The importance of social media for business is undisputed. Social media platforms allow you to showcase your services and products, engage potential, as well as existing customers, all this at an impressive global scale and in a very cost-effective way! However, just setting up your social media profiles is simply not enough. Today’s top marketers have fully embraced the power of social listening, user-generated content and brand-to-customer conversations.
The problem is, however, that even if you make a genuine and determined effort to plan and then execute your brilliant plan for effective social media communication with your target audience there is still a risk to fail
Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken
Consumers join (and enjoy) social media to follow people, not corporate profiles. To succeed, brands need to show a human face and add a bit of their shiny personality to their social media communication. This is why people love social media for letting them being personal and social.
Keep Your Social Media Audience Engaged
When still most of the brands use social media as a one-way channel to solely inform the audience about their products, step out of the crowd, get truly social and engage your existing and potential customers in a funny and attention-grabbing dialogue. This is nothing different than in a real life. How do you think you can make loyal friends and fans? Talk to them and make them feel you care. Surveys, caption contests, giveaways and questions are all great ways to get serious about your social engagement
When people talk, listen completely.
Ernest Hemingway, the author of this quote, apparently knew much more about social media than many marketers of the current times. You have probably heard this before here, and you will most likely hear it again, but the ability to pick and address relevant online conversations about your brand can either make or break your business. This is why you need to equip your social marketing arsenal with a social listening tool. Any business that is serious about its online presence needs to be aware of social media activity around its brand. It is like doing a regular doctor checkup but instead of your own health you monitor your brand’s online well-being. Prevention is better that treatment and this stays valid also for your online reputation.
People Will Stare. Make it Worth Their While.
People like visuals. 40% of people will respond better to visual information than to plain text. Our articles promoted with visual tweets gain much more social attention than these promoted only with a text tweet. Viewers are 85% more likely to purchase a product after watching a product video. In a nutshell, visuals are processed incomparably faster in the human brain than plain text. This is pure nature. Consequently, the information in an image takes just a fraction of a second to be digested.
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone
Social media is still an evolving art. There is no clear and settled code of conduct nor one-size-fits-all success recipe. It is all about being authentic, helpful, interesting and engaging. And who is more interesting and likely to be followed than a pioneer? Businesses that from time to time leave their “comfort zone” set up by the industry standards and explore new ideas and unknown territory of influence harvest amazing fruits of the “shock effect” social users are treated with. Breaking the limits enables social conversation and makes your social profile more interesting. No matter how big you are, social media is an opportunity to leave the mainstream from time to time and grab some extra attention with a surprising and engaging comment.
