Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing (SMM) involves utilizing online social networking and user-generated content platforms to promote a product, service or brand. Many companies have heard so much about “social media” or “content marketing” that they believe it is a panacea for their marketing ills. That is very rarely the case in our experience. However, we find that the proper use of social media provides valuable support to search engine marketing, allows for real understanding and conversation with customers, and can be used showcase a company’s products or services visually as well as the knowledge of its leaders.
The Art of Conversation
With the advent of social media platforms, the barrier preventing customers and businesses from having active dialogues has gotten thinner and thinner. If a customer wants to contact you, you’re only a Tweet or Facebook message away. And you have access to the eyes and ears of your customers to deliver ongoing content to retain their loyalty.
Using social media for marketing is more than just creating a Facebook page or Twitter account and hoping for a sale. This discipline often involves creating and participating in a dialogue with your target audience. SMM can also include creating and promoting viral content to be shared by users. The more users sharing your content, the more eyes there are on your company which can cause your website traffic to boom, and in the long run, your ROI, too.
Social Listening
Before you even create your social media strategy, rest assure people are already talking about you online. Most marketers call the tracking of these conversations as social listening, but social listening is more than monitoring the outspoken unhappy or happy customers. Social listening goes beyond the profiles you control. It can be used across many platforms to find conversations about your company or products and services. Social listening can produce insights you can’t acquire elsewhere because you can “listen” for more than just negative reviews. Effective use of social listen can develop relationships with future customers and thus boost awareness or sales.
Our Social Media Marketing Process
WrightIMC is a social media marketing agency for small, medium and large businesses. There is no single strategy for social media marketing that fits every business, because the demographics of different business vary widely. What works well for one business, may not work well for your business because your customers are different and they may be on different social platforms. We craft social media plans specifically for your business’s needs and future goals. We have some roadmaps and best practices that we follow, but our approach is unique for every client.
Here’s how we help our clients with their social media needs on various platforms:
Facebook
We craft a strategy unique to you that will have your target audience voluntarily interacting with your brand and sharing your brand’s story with others on Facebook. Posts containing videos on Facebook have now overtaken images as the most shared kind of post. We can help you with videos. And, Facebook now only shows a post to about 1-3% of your followers in their stream – unless you pay to boost your presence. WrightIMC helps all of our social media clients with advertising on their platforms.
Twitter
Twitter has grown to become a preferred platform for customers to talk about your business – both positively and negatively. Smart companies are now using Twitