Why You Need Social Media in Your Marketing Strategy
How TikTok has Become the Number One Social Media Platform with Coronavirus
Amid the social distancing guidelines brought upon by the spread of Coronavirus, celebrities have taken to TikTok to share how they are passing time in quarantine. TikTok has become the new hub for stars and organisations to connect with fans and spread awareness on the pandemic.
Lebron James performing a dance on TikTok
The current international lockdown protocols have given rise to a new form of content on social media. #quarantine. The #quarantine hashtag has racked up over 2 million posts on Instagram and is made up of videos and images sharing how people are living through these stringent safety measures. From memes to at-home workouts, this form of content is flooding all social-media platforms. Despite the traction #quarantine is gaining on Instagram, TikTok is still dwarfing these figures, reaching well over 2 billion views for this exact category.
Fitness influencer Demi Bagby posted a video to TikTok with the #quarantine hashtag
Why TikTok?
TikTok is a social-media application commonly used by teens and Generation Z’s to share short-form videos. With the ease of editing, coupled with a large database of music and filters, TikTok has developed a platform for creators to share content in a way which is far easier and quicker than other platforms. The simplicity of developing quality content on TikTok allows celebrities and influencers to branch out to new and younger audiences, which is why it is becoming the preferred platform during this crisis period. The option to embed and share TikTok’s to other social media platforms gives creators more reason to use TikTok. It is not uncommon for celebrities to initially create and post their content to TikTok and then share it to their larger following on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It is the creative accessibility of TikTok, in conjunction with the ability to share to other social media platforms which grants celebrities and organisations with the immense reach they are achieving.
Courteney Cox sharing her TikTok to her 9m followers on Instagram
TikTok during the Coronavirus Crisis
With social distancing becoming the norm for most people, celebrities are turning to TikTok to share best practices, dances and light-hearted comedic content. Many are posting short clips demonstrating social distancing and urging others encourage others to follow their lead. Gloria Gaynor, for example, shared a 20 second clip washing her hands to her 1978 hit ‘I Will Survive”, with the caption “It only takes :20 seconds to SURVIVE”.
Gloria Gaynor sharing handwashing tips to her single ‘I Will Survive’
Users of TikTok are not only limited to teenagers and celebrities. Many companies are using TikTok to build brand awareness though engaging younger audiences with creative and quirky videos. However, during the Coronavirus outbreak, organisations including the NBA have used TikTok as a platform to show fans how each player is individually dealing with the social isolation restrictions.
Organisations including WHO and NBA are using TikTok to encourage social distancing
Similarly, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has also taken to TikTok to share best practices, by launching the ‘Safe Hands Challenge’. With over 1.6 billion views, #safehands encourages users to post 40 second clips showing what they are thinking while washing their hands. TikTok’s reach to an entirely new audience allows organisations to share preventative methods that can slow the spread of the epidemic. Posts with the hashtags #coronavirus will automatically include a notice from Health Authorities with updated information.
TikTok has been widely used by celebrities and organisations during the last few weeks as a platform to share best practices, their experiences with social isolation, or just light-hearted dances. The ease of content creation and sharing ability has shown TikTok to be the most effective platform to get content across to a large audience during this period.
The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing
Social media platforms have experienced exponential growth since 2004. Despite almost half of the world’s population being active on social media, it still has not reached the peak of its popularity. With users spending an average of 3 hours on social media per day, businesses are experiencing countless opportunities to reach their audience through social media marketing.
Social media provides businesses with a low-cost alternative to traditional marketing methods. It also allows brands to interact, communicate and build brand loyalty with their audience. In doing so, they can build their brand, increase sales and drive website traffic.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing
- Drive awareness:
Consumers will gravitate towards brands they recognise; social media allows for cheap, effective and easy brand building. Effective social media strategies will stimulate conversation about your brand and get fans talking.
- Build customer loyalty:
A strong investment in customer service can build meaningful relationships between your company and your customers. Social media allows for immediate interaction and customer feedback. Businesses can also respond to their customers right away.
- Low-cost:
Creating social media profiles is completely free. Sharing quality organic content can often be enough to boost your brand on social media, however paid promotions will often expose your brand to a wider audience. Most social media platforms base your ad promotions around a budget, meaning you can adjust it depending on the extent of promotion you want to achieve.
Build a Social Media Strategy to Boost Your Brand
- Align your social media strategy with your business objectives:
Set realistic goals that are in line with your overall objectives. This could be to raise brand awareness, generate leads, increase community engagement or to build traffic to your website. Once you determine which of these goals (or combination of these goals) you would like to achieve, you can develop your social media framework around achieving them.
