Social media is one of the best marketing tools for businesses of all sizes. It’s free, gets your message out there to the world, and lets you immediately interact with your customers directly. But in some cases, it can be incredibly daunting, especially if your business isn’t in a sector which is perceived to be as exciting as others. Even though you might not be selling the latest gadget or must-have product, you can still generate more than enough interest by putting together the right social media campaign.
Plan and produce original content
Original content is key when marketing your brand and business, especially when linking back to your own website. This isn’t only crucial to getting a good ranking on search engines, but can be particularly helpful when you want your customers to interact with something online they can’t get elsewhere.
It’s essential to plan ahead with your content, making sure your posts correspond with upcoming promotions, or major newsworthy events which are relevant to your industry. Unique ideas are difficult to come by, and a dedicated team of creatives can help you look for fresh takes and angles on old ideas to help you stand out from the crowd.
As MN2S explain in their guide on social media strategy, your plan should include “carefully considered preparation that’s informed by research, expertise, and creative direction”. This encompasses choosing a strategy that reflects your brand’s personality, while ensuring it’s targeting the right kind of audience.
The content you create for your brand’s social media could be anything from a link to a blog on your website to creating your own memes and responding to trending topics. For example, if you’re a leading fashion brand, you need to stay ahead of the latest trends, and ensure that your social channels aren’t looking stale, or rushing to catch up with your competitors. This could even extend to making sure any lookbooks are completed early, allowing you to share images from it well in advance of the new season.
Create shareable content
One of the most significant uses of social media is posting content that other people want to share and repost. This increases the reach of your posts, introducing your brand to potential new customers. And these posts don’t have to be solely related to your brand, either. Plenty of companies reach new audiences purely based on their web presence and how they respond to trending topics. Innocent drinks, for example, are well known for their tongue-in-cheek tweets about the weather, the working week, and, perhaps most famously, about The Great British Bake Off.
While there is some product plugging every so often, Innocent’s social media team tends not to focus on anything in particular, which is paradoxically far more likely to attract shares. However, they retain the same tone of voice and brand ideals across every social channel, which then extends onto every marketing campaign the brand puts forward. This makes it easy for people to spot an Innocent campaign, regardless of which medium they see it on. And if there is a genuine concern from a user online, they make sure to respond quickly in order to resolve it.
Nurture relationships with influencers
Influencer marketing—which harnesses the social media status of a celebrity or someone with a lot of followers to boost brand awareness—is still a relatively new trend. It doesn’t serve to replace traditional marketing tactics, but instead works to complement it. In 2017, it was reported that marketers spent $570 million on influencer marketing globally, which increased to $1.6 billion in 2018. And according to a study by Linqia, 39% of global brands plan to increase their influencer marketing budget in 2019.
However, it’s not about simply partnering with any celebrity for your brand’s posts. Influencers work hard to build a following based on their individual niche, which could be anything from beauty to gaming or design. As long as you find the right influencer to market your brand in a suitable way, you could build a professional relationship. For example, meal kit company Blue Apron collaborated for a period of time with YouTube ASMR artists like Gibi to create a series of ASMR-based cooking videos for fans. This allowed the brand to reach a previously untapped audience, simply by targeting relevant influencers with a very particular niche.