Social media marketing forms part of a well-rounded inbound marketing strategy. You can use it to promote your content, boost brand awareness, and give your business a voice. With so many demographics active across social networks on a global scale, it’s where you want to be, to engage, influence and convert.
According to a global overview report on social media use, there are some 4.6 billion active social media users, and that’s nearly 60% of the world’s population. The average time spent every day on social media is a whopping 2.27 hours. And people are using an average of 7.5 platforms each month. These numbers are telling, that to be seen, you need to be on the social media platforms, and perhaps, depending on relevancy, be on multiple platforms.
And so it all boils down to having an effective social media strategy, so your brand can be seen by the right audience at the right time.
What is social media strategy?
Put simply, a social media strategy is a plan that outlines your social media goals, the tactics used to achieve them and metrics tracked to measure performance.
Your strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. What you want is a simple and specific plan with meaningful measurables. This will help you to identify the channels and tactics that are successful, versus those that fall flat.
Ultimately, your social media strategy should drive brand awareness and engagement across social media channels for your target audience.
What is brand awareness?
Brand awareness represents how familiar your target audience is with your brand identity and how well they recognise it. Brands with high brand awareness are generally referred to as ‘trending’, ‘buzzworthy’, or simply ‘popular’ within their field. Establishing brand awareness is valuable when marketing and promoting your company and products, especially in the early stages of a business.
Here are some things our team at I Concept Singapore, your choice branding agency, often consider when drawing up social media strategy that best increases brand awareness.
- Choose the right platform(s) for your audience
Keeping up with all of the social media sites can be nearly impossible for many brands. The goal of social media marketing is to find your customers and your potential audience, so focus on the places where they spend the most time. Limiting your efforts to one to three sites will help to ensure that they’re manageable.
Also, it is important to be clear of your brand identity, and how certain platforms are better in line with your branding, and not force your brand to adapt to it.
- Deliver content and engage with audiences
Don’t share or repost the same message and content between platforms. It’s vital to create content specific to the type of social media that you’re using. And this is where skilled and smart digital copywriting comes into place. For example, Twitter is a place for short posts limited to 280 characters, and Facebook can often see better engagement with longer posts that accompany photos or videos. In comparison, Instagram is all about the quality visuals, and quick witty captions with emojis can go a long way.
Visuals will typically have a positive impact, regardless of which platform you choose. Facebook posts with images have 2.3x higher engagement than those without images. 80% of marketers use visual assets in social media marketing. The most common types of content are images (80%), videos (63%), blogs (60%), and live video (35%). Consider this when determining how to excite your audience, stand out from the competition, and connect with your followers.
- Encourage your audience to share your content
Social sharing is one of the greatest powers of this type of marketing. Not only do you reach your immediate audience, but you reach their network as well. The act of sharing is received as a recommendation from a friend, family member, influencer, or peer, which is essential to convincing potential consumers to become customers.
People who enjoy reposting tend to look for clever digital copywriting, those with humour, values-driven content, and posts that create an emotional attachment. Make creative posts during special occasions, and let it be an alternative to greeting cards that users will share. Remember to add social sharing options to your blogs, e-commerce store, and even certain email content so that your audience can share directly from those sources as well. Also, do use relevant hashtags in your posts for optimal tracking.
- Connect with and learn from influencers
Connect with influencers who share your audience, complement your offering, and don’t compete with you to tap into established groups of consumers. Joint venture partnerships with influencers can vary in structure. They may include exchanging content, packaging bundled giveaway offerings, and developing an affiliate fee structure. How complicated and involved you want to make these relationships is up to you. Also, follow influencers who make sense with your brand to observe and learn from their posts. See what they discuss and watch engagement levels to see what types of content work with their audiences. Your team can use their popular posts to spark new ideas for your brand.
- Mention influencers, partners, customers and more
Social media is about building a community, so don’t be stingy with your likes, comments, and shares. Developing a culture of engagement on your profiles will encourage others to do the same. Mentions are especially powerful. Customers and followers love being mentioned on social media. This simple act rewards your audience by making them feel recognized and appreciated. Mentioning partner brands or influencers can also earn you favours with other accounts that also aim to increase their following and expand their audience.
- Maintain relationships with customers
Healthy customer relationships are essential to growing your brand awareness and boosting sales. When you engage with your customers through social media management, you create an opportunity for their network to learn about your brand. Other followers or visitors can also learn more about your company and your professionalism by reading your responses to questions. If these responses are a good reflection of your company, they’ll help you build trust with your future customers.
- Invest in promoted posts and advertising
Unfortunately, social media is not the equal-opportunity landscape that it once was. Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms actively limit the reach of posts to your audience, leading to plummeting engagement across brands and accounts. To combat this, companies should invest in promoted posts and advertising via posts and stories. Ads that come across as organic perform best and lead to more conversions.
- Always measure your progress
Good social media management is all about tracking everything possible with your brand awareness campaigns. Pay attention to engagement statistics on your social profiles to see how much reach and interaction your posts, ads, and other content are receiving. Track whether the visibility of your posts is trending upward or not and continue to experiment until you hit your stride. Tracking links on posts will help you gather and analyse this information. Also, refer to your website analytics to determine where your referral traffic is originating.
To make this process easier on yourself, consider using software tools to help you analyse and optimise your social media activities. There are online tools that help you observe what your competitors are doing well in, and allow you to learn how you can improve. Social mention tools can help you track any mentions of your brand on various social sites to see how much buzz you’re generating.
Manage your socials well and let your brand be seen
So, as it shows, it takes careful calibration and planning, to bring your business to the most (potential) audience possible on social media platforms, to get optimal brand awareness. If you think you need some help with crafting a wholesome social media strategy, as well as assistance keeping watch of your brand’s social performance, then let I Concept Singapore offer you a hand!
As a leading branding agency in Singapore, we have years of experience in all-round digital marketing and social media management. We have been working with many of your familiar brands to tailor and customise their social media strategies, achieving great results. And yours can be the next.
With an understanding of your preferences and your business needs, our team of experienced strategists and designers will guide you to create quality posts and content, draw up effective campaigns, and help you get the views of engaged audiences. We’ve also a host of other digital solutions to help you grow your business. Get in touch with us today!
