Social Media Marketing

Introduction:

Welcome back to another post! Today we are doing to be discussing social media marketing! I hope you can take something away from this week’s discussion, let’s dive right in! 

Social Media KPIs and Tools for Measurement:

A big decision that almost every single company will have to ask themselves is whether being on social media is worth it or not. Society now-a-day is hooked on social media so doesn’t that mean so should your business? The answer is yes, your company should be on social media as long as you are using it the right way. Let’s dive into why and how to manage the best social media accounts for your business. 

In the video, the instructor refers to four pillars as being a full business strategy (Gil, 2019). Those pillars include: 

• Content (what the user will see)
• Community (Who sees the content) 
• Consistency (Posting on a regular schedule) 
• Conversion (Effectiveness of the post) 

Now it’s time to discuss KPI’s also known as Key Performance Indicators. This is a critical aspect of social media as you need to monitor how your content is doing, and if it is engaging the correct audience. Engagement includes likes, comments, and shares. This means that physical activity has been taken. Tools such as BuzzSumo, Keyhole, NetBase, and Brand24 are great tools to help monitor these social media marketing efforts. 

Decoding Social Media Analytics: What Does It Mean?

Let’s start this section by talking about Facebook insights data and how it can be helpful for your company. This is an important aspect to record clicks, leads and overall brand awareness. Your companies Facebook business page will be a crucial part of success as social media has become a huge channel used by just about everyone. In a recent blog post that I wrote, you can read all about Facebook Business. 

Facebook is one of the most affordable places to drive ROI through an advertising platform, and it is also an easy channel to navigate through. On Facebook Business you can choose a target audience and that is a big tip to be successful. You can customize age, gender, profession and interests which is very specific. The instructor refers to Facebook like a casino, the more money you spend, the higher the likelihood you have of winning the customer acquisition (Gil, 2019). 

One issue with a Facebook post is that is only lasting and will be relevant for up to 24 hours unless it gains massive traffic from customers. A great tool that Facebook offers is called “boosting”. This way you can revive old posts and get the community engaging with it again. 

Through additions and new features, Facebook is now a shoppable website. Setting this up on your site can simply be done by clicking on the ‘shop’ button on the left side of your page. You can add any product that you wish to upload. A great recommendation is to continue sharing and expanding the store that you have added to Facebook. 

Lastly, we are going to discuss Instagram. This is another channel that has become widely known and used by a lot of users. Most users base the success of a post off of likes and comments, but in reality, they should be more focused on bookmarks and shares. Comments are a valuable tool to engage directly with a customer. If they comment, you should reply to them even if it’s just sending a smiley face or thumbs up. In the end, Instagram is a great way to keep a community going. 

Driving Measurable ROI on Each Channel:

The next step that we are going to discuss is building a recognizable personal brand on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has over 500 million users which makes this the powerhouse for business networking. LinkedIn allows you to search and connect with so many professionals that could add to your business, the only downfall of LinkedIn, is that it does not allow you to access the same analytics as Facebook or Instagram as we have previously talked about. 

Have you ever wondered who is looking at your profile? A great tool that LinkedIn has, is that you can view those sorts of data. From your LinkedIn profile, you can see a list of the number of clicks and exactly who was looking at your profile. 

As we jump from channel to channel, we are going to discuss a platform that I hardly ever use anymore, which is YouTube. Did you know that you can make money from getting views on your videos you post? To achieve that though, you must have at least 1000 subscribers. Videos can be a valuable asset to your company as they could show how your product works, users using them, or tips and tricks for using them. Plus, they could be very cost-effective for your business. 

The last channel we are going to discuss is Twitter. Twitter is a site that you can just post a paragraph or an image. Twitter is a site that you need to be constantly posting on, once a day won’t cut it. Again, this site has robust analytics that enables you to learn more about your audience and who you are essentially reaching with your posts. 

Bonus Strategies for Maximizing ROI:

Twitter cards offer you a way to make your content stand out. It is an easy growing hack to improve click-through conversions. It does require constant updating and creativity, making sure that is it standing out against your competition. 

Yes, when you are scrolling through Instagram it gets tiring seeing ad after ad. An effective way to intrigue people into seeing your company is to create Instagram stories. It is a great way to tell a story with creativity and have a call to action. These stories however only last for 24 hours. 

We have almost reached the end of this blog, but before we go, we are going to talk about measuring site visits with Bitly and Google Campaign URL builder. If you are posting daily, but not measuring the impact then you need to change your habits. Bitly is a really easy tool to use that measures website clicks for free, along with demographic data. Google Campaign URL builder, however, is more advanced as you can create a campaign with multiple links. You can track several channels, which is super important to the success of your business. 

Conclusion:

An important aspect that we have just talked about is KPI’s or also known as Key Performance Indicators. I have previously worked for a Distillery where I was the marketing rep. A big part of my role was to handle all of the social media content, which means that monitoring the posts that I was posting was crucial. I would check the clicks and visits to our website, watch-throughs on the videos, and likes. This helped transform my posts to the best possible that would get the most engagement and possibly a new customer at the end of the day. 

References:

(2020). Retrieved March 10, 2020, from Linkedin.com website: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/social-media-marketing-roi-2/the-roi-of-social-media-marketing?u=2109516