Social Media Marketing
Your Audience is WaitingSocial media marketing is a three-fold process; listening, broadcasting and engaging. Every business should have a social media marketing plan that takes these aspects into account.
Social networks provide us with unprecedented access to information, audiences and potential customers.
Consequently, working social media into the marketing mix is essential to maximise performance in competitive markets.
Step 1 – Listen
Social media marketing is no different to any other area of marketing in this sense; information comes first. Using a variety of listening tools, we can identify trends and influencers for any given sector.
Metrics such as shares, likes and re-posts help us to determine which messages, topics and content types perform best with a given audience.
Social media listening tools can be configured to generate alerts, or simply filter broad audiences, to identify emerging topics and trends at glance. Furthermore, with the right tools and processes, you can keep your finger on the pulse with the minimum of daily involvement.
Prospects, existing customers, competitors and partners may indicate intentions via social media well in advance of other channels. Consequently, listening puts you in the right place to act fast and turn insight into competitive advantage before others do.
Step 2 – Broadcast
In the early days of social networking, businesses considered social media as just another outbound channel. This capacity to broadcast news and share your latest content retains a place in any marketing strategy. However, this is only one aspect of social media marketing.
Connecting to the right individuals with your social networks, and even filtering your audiences where possible, ensures your social media posts reach the most receptive audience. In addition, including hashtags and mentions, as well as keywords, in your posts helps to grow your audience of followers as you broadcast content.
Step 3 – Engage
Engagement is possibly the hardest and, in many cases, the most valuable part of social media marketing. Crucially, engagement can’t easily be scheduled or automated*, so it’s the moment where brand meets audience at a more personal level.
*there are ways, but let’s not get into that here.
Truth is, few brands really do the engagement part of social media marketing well. Simply put, It’s about being able to join the conversation, rather than just liking a conversation.
We can help you identify the opportunities where you can reply to posts, or mention individuals, and what to say in these situations.
Get in touch and we can show you how to make social media marketing a measurable, valuable and revenue-generating part of the broader marketing mix.
Without posting any images of #cats. Honest 😉
Get In Touch
Glastonbury, Somerset, UK
+44 747 666 2948
marc@glastonbury-marketing.co.uk