Social media in business: The four platforms that can determine the future of your brand
Social media has been helping the small business blossom and boom over the last couple of years. Ever since people realized that they could use social media platforms for marketing their brands and hiking their sales, these small businesses have been quite unstoppable. This free tool is ideal for MSMEs looking forward to saving money and at the same time expanding their horizon.
What most brands do not realize is that social media for businesses is a double-edged sword. Not utilizing the opportunity will result in missed leads and restricted markets. Utilizing them and not knowing how to approach a new market can result in irritated followers, who pull out of the sales funnel. Social media marketing demands investment and strategizing. Each post, graphics, and share need days of observation, analysis, and action. Measuring Social media campaign ROI can be a little difficult for the newbie digital expert. However, not paying enough importance to your strategy can result in lower click-through rates and lower conversion rates in the end.
If there’s a viral meme or a viral video you want to see, it must be there on Instagram. It is the leading photo-blogging website that has over 500 million active users. It hosts over 90,000 photos per day, and user engagement has sharply increased since the introduction of video into the world of photo blogging. It has enchanted the users with amazing photo editing and video editing options.
The intuitive design, extensible features and easy to understand policies have made Instagram one of the favorites among all social media marketers. It is ideal for almost all businesses that are looking for graphical representation and recognition. To boost the visibility of your brand, start with brand logos and brand colors. Instagram is a place for HD photos and live videos. So no matter the subject of a photo, make sure the quality is high because your followers will judge you!
Instagram has its own set of hashtags and filters for all kinds of businesses. Even if your niche is not as famous on the social media platform, you can find the ideal hashtags and the filters that work for your followers with a little market research.
Facebook has over 2 billion active users right now. It is a great platform that connects brands with potential new users. Social celebrities or influencers are dominating Facebook to market some of the leading brands in the market. Quite a few brands are using this social platform for sponsored content and organic reach.
This platform has a wealth of marketing features for almost all kinds of products and services. Irrespective of what you are selling, Facebook has the right tools for your marketing and PR campaigns. Thanks to the plethora of tools and extensions, Facebook has become one of the most low-maintenance websites on the planet for digital marketing.
From presidents to pretzel shops, everyone has their share of Twitter fame. It is an easy to master microblogging site that is constantly evolving to suit the needs of their regular users. There are over 330 million active users, who are not only actively sharing their thoughts and ideas but also following other brands, influencers and sharing their Tweets 24×7. Twitter can now support images, videos, polls, and URLs for increasing user engagement. You can share the link to your products, blogs, and new marketing videos on this platform to boost your reach.
Brands that maintain an active account and engage with their target audience enjoy much higher visibility on the web. Tweets and reTweets are some of the quickest tools to spread the word about your new product launches, website offers and everything else. The key is to switch up the quality of content by sharing posts from other users and responding to your target audience. Always use relevant hashtags for your posts, this will attract the attention of the users already interested in the niche.
YouTube
YouTube is the video sharing platform that hosts all kinds of videos. From funny animal fails to the first ever recorded castrato soprano singer, this platform has video/audio of everything you can even think of. People can watch, share, rate and comment on all the public videos users share on YouTube. Over the years, this video sharing network has undergone scores of changes just to be in tune with the demands of the users. YouTube is a place for carefully constructed SEO plans and cross-platform publicity that can attract more users to your target video.
Your business can trend on Google and YouTube if it creates the right kind of content for its target audience. Several digital marketing companies release educational and informative videos on YouTube for garnering views. Several fashions and makeup houses create DIY tutorials that give the followers a close look at how to complete a makeover at home. A subculture of Vloggers like VSauce and Stevie Terreberry exist, who engage millions of fellow vloggers and YouTube users with regular video posts. They make millions a year from their video sharing efforts, and that has helped them become a brand!
In the end
No matter which platform you choose and what kind of content you create, keep in mind to uphold a certain consistency in design. The consistency they see across your shared media is a representative of the consistency in your products. The quality of your micro-blog, photo or your video should entice your target users to click on the content and move further along the sales funnel.
Do not forget to employ analytics tools for each platform as well. Observing the number of clicks, dwell time, peak activity hours, traffic sources and direction of traffic from your social media profiles will give you a complete idea of the performance of your current marketing campaign. The metrics can tell you which way to go and where to invest next. Utilization of social media also paves the way for big data analytics and prediction analysis for your brand shortly.
Ariya Stark is an expert on marketing. Her specialty is budget social media marketing for small businesses and startups. To know the nuances that define the success of digital marketing campaigns, read what Ellen has to say about businesses on social media.
what do you think?