We all know how social media plays a big role in increasing your brand’s reach. In fact, businesses that are not using social media to further market their brands have been missing a huge ton of ROI. Apart from helping your brand establish a strong digital footprint, and help you keep in touch with your loyal community- social media gives your brand unlimited benefits compared to the age-old way of marketing.
While social media is a critical part of you and your customer’s lives- there are so many businesses misled on how to use it properly to their advantage. Perhaps, by now, you are still wondering why your social media marketing efforts are still falling flat. If you want to know how to increase your ROI with the help of social media, read on.
Rule # 1: You can’t improve what you can’t measure
Have you ever wondered about improving your campaigns, but are unsure how to start?
Most businesses struggle with the same flop when it comes to diagnosing what’s going wrong with their content marketing strategies.44% of CMO’s are actually unable to measure the impact of social media to their business. Meanwhile, 36% of them do have a qualitative sense of its impact, but not able to translate how social media is helping out when it comes to solid figures.
While you might think, “Maybe it’s safer to not do DIY social media management and marketing, I should go get some pros to do it” works, you also thought wrong. Even digital marketing agencies struggle with this part. Further research unveiled some more shocking truths- 28% of marketing agencies face difficulties trying to gauge the impact of social media on their initiatives. Take note, only 17% of them can quantify the impacts accurately. Click here to effectively measure yours.
Rule #2: Know who your audience are
Who are you writing for? What kind of people are subscribed to your social media channels? SmartInsights themselves found out that 51% of people would unfollow your brand if they find you posting annoying content. What best to avoid this new-age customer churn? You must fine-tune your postings according to their interests.
9% of people would unfollow your brand if you post too much, and 9% of them will unfollow your brand if you’ve been too quiet. Moral of the story, know what makes your audience tick. What would your audience want to see? Life hacks? Quick trivia? Some motivational posts? Promotional ones? If you are posting golden nuggets for them, then that’s what sets your brand apart from your competitors.
Keeping the personality of your brand is just as important as keeping your content relevant. Notice your audience, respond to their comments, reply immediately to complaints and queries- and you’ll be just fine. It’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends and keep your brand personality upbeat. While you might notice that you’ll still be getting unsubscribes, that’s totally okay. They might be 41.1% of people who still can’t relate to your content, and that’s perfectly fine. Remember that it is more important to engage with the right people rather than those who are not really interested in what you are posting.
Rule #3: Make sure your content speaks to the right audience
Let’s say that you were running a plastic surgery clinic. Would you rather post yours before and after pictures, or post-surgery success stories about vasectomy? Sounds a bit relevant. Read it slower this time. While a plastic surgery clinic might have more females interested in it, there’s no obvious need to post something about vasectomy. Same goes with your brand’s posts on social media.
Making sure that your content resonates with your target audience is the first step to building valuable engagements with them. The key to understanding what your target audience is doing online and what makes them interested in your content is through thorough campaign measuring. The demographics don’t lie.
Research from Sprout Social found out that 9% of people will unfollow a brand if they use language that does not fit the brand’s overall personality. Meanwhile, if you think your customers only enjoy freebies and discounts, bombarding them is also not a good idea. 46% of users will unfollow a brand if you are blast-posting too many promotional messages.
Avoid using slangs or jargons that your audience might not comprehend. For example, you are a beauty brand selling age-reset serums and foundation to cover up acne. Your brand tone, of course, must sound like you are promoting empowerment, confidence, freedom, and strength, regardless of the gender. How do you really find the perfect brand voice for your target audience? Click here.
Rule #4: Get the right posting frequency
1% of your audience will unfollow your brand if you are inactive in posting content. Your inactivity lets them presume that you are no longer in business, and therefore, you aren’t valuable to them anymore. You need to post on a regular basis to see what content is working for your followers.
Statistics from the Statista Charts show that brands send out the least number of post in a week during Sundays, but that particular day gets the strongest social media engagement. Posting multiple times in a day helps you generate better engagements and traffic.
Be sure to post multiple types of content with value to your readers.
73% of brands regularly track the engagements they get from their social media efforts. The metrics analyzed can be scarce, if you are to base it on reactions, comments and likes. It is definitely a must for you to watch your demographics to know when it’s the best time to post content.
For example, Hootsuite found out that top brands on Instagram enjoy a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21%, 58 times higher than Facebook and 120 times higher than Twitter. While you might be getting more engagements from one platform compared to the other, it’s important to post across all channels to secure a better result.
Rule #5: Use your socials to nurture your existing customer base
If you want to keep your customers loyal, social media is a key way in keeping in touch with them.
Research from Smart Insights found out that 63% of your customers expect companies to give them customer service via social media channels. 90% of these social media users have used social media as a means to communicate with businesses regarding their customer concerns. So, if you think a hotline would suffice all your customer service needs, think again. Omni-channel servicing is taking the world by storm, social media itself becomes a key driver for businesses to keep in touch with their customers.
While you might think responding to comments and removing negative insights from your social media channels would work, you need to take it one step higher. Sure, a well-engaged community might sound great, some discussions on your threads, a few responses to customer inquiries and a few likes to memes, but, here’s the real deal:
In a world where almost every customer is impatient, it’s time to get to using advanced tools to outrank your competitors in customer servicing. If your customers feel like they are valued, all you need to do is keep the good service coming, and they’ll always come back to you.
Rule # 6: Use visual content to stimulate better responses
Ever wondered why your ads are not getting the right traction it needs? Not enough ROI?
Truth is, visual content impacts your marketing efforts even in social media. How would you like a post that only talks about success in, let’s say, a dropshipping business? No screenshots, no proof of orders, no summary of earnings- just a plain summary of how they can help you grow your brand to a 7-figure milestone. Seems legit? No. Of course not.
People believe what they see. And now, more than ever, visual content is dominating the space of marketing itself. HubSpot’s research alone found out that visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared via social media platforms, surpassing all other types of content.
HubSpot’s 2018 survey even revealed that 54% of your consumers wanted to see more video content from a brand they support. Imagine how it could be a big no-no for your brand to publish social media posts without a video teaser. If you a promoting your products or services, or if you just plainly want to introduce yourself to your digital followers, putting up visual content immediately gives you the authority to own their attention.
But, what if you have no time for videos? Buzzsumo’s recent survey revealed that Facebook posts containing images are capable of drawing in 2.3x more engagement than those who don’t. So, why don’t you go ahead design that infographic or tell them about your newest promotion they might not want to miss?
Final Takeaways
Developing a content roadmap for your social media is not that difficult if you know what to write and who to write for. All you have to do is determine who your buyer persona is, select the best content they might want to see and keep your content fresh. The demographics don’t lie. A constant monitoring of your post engagements and improvement based on factual analysis would lead you to better tactics in upscaling your social media ROI.