- Define your target audience:
Create a profile of your ideal customer. By knowing their demographic, behavioural and psychographic similarities, you can develop content that will be directly relevant to them. This will also assist in creating ad campaigns that can be targeted to this target group. If you are struggling to come up with a profile, examine your social media insights to learn about your followers.
- Conduct a competitor analysis:
By evaluating your competitor’s social media strategy, you will gain insight on how brands in your industry are conducting themselves. From this, you can establish what is working for them and what you could improve on; ultimately to inform and adapt your own social media strategy.
- Analyse your current social media profiles:
If your brand already has social media profiles, investigate what is working and what is not. Understand which posts are performing well and which posts are not connecting with your audience. Are your profiles up to scratch with those of your competitors? These are the questions you should be asking when conducting an audit.
- Set up and optimise your accounts:
Determine which social media platforms are relevant to your brand and create them. Try to keep usernames consistent between each platform to ensure ease of access for your consumers. It is likely that a separate strategy for each network will be required. I.e. Tutorials on Instagram and customer service on Facebook.
- Plot and schedule your social media content:
The social media rule of thirds is a common strategy used to develop content. One-third of content is to interact with your audience, one-third is to build your business and the final third is sharing content from other businesses or accounts. Once you have the content prepared, place these pieces into a calendar to schedule consistent and frequent posts.
- Evaluate and improve your performance:
There is no single generic strategy that will work for all businesses. Some areas of your strategy may work very well, others may not. It is important to constantly adapt and develop your strategy with the assistance of analytics and data parameters to distinguish how you can optimise and maximise the use of social media marketing.
Building a solid social media strategy is imperative in today’s marketing climate. With approximately half of the world’s population active on social media platforms, this method of marketing provides businesses with a low-cost alternative to traditional methods. For more information, please contact us here.
How To Leverage Social Media During A Time Of Social Distancing
These are uncertain times for us all and we now live in a world where life seems so different from what we’ve been used to. The reason for this shake up – COVID-19 or Coronavirus.
This week, governments all around the world announced set guidelines that need to be followed in regards to travel, social gatherings and health that include staying home whenever possible, avoiding social gathering of over 10 people, and maintaining a distance of at least six feet from other – all aimed at slowing down the spread of the virus both locally and globally. These guidelines have given rise to new ways of navigating the new reality. Terms like “working from home” and “social distancing” have become the new norm.
For many businesses, isolation is a scary reality but in this digital age we have so much at our fingertips that can equip us to keep our customer engaged and our relationships thriving. Enter social media. Here’s how you can leverage this tool in a time of social distancing:
Own Your Social Media Channel
As a business, it is necessary to remember that you can no longer engage with social media as you once used to i.e. once a week. Social media may have been at the back burner before the pandemic, but it must now take center stage in your digital marketing strategy.
Ensure your channels are current and relate to the current environment. Share timely updates that are useful to followers and relate to their current state of mind. Take part in trending conversations that relate your brand as well as participate with happenings on your channels. Make timely use of GIFs, images and videos to educate, connect and entertain your audience.
Engage in Online Networking
In a time where face-to-face meetings are no longer possible and networking events are being cancelled to limit contact, virtual relationship building is the way to go. Lucky for us, platforms like LinkedIn allow us to connect and keep the conversations going. The convenience of networking online means that you can do it anywhere and at a time that best suites you.
Build an Online Community
In a time of social distancing, there is a high risk of businesses and their consumers losing touch of one another. By building online communities, businesses are able to rally their followers, maintain engagement and ensure they communicate to consumers their value .
Twitter chats, Hashtags, IGTV, Facebook and LinkedIn groups and YouTube channels offer a sense of community and allow meaningful interactions with customers. It is also a great way to receive constructive feedback and hear what is relevant to your target audience in order to improve.
Respond to Online Reviews
Managing business reviews is a painstaking, time-consuming process that you can easily fall behind on. However, now with all this time suddenly spent online, there is enough and more hours in the day to respond back to customer reviews that you were previously too busy to address. Appreciate feedback provided. Appropriately handle unsatisfied customers and extinguish any festering displeasure in a timely manner.
These efforts will especially pay off when social distancing is lifted. Consumers may not receive face-to-face reviews about a new product or service to try but by leaving positive reviews of their experience before the pandemic could possibly mean a spike in your online store and a pipeline of quality leads after the pandemic dust settles.
Social distancing, while inconvenient is a temporary hinderance that can be overcome. We are now more connected than ever thanks to social media. The key to success during this season is to effectively employ its capabilities to do what we’ve always been doing and do it better.
5 Ways To Maximize Your YouTube Marketing Strategy
Let’s be real: the year is 2020 and if you still haven’t figured out the YouTube thing yet, now is the time to get savvy at it.
Why? Because as a content churning machine with over 50 million content creators collectively spewing out videos every single minute and more than 1.8 billion active users on the platform, your inexperience could possibly equal to being lost at sea where no one can find you. In other words, oblivion.
So, how can you ensure you are raising brand awareness while also keeping viewers entertained?
Here are our 5 ways to maximize your YouTube marketing strategy:
- Focus On SEO
In marketing today, SEO is king, and it is not limited to just your websites and your blogs. ‘Findability’ is an actual thing that needs to be considered even when developing content for our YouTube channel.
Google owns YouTube, which also means their algorithms are also closely aligned to one another. Therefore, failing to consider the searchability of the content you are developing could mean obscurity.
To mitigate this, ensure that your video title is “keyword relevant”, your video description is keyword rich, have an interesting thumbnail, and use tags that really capture the content of the video.
- Consider Videos When Strategizing
The mistake that many businesses make is failing to seriously consider videos in line with their overall marketing strategy. Videos are often seen as a one-off marketing activity you engage in whenever you find the time, however this is far from the truth.
Visual content marketing is great source for lead generation and improving website traffic. Videos can be used along with blog posts to generate a steady stream of organic traffic, emphasize on key points and build engagement.
- Create A Content Calendar
Managing a business is crazy enough. So, add a little structure and relieve your stress with a plan in place for a steady flow of relevant content.
Content calendars assist with creating a clutter-free structure to promote and manage content on not only YouTube but also other social media platforms.
The key to succeeding here is by maintaining both quality and consistency in workflow. Your content creation needs to have specified timelines and requirements that relate to what your brand is all about. Simple!
- Learn From Your Favorites
Pro Tip: When watching your favorite Youtubers, ask yourself – what makes them stand out? how do they maintain attention? what are the topics they discuss?
This step will help enlighten you on the techniques used and best practices followed to drive views, subscriptions and engagement. Whether or not your favourite Youtuber is in your business niche, adapting their way of doing things and customizing it to your business has the potential to work wonders.
- Learn From Competition
While your favorites inspire you, your competition challenge you!
A thorough analysis of your competition’s YouTube strategy has the potential to help you stand out from the crowd. Fortunately for you, there’s plenty of information available on their channels to stalk them enough to beat them at their own game.
Watch their videos, look at the language and tone of voice used, analyze their videos with the least views and their videos with most views and learn from that to inform your own strategy.
Developing an effective YouTube marketing strategy takes time, structure, creativity and skill. While there is no set recipe for success, we hope that our tips act as a guide that inform the development of your business’ YouTube strategy.
10 Tips To An Award Winning Facebook Marketing Strategy
Facebook can be considered one of the most popular social media platforms out there, with 68% of US adults actively using it. So, if you plan to promote your brand, this is probably the first place to start.
Understanding how you should market your product or service through Facebook has the capability to skyrocket your business, however studying this social media platform takes discipline, time and effort. While the platform is popular and relatively easy to use, you still need to train yourself in targeting the right people with the right messages.
So, in order to get you started on this journey of learning, here are our top 10 tips to an award-winning Facebook marketing strategy.
- Set goals
What results are you hoping to achieve? Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Are you looking to increase traffic to your website via Facebook ads? These are some questions that need to be asked when planning your Facebook marketing strategy.
Goals should be catered to a specific need and have a SMART strategy (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely). For example, having a goal that attempts to have 40 leads and a cost per conversion of less than $12 by the end of the month.
- Prompt your target audience
Using Facebook Ads manager is a good tool to work out where to find your target audience and how to best reach them. It allows you to adjust your audience to those who are most qualified for the product or service that you will be promoting.
If the audience selected is small, this may mean that the ad may be seen over and over and may not be reaching out to new people. To mitigate this, you can utilize Facebook insights to increase your reach. Ensure you remain within your budget when attempting to do so.
- Set budget
You need to spend money to make money! But you need to have a budget in place for the amount that you want to spend on Facebook ads, so nothing goes to waste. Facebook is a money-hungry yet money-making platform, which means you need to ensure you are constantly monitoring the money being spent on ads when planning your price strategy.
A Facebook budget should include:
- Page-like ad costs
- Conversion costs
- Boosted post costs
Depending on the goal that you have in mind, you will need to alter what is included in your Facebook marketing strategy budget.
- Plan Engaging Content
Utilizing post-scheduling software for Facebook posts can allow you to have posts ready to go far in advance. It is recommended that posts are scheduled a month in advance, averaging at 5 posts per week.
Facebook posts should include GIFs, images and/or photos to increase recognition and interaction with your target audience.
When planning posts, the 70-20-10 rule should be followed (created by Crystal Vilkaitis):
- 70% of Facebook posts should add value and build the brand
- 20% should share ideas or content from other sources
- 10% should be promotional, with offers and discounts offered to followers
- Plan Equally Engaging Ads
When planning a Facebook marketing strategy for your business page, types of content and their tone must be discussed. Consistency in tone of voice throughout your page is of utmost importance.
Photos added within posts must relate to the product or service that you promote or sell. Even the kinds of relevant articles that you repost from relevant sources must fit in with the tone of your page. This tone must also resonate with your target audience.
- Focus on the copy
Each post should have around 3 sentences that contains one that grabs attention, one that adds value to the post and a call to action in a form of a link, ‘tag a friend’ or ‘watch video’ prompt.
When developing your Facebook copy, aim to schedule posts around 4 to 10 times a week, along with special attention to tone consistency as discussed earlier.
- Planning the monitoring of your posts
Posts should be monitored daily with special emphasis on ensuring messages and posts are replied to. It is of utmost importance that you engage with your target audience.
Make sure you plan ahead and allocate time for you to be able to monitor and respond to posts as this in turn improves your response rate.
- Retargeting
Ensure you plan how you will retarget those who purchase or opt into your Facebook ad to further increase the potential of word-of-mouth/sharing of posts or Facebook page. Retargeting should relate to the customer and their last purchase and fulfil a need.
- Create or Join Facebook Groups
Join groups on Facebook when creating your Facebook marketing strategy for more tips on how to master the art of marketing on Facebook. Additionally, by adding your business to groups, regardless if they are public or private, gives your company the opportunity to connect with other similar businesses as well as generate brand awareness for no additional cost.
- Promote Page Outside Facebook
The more publicity you can generate for your business, the better. As part of your Facebook marketing strategy, it is a good idea to interlink your digital platforms such as Instagram or your website to allow for a more thorough promotion of your brand. If optimized correctly, you will be able to see an increase in website traffic as well as an improvement in returns.
It is essential that you utilize these tips to your advantage, so you are able to nail a brilliant Facebook marketing strategy. Make sure you take the time to study how Facebook insights work to ensure marketing success.
The Dramatic Rise of TikTok Marketing
Since acquiring and merging with Musical.ly in 2017, TikTok, and its censored Chinese equivalent Douyin, have been downloaded more than 1.5 billion times.
TikTok is a social media platform that allows users to upload short video clips of between 5 and 60 seconds. It is characterised by challenges that often become viral, spreading to other social media networks.
With TikTok alone boasting 500 million active users spending an average of 52 minutes per day on the app, it’s clear that marketers cannot afford to miss this opportunity.
Here are some examples of how brands have utilised the platform so far:
Participating in existing challenges
Trendjacking isn’t new or unique to TikTok and is perhaps the least effective method for achieving a brand’s ultimate marketing goals on the platform. However, it does assist with building an initial following, thus leading to:
Creating sponsored challenges
US clothing brand Guess is one of the only fashion retailers on the app, acquiring 38,000 followers off seven videos before launching their own #inmydenim challenge in late 2018. All in all total videos featuring the hashtag were viewed over 40 million times.
Partnering with influencers
TikTok’s most followed user, Loren Gray, boasts nearly 40 million followers of her own, and the platform is home to 22 accounts with more than 20 million followers.
When cosmetic brands eos, NARS and e.l.f. launched their combined ‘Eyes. Lips. Face.’ campaign they partnered with users such as Charli D’Amelio, number three on TikTok’s most followed. Ultimately resulting in more than four billion total views.
Overall the platform that TikTok provides is crucial to reaching Generation Z, of which 82% skip ads and more than half utilise ad-blocking software. Anti-marketing, less invasive strategies is the best way to reach this demographic. Brands need to create a sense of community and generate content adapted to suit this specific audience.
A successful example of this is the National Basketball Association (NBA) which has segmented their offerings. Match highlights on Instagram, news on Twitter, and comedy, memes and motivation on TikTok. This strategy resulted in their account gaining nearly 10 million followers, the most for a non media and entertainment or technology brand.