Marketing on social media

Choosing the right platform

You can choose from several social media platforms to include in your digital marketing strategy, each with its own strengths. However, social media marketing requires a significant time investment to succeed, so it's vital to pick the social network you feel will meet your business goals.

To decide which social platforms to use and how to get the best results, it's essential to consider:

• What social accounts does your audience use? If you sell to other businesses, LinkedIn could best meet your social media marketing goals. If you're aiming for a younger audience, direct your social efforts towards Instagram. Facebook has the most significant number of users in New Zealand, so Facebook marketing is an excellent place to start if you're not sure. TikTok has a self-serve advertising platform called Business Ads Manager allowing you to target TikTok users based on their activity.
• What's your story, and what do you want to tell your target audiences? What's your point of difference? Is your founding story compelling? What's unique about your product or service? What do your customers love about you? If you've got a good angle, share it, and others might share it too.
• What are you trying to achieve with your content strategy? First, you're going to need the right social media management tools. If you want to boost brand recognition, you'll want to measure reach. If you're going to drive action, you'll want to measure clicks and enquiries. Fortunately, social media sites provide insightful metrics for businesses to obtain a competitive analysis. But make sure you test, learn and experiment in order to understand your social media performance. Use Google Analytics to discover why certain user-generated content or formats have been more successful than others and then aim to replicate that.

Advertising on social media

While it is possible to maintain communication with your followers for free just by posting engaging content, you may need to pay to advertise to generate leads and reach new customers.

Here's how to make the most of your social media marketing campaign:

• First, select your target audience to match your customer profile (age, location, interests, occupation and other details).
• Decide what social media platform to run your advert and if you want to run it across multiple platforms. For example, you could display identical social media posts across Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram and Messenger.
• Select your daily ad spend and the length of time you want your adverts to run. These limits mean that you'll never go over your marketing budget.
• Pick a format. You can choose to show a single image or video in your advert or use a roomier, multi-image format.
• Create appealing organic content for maximum audience engagement. For example, ensure that your advert has a simple and powerful message, a consistent tone of voice, and a clear call to action combined with relevant hashtags. Also, people engage better with brief social media messages.
• Finally, most social media analytics allow you to track and edit your social media campaigns to discover how your adverts perform. For example, if you've created Instagram and Facebook ads, you can gather data to determine which is working better and use this information for your next major strategy.

Using blogs

A blog post can complement your social media marketing plan and provide you with an opportunity to offer helpful information to customers. Do you have an exciting story to tell about you or your business? An innovative new product or service to announce? Some unique knowledge or valuable insights within your field to share?
 

By sharing those stories on your website, you can drive traffic from people seeking information, strengthen your brand identity and encourage customers to take up relevant products or services. So when you create content, make it relevant, helpful, and engaging. And then promote your content by sharing it across other social channels.
 

Other blog tips:
 

• How-to vlogs (video blogs) are one of the most popular categories on YouTube. For businesses wanting to show their expertise, it's an excellent way to target customers by offering something valuable. In addition, you can integrate products you might be selling and increase your company's brand awareness when it comes time for customers to book or purchase.
• Using this social strategy, you can also share business news and updates. Boost your social media presence and advise loyal customers when you have updated your site with new information, promotions or discounts. Encourage potential customers to sign up for newsletters or provide sneak previews of what is coming up.
• You'll need to put time aside to blog regularly. Most successful bloggers put out new content a couple of times a week and stick to a regular schedule. A social media scheduler can help with your social media management across various platforms. 
• Pay attention to writing concise and engaging content that's easy to scan, as most people do this before deciding if they will read it in full. 

Keep working on it. It's unlikely that your blog will be an instant success, and it can initially feel as though you are writing for no one. It takes time to build relationships and customer loyalty.

Next steps in your social media strategy

• Check out the free web hosting platforms such as Blogger and WordPress.
• Go online and delve into the social platform of choice to learn more about their advertising process, for example TikTok for Business, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and Facebook Advertising. 
• Like any promotional tactic, you'll need to allocate money and time to make social media marketing worth the investment.
• Cross-promote your content over the various social media channels you use. For example, if you've just posted a new blog entry, tweet about it on Twitter and add a link to your Facebook and LinkedIn page. If you've just uploaded a "how-to”" video on YouTube, share the video on your blog.
• If you need help, you'll find many smaller agencies specialising in social media advertising effectiveness. You can even pay them to do much of the work for you.