Many businesses, regardless of size, have already jumped on the bandwagon and joined social media for marketing purposes. However, many entrepreneurs are still in the dark about the best social media practices that can generate optimal results. There are many popular ways to use social media for marketing purposes, but many entrepreneurs overlook these 6 ways to maximize the benefits of social media.
1. Communicate using your brand's voice
Successful entrepreneurs use their brand's tone of voice in social media. So what is a brand's voice? A brand's voice can be funny, positive, powerful, and motivational, but it should reflect the brand's personality.
Every brand has a personality and it is often unique. Brand personality refers to the distinct way of presenting products and services to consumers and the public. To be more specific, brand personality humanizes the brand and influences the development of a connection with consumers. It makes consumers identify with the brand and understand the positioning of the businesses. However, brand personality alone is not enough to communicate the brand's characteristics. Consumer communication requires the use of the brand's voice. The brand's voice should reflect the brand's personality and communicate the brand's positioning.
Social media marketers use the brand's voice to communicate with consumers. So far, those who use the brand's voice effectively engage their target market. The brand's voice should be aligned with the brand's personality and the persona of the target market. In essence, using the brand's tone of voice requires knowing the target market's unique personality.
Nike and Coca-cola are among the companies that know their target markets well. Both companies use a positive and motivating tone of voice when posting content and communicating with their consumers. However, their brand voice is distinct as Nike's voice motivates sports and fitness aficionados while Coca-Cola uses a friendly tone to exude positivity. Thus, Nike's voice is more empowering while Coca-Cola's is more warm and pleasant. Using this example, Nike and Coca-cola use their tone of voice to represent their brand's personality. Using the right tone of voice effectively engages their target market. Entrepreneurs can learn from their example and start developing their brand's voice that aligns with the market's persona. In this endeavor, knowing the target market is a crucial step.
2. Use Emotional Marketing
Some of the most viral content are those that touch human emotions. Emotional marketing targets consumers by creating videos that extract emotions such as happiness, sadness, or anger. Successful emotional marketers create contents that invoke strong feelings.
Entrepreneurs can use YouTube to publish emotional content. Posting on YouTube can make the ad easier to share on other social media platforms such as Facebook.
The "Real Beauty" campaign by Dove is an example of the effective use of social media in emotional marketing. Dove posted videos relevant to the theme. In one of the videos, Dove showed the discrepancy between how women perceive themselves and how others perceive them. The campaign evoked emotions as it highlighted that most women were harsh on themselves. They didn't see themselves as attractive as how other people saw them. It extracted a very strong unhappy emotion, which made the campaign viral across the social media realm.
Using effective emotional marketing can help boost your page. As the number of shares and likes increases, your target market will start noticing your brand. Consumers can easily relate to your brand personality, which can lead to successful social media marketing and overall sales performance. In general, emotional and relatable advertisements and content can propel your brand to success. Just make sure to sustain the brand's popularity by improving quality and customer service and choosing the right endorsers.
3. Don't just focus on popular influencers; consider their niche
Hiring an influencer is among the popular marketing methods employed today. While many influencers with vast followers are available for a brand partnership, don't choose them because of their popularity or lower rate. It is important to consider their niche and their ability to stick to it.
Many influencers can steer away from their niche depending on the brand they endorse. Who can blame them? They also need to live. Nevertheless, brands won't benefit from influencers that can bend for income. The ideal influencers to hire are those who are consistent and powerful. They don't constantly change their branding and can effectively influence their followers. In essence, influencers that will endorse your product should have a niche aligned with the brand personality. The requirement should also include the ability to communicate using the brand's voice. The alignment of the influencer niche and brand personality can help the influencers easily convince the followers to try and trust your brand.
By considering the niche and not the popularity, new and starting entrepreneurs can maximize the benefits of social media marketing. Entrepreneurs can ensure that they are targeting the correct audience through the influencer. It's true when they say: you cannot sell to people who don't need your products. Find a group that looks after your product's benefits and sell it to them. You can surely improve your sales performance without breaking the bank by considering influencer niches instead of popularity.
Maximize the Gain
Hiring popular influencers can be expensive as their rates increase as they become famous and amass a large following. Thus, popular influencers are not ideal for new entrepreneurs. They can charge higher talent fees, but they cannot influence their followers to buy your product. At the end of the day, people will still choose to buy what they need and want, and purchase an item endorsed by the influencer they follow. It's a complete waste of investment to go after a large audience that doesn't match your target market's persona.
By choosing an influencer with followers that match the target market persona, you can get the most out of your investment. It's better to sell to a small audience, composed of people interested in your brand than to convince a large group that they need your product. The investment in influencer niches can be worthwhile as fees can be lowered while ensuring constant sales. You can reach influencers on various social media platforms, but some of the most influential today is in TikTok.
4. Explore TikTok
TikTok is a popular social media platform that is younger than Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can utilize new and trending social media platforms such as TikTok to advertise your content. You can surely maximize the benefits of social media marketing as creating an account in TikTok is free, and you can expand your reach to different types of audiences.
Tiktok is currently a powerful app. It can increase the brand's reach as it has a billion users that continue to grow every day. You can surely get the exposure that your brand deserves. However, you really don't need exposure to over a billion users. As mentioned earlier, it is better to reach a niche market. Fortunately, TikTok's algorithm increases your brand's chances of getting exposed to your target market. TikTok considers the users' interests to determine which videos or advertisements to show them. Thus, your target audience is more likely to see your content, which can boost sales. TikTok's new feature includes an e-commerce functionality.
TikTok E-commerce
Entrepreneurs can now allow their viewers to add to their carts. The e-commerce feature is currently available in many countries. Sellers can create a video featuring their products and add an option for potential customers to order them through the app. Utilizing this feature can help entrepreneurs take advantage of the tendency of consumers to buy impulsively. Although it does not sound ethical, there is no harm in encouraging people to buy products. The seamless process of buying transactions is one of the key drivers for buying through TikTok.
As TikTok users can continue to grow, utilizing the e-commerce feature can help you maximize the benefits of your brand's social media presence. TikTok users can also be brand ambassadors as they develop loyalty.
5. Encourage Brand Evangelism
Brand loyalty is good for business, but brand evangelism can generate greater benefits. Brand evangelism happens when customers become so into the product. Many factors drive brand evangelism, but product quality, functionality, reliability, and after-sales support are the most common drivers. Entrepreneurs can benefit from developing brand evangelism as they can get free advertising.
Social media users can be devotees. They can become a loyal follower if they develop an affinity with your brand. Entrepreneurs can benefit from this behavior as consumers are more likely to create content that shows their love for the product. Loyal consumers will voluntarily contribute to the brand's marketing through original content that features product benefits.
Through the content of loyal consumers, exposing the product to a number of people from their network of friends is possible. In addition, consumer content can contribute to the positive image of the brand, attracting more potential customers. Consumer creators make free advertising that generates greater impact as it can be shared across social media platforms. One important impact is expanding the loyal consumers of the product. Thus, brand evangelism makes social media marketing cost-effective and profitable.
6. Know when and what your target market talks about
Knowing when and what the consumers are talking about is often one of the most ignored uses of social media. Despite being neglected, it is among the most effective way to engage the target audience. Knowing when the target market talks, for instance, can optimize social media marketing.
When the target market talks
The popularity of the content, sometimes, relies on the time of posting. Certain groups are active during the daytime while some are active in the afternoon or at night. For example, most old people are active every morning and afternoon while the younger generation is active only in the afternoon during weekdays. It is important to post content when your target market is active on social media to gain more likes and shares. More shares can help increase the reach of the advertisement, which means that it can generate more positive business outcomes. In essence, knowing when the target market is talking or active online is tied to maximizing the benefits of your social media presence. Knowing when is just as important as knowing what they are talking about.
What they are talking about
Some businesses also fail to consider what the target audience is talking about. Knowing the topic enables the brand to create content relevant to the current conversation topic of the target market. For instance, if Bella Poarch's divorce is popular among the target market, a brand can post content relevant to divorce that can extract emotion and encourage responses. It is a great way to engage consumers and develop a connection with them. In addition, knowing what they say about the brand is important to avoid a bad reputation.
Consumers often post feedback on social media. To maximize the use of social media, entrepreneurs can explore it to understand how consumers perceive them. If consumers are looking for more features, brands can add them or develop more advanced products. If there are numerous complaints, companies can address them. Finally, reading consumer feedback can highlight the factors that the brands or entrepreneurs need to improve. In a way, using social media to view what the customers are talking about is close to involving them in important business decisions. When customers are involved, they are more likely to contribute valuable ideas. Customer-generated ideas are often helpful in product and service improvements. Thus, don't underestimate the power of knowing when and what the consumers are talking about. They open many opportunities to keep consumers loyal and satisfied.
It is not surprising that many businesses are now on various types of social media. Social media marketing increases brand awareness and recognition, which is linked to higher sales and successful business outcomes. As such, many businesses continue to find ways to maximize their use of social media and to ensure that their digital marketing investments generate returns. The above suggestions can be beneficial, but it is still important to find the social media marketing strategy that works best for your business.