For brands and enterprises, having social media is a must in today’s standards. After all, having an online presence is what consumers expect from businesses—and the lack of it often triggers red flags.
This is especially true for social media marketing in the Philippines, a country whose populace is more inclined to shop online.
However, having or acquiring social media presence does not cut it. What you need to do is to be able to wield it effectively. And if done properly, it could be an asset to your company, specifically when it comes to brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, growing your customer base, and even increasing your revenue.
That being the case, it’s important that you as a brand or enterprise navigate this field with caution and always manage your online behavior accordingly. You don’t want to lose the trust you’ve built up with your audience, seem unprofessional, or leave a negative impression, do you?
To help you out, we’ve created a guide you can use to avoid social media mishaps and make the most out of your online pages.
The Dos
When it to comes to social media marketing, results are important. And one way of effectively monitoring that is through checking goals and objectives.
By being clear with what you want to achieve with your brand’s social page, you’ll be able to tell if you’re social media strategy is affecting your business positively. However, you also have to make it so that these goals complement your overall business trajectory—be it an increase in return of investment, boosting brand awareness, or improving customer experience.
Now that you’ve set up objectives for your business, the next step you should accomplish is to establish a system to track and analyze your activity and results.
Keeping an eye on this aspect of your business will be of aid to you in the long run, especially when it comes to coming up with new objectives and goals.
You don’t even have to break a sweat over this since social media platforms often come equipped with tools that’ll provide you with accurate numerical data on your performance. If you make use of it, you’ll be able to observe even the most minute detail about your socials—whether likes, views, shares, comments, traffic conversions, revenue, and more.
To avoid confusing your customers or audience, you should always implement a consistent branding look across all of your platforms—the same color scheme, the same logo, the same name, and the same posts.
If you fail to do so, people will likely assume that they’re on a different page altogether, leaving them no other choice but to leave and give up. It’ll also signal alarm bells and make your audience think you’re posing as your own brand.
The same thing should be applied when it comes to your brand’s messaging. Although social media platforms have different users and purposes, the tone of your voice and messaging should always be coherent.
Sharing valuable content does not only help your page gain engagement from your users ( likes, comments, and shares), but it’s also a great way to keep them coming back. It’s also important to note that content that has value and is relevant will boost your chances of achieving a better or stronger ROI.
Meanwhile, if you’re churning out poorly thought out and awfully designed content on your page, you’re more likely to lose traction and followers.
While growing your social media pages organically is a good strategy in itself, using promotional tools and targeted advertisements is not a bad thing.
Through it, you’ll be able to reach a lot more and target people that are more likely to avail of your products or service—at the right times and in the right places. The added exposure can also drive more conversions and revenue for your business.
The Donts
While it’s a good thing to regularly post on your social media pages, overdoing it could jeopardize your engagement, following, and conversions.
According to a study conducted by Sprout Social, 60% of social media users are annoyed by constant promotions and content. And 46% of users are more likely to unfollow a brand if they’re overloading their page with posts.
What you need to do is find the right balance and always remember that quality always trumps quantity.
If you’re on social media most of the time, you’re probably familiar with these posts: “Like and Share post to WIN” or “Tag a Friend to WIN Prizes!”
Most often than not, you’ll see these posts on businesses pages, particularly those who are trying to build engagement and followers. And while it did work in the past, it won’t now.
Social media platforms are now cracking down on such posts, which are being described as ‘spammy.’ A good example would be Facebook—the social networking site has begun demoting posts and pages with such messaging.
So, think twice before utilizing baiting tactics as it might cost you reach and negatively impact future social media campaigns.
In the first part of the post, we mentioned that social media platforms offer different types of audiences and varying purposes. And due to this, not all will be able to accommodate your business, specifically when it comes to ethos, goals, and objectives.
On that note, what we recommend you to do is focus on one or two social media pages that align with the objectives and intent you’ve set for your brand. This way, you’ll be able to focus on the pages that bring in the most results. You’ll also be able to save time and money by cutting down on your social pages, especially those that don’t perform as much.
While it’s easy to get hung up on your socials’ number, obsessing over them won’t get you anywhere. Metrics sure are important, but it’s really not the epitome of success that you think they are.
You could have a following of 100,000, however, if most of them are spam accounts then that really won’t be of help to your conversions or ROI. And that’s where quality over quantity comes in.
What you should really focus on is maintaining your engagement rate and maintaining the audience that participates in it. This is what makes you real money, which means you better pay extra attention to it.
Now that you’re aware of how to navigate the social media sphere, you can use your time to focus on other aspects of your business, specifically search engine optimization.
SEO will come in handy for your online store or website if you always want to be on top of the relevant search results—Google’s first page.
You could also put your extra time to use by optimizing your site according to Google’s algorithm changes. This will ensure that you’re always updated and won’t fall in the rankings.
If done properly, this could boost your overall ranking and conversions, specifically for your social pages.
*This article is written by Alexandra Santos.