Social Media

Love it or hate it, social media is here to stay. Whether you are an avid instagrammer or avoid it at all costs, you can pretty much guarantee there are people online discussing your industry, products, services and even your business. For the majority of businesses, it’s important for them to join in the conversation. But that sounds easier said than done, with so many different platforms out there it can be difficult to know where to start.

Social media marketing is hard work, it’s easy to think that all you need to do is set up an account, post a couple of things about your products and cha ching, the tills and phones will start to ring. That really isn’t the reality, I’m sorry to say this, but most people don’t care about you and your business, they are interested in what is important to them and not what is important to you.

That being said, social media marketing when done well can be a great asset to a digital marketing strategy, in fact for some businesses it has been invaluable in their growth. Depending on your products and services, your strategy will be different and so like most things it takes some initial planning and organising before you even begin.

This can be the most difficult part. You can of course ask colleagues and friends to like or follow your business but this is unlikely to achieve the results you desire. What you really want is to reach potential customers. Here are our top tips for getting and growing an audience:

1. Ask your suppliers and existing customers to help you out here by liking, following and sharing you and your content, this can open you up to new people.
2. Engage in relevant groups or discussions, answer questions, comment on other people’s posts and start to be social. Remember always enter into any discussion with the mindset that you are seeking to help others and not sell to them.
3. Pay for it, social media advertising in incredibly targeted and it can be a great way of gaining new followers, just be mindful again of selling cold to people. Paid advertising on social media platforms is interruption marketing and needs to be done in a much softer way than more traditional PPC.
4. Make use of influencers. Depending on your product/service you can pay people with a big following to promote your business for you.
5. Make it easy for people to find you, add links to your website, email signature, email marketing campaign and any other marketing material you use.
6. Pick one or two platforms to start with and focus on growing an audience there first, then you can add another and encourage, for example, your Facebook followers to also follow you on Instagram.
7. Try not to get disheartened, it can take time to build an audience, but it tends to grow exponentially so hang on in there!
8. Don’t be tempted to pay for follows, likes etc. it’s completely pointless and if your genuine audience works it out, you could lose them too.

We are happy to work alongside our clients on their social media marketing, offering advice, helping create their strategy and providing training where necessary. For some businesses, their budget can be better spent on other areas of digital marketing and in these circumstances we always recommend they take this in-house (with our guidance of course). The reason for this is that only you have the expertise and knowledge to engage properly.

For larger companies we work with an independent social media manager to look after this on their behalf. But by using us as a conduit we can ensure that the activity on social media platforms ties in beautifully with the rest of the digital marketing activity taking place. We have talked a lot about consistency, and this is true across all marketing activity. That’s why working with one agency that can manage the whole of your online marketing can make sure you are spending your budget in the right place and achieving the best results possible.

Our aim is always to help our clients to achieve their goals. Social media marketing activityis no different, we work together on creating good quality, relevant and well optimised posts aimed at the right audience, using the right platforms.

If you want to discuss your social media marketing requirements or digital marketing in general, please do get in touch today.