Raising Brand Awareness through Social Media

It's become pretty obvious to everyone by now that social media is simply one of the most useful and powerful marketing tools that we have currently. Chances are if you have a company, you are using social media as a part of your marketing plan. But are you certain that you are using it properly? The number of followers can be deceiving –there are inactive followers and even old accounts that can interfere with the accuracy of your data. How positive are you that your return on investment is worth the effort? Your job is done right only when the right people see your content.

A focused marketing plan requires hours and hours of monitoring, maintaining and optimizing company’s presence across various social networks. However, if managed correctly it may prove invaluable in connecting your business with customers on an emotional level. Here are some of the starting points for you to help you start your social media footprint:


Finding your target market

Every social network is unique and caters to different people, based on their interests, social status, age, sex and other demographics. You need to know the profile of the people you are targeting, it takes time, and it is an on-going process. Pew Research Center, for example, provides excessive data about the social network users that can be of value to you. You have to define what your company is trying to achieve with its social media interactions, so you could examine the strength of each platform you chose.


Focus

The first mistake you can make is trying to be on all social platforms at once. It will waste your time, drain your recourses and limit your ability to interact with people. Having fresh content on all of the major sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) can be difficult for even the major companies with big financial backings. You should focus your marketing plan on two or three sites, before expanding to others.


Shareable content

A study by Ipsos showed that 61% of people are most likely to seek out interesting content to share, while 43% will seek informative content. Your content has to be reactive, try to make it eye-catching so it can grab someone’s attention right away and trigger thought provoking emotions. Often as possible, your content should relate to the trending topics in your branch, so it can spark conversations and debates among your followers. Pay special attention to details. You have to choose your font wisely, pick one that is easy to read, so that people will not waste time trying to read the words.


Balancing your content

Nobody likes a hard sell – nothing pushes a customer toward the un-follow button faster than media channels used only for cold-hearted promotion flooding their timeline with constant posts. That is why some of the biggest companies on the market apply the 70/20/10 formula to their marketing methods. What is it all about? Without getting into explicit detail, here are the basics: a certain percent of your material should be seemingly promotional and a healthy percent should be shared content from other sources. This will position your organization as a reliable source of information, keeping it from looking biased. 

In the contemporary world of business, not many companies decide to handle their marketing in-house. If you are located in Australia there's a digital agency from Sydney that can help you strategize and organize your campaigns for both local and global audience. Agencies can help you create client personas, collaborate with your customer service department in establishing a transparent CRM system so that you can ensure your ROI. The best part of it, you won’t have to log in to all your social media profiles for 10 times a day to post and respond to all comments which leaves you more time to concentrate on your actual job.