Social Media Marketing Beyond the Post

Sharing is Caring But It’s Not the Only Benefit of Social Media Marketing

If your organization’s social media marketing begins and ends with status updates and offers, your business is only scratching the surface of what social networks can do for your company. Small and mid-size business owners can use social media to monitor brand reputation, competitors, discover trends and interact with prospects and customers. These seven social media marketing tactics might just produce a change of heart in business owners who feel like social media marketing is a total waste of time.

7 Social Media Marketing Tactics that Make Social Networks More Valuable

Customer Engagement

We are living in an omni-channel world. Chances are if your customer has a question or complaint, they’re not going to go digging through their receipts – or even your company’s website – to find a way to get to your customer service department. Instead, they’ll go straight to your social media profiles and ask questions, air grievances or request information, and they’ll expect an answer right away. According to Search Engine Watch, more than 70 percent of Twitter users expect to get a response when they tweet to a brand, and 53 percent expect that response to come within an hour.

Competitor Benchmarking

Your competitor’s social media marketing can tell you exactly what they’re up to now and what they plan to do next. Since social media is conducive to casual conversation, competitors may be using posts to create anticipation among customers about new products or services they plan to launch in the future. It can also give you a birds-eye view into their advertising, their marketing offers, and what type of prospects they are trying to reach out to. Apart from actually walking the halls of their business, social networks may be the best provider of competitor information you can have.

Industry Trends

A quick search of key industry terms on any social profile can help you discover where the industry is headed in the future, help you find out which companies are on the cutting edge, or help you validate your own ideas for how to grow your business next.

Brands and Products

Monitoring social networks for mentions of the brands you carry or the services you provide can help you find prospects as well as up and coming competitors. You can also see what other companies are doing to promote the same types of products or services your business provides, which can be a great way to brainstorm new marketing ideas for your own organization.

Influencers

Influencer marketing is at an all-time high; but how can you find and connect with influencers that might be able to help promote your brand? If you answered “social media marketing” then you’re on the right track. Connect with influencers who have large social followings (and whose followers are among your target audiences) and who are active on social media and create relationships for endorsements, positive reviews and word of mouth marketing.

Reputation Monitoring

Obviously it’s important for you to be actively monitoring your own social channels and responding to customer questions and complaints. You can also search social networks for mentions of your company’s name, company executives, hashtags and other known brand identifiers to find out if there is additional chatter going on in the social media universe about your business. Given the reality that you don’t always hear directly from either happy or unhappy customers following a transaction, it’s important that you actively seek out whether they are talking about your brand “behind its back.”

Proof of Life

Vendors, prospects, lenders, job candidates and other key stakeholders may further evaluate your company’s professionalism and prowess based on your social media marketing. Sterile, stale, or seldom-updated social profiles may lead people to undervalue the quality of your business and its marketing team.  An active social media marketing approach provides proof of life, telling people that you’re open for business.

Your Competitors are Already Using these Social Media Marketing Tactics

Still on the fence about the value of social networks when it comes to marketing? Chances are that some of your competitors are already using these tactics on social media. A Clutch survey found that brands are using social listening tools for these very purposes:

• 86% – monitoring customer requests, questions, complaints and concerns
• 77% – monitoring competitors
• 75% – listening for mentions of their brands or products
• 61% – discovering industry terms and trends
• 60% – identifying industry or brand influencers
• 55% – checking for mentions of the company name
• 44% – checking for mentions of company executives

Social media marketing doesn’t have to take a lot of time to produce results, but it does require an effective strategy and consistent engagement. Outsourcing social marketing to a team like ours can be a good solution when hiring a social media specialist isn’t an option for your company, or when your social media marketing plan isn’t working as well as you’d like.

We would love to be part of your story.

Reach out to us for a free, no-obligation proposal for social media marketing services. Beginning at about $125 a week, we can tailor a plan that takes your company’s social marketing to the next level and proves the value of your investments in social marketing channels.

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