing channels to achieve any of the following objectives:

  • To grow your products or services sales and profits
  • Create your brand awareness and build a strong relationship with your target audience
  • Create and add value
  • Promote your products or services or brand
  • And many more!

Read more: The Difference Between Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing (and Why You Should Care)

 

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TRENDS FOR 2020

The increased proliferation of social media, alongside advances in AI technology, means the capabilities of digital advertising platforms are changing and improving all the time.

Below we run through some of the biggest updates on social media in 2019 and what we can expect looking ahead into 2020.

What changed for social media marketing in 2019?

Improvements to the Facebook Ads Manager interface

Facebook is always making small changes to the design and functionality of Business Manager. But in April of 2019, the Ads Manager interface was redesigned to incorporate a number of new features. They included:

  • New navigational experience in Ads Manager – this update made it easier for advertisers to navigate through multiple ads and ad sets.
  •  Integrated search and filter function – a combined search and filter bar let advertisers search or select filters to find ads, ad sets or campaigns.
  •  Dynamic action bar – now shows only the most frequently used actions, making it easier to determine what changes may have affected your ads.

Introduction of Messenger Ads & Chatbots

AI-powered chat services are popping up on many sites worldwide — it’s never been so important to incorporate them into your 2020 marketing strategy.

Chatbots and Messenger ads empower marketers to give prospective buyers full focus, enabling maximum engagement, and converting them into paying customers.

Read more: SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TRENDS FOR 2020

How Important are Hashtags to Social Media Marketing?

The modern-day hashtag has come a long way. From its birth name, the octothorpe, to being called the pound symbol used when dialing phone numbers to now being referred to as a hashtag, used to categorize topics on social media, that little symbol has been through a lot.

The hashtag’s first appearance on the web was found on the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) application in 1988. Within the IRC, people could chat with one another about specific topics in channels labeled with hashtags. Example: if you wanted to chat about flowers for your yard, you’d go to the channel “#gardens”. Pretty simple, right?

Well, in August 2007, Twitter user and social media expert Chris Messina changed the history of digital marketing with a single tweet.

Not long after Messina’s now-famous tweet, hashtags started popping up across Twitter and their official use was instituted by the company in 2009. Other social media platforms noticed and soon adopted the hashtag as well.

Do They Drive Engagement?

Nowadays, from a digital marketing standpoint, how are they beneficial? Hashtags help drive engagement by linking consumers directly to brands. On Instagram, they help sort and organize the content posted by the platform’s 1 billion active monthly users. Not only can users search for a specific hashtag in all social media platforms, but on Instagram and LinkedIn, they also have the option to “follow” a hashtag. This allows content from a specific hashtag to pop up in the users’ newsfeed. So whether they’re following or just searching, using hashtags relevant to your brand helps reach consumers who normally wouldn’t have been exposed to your brand’s content.

Read more: How Important are Hashtags to Social Media Marketing?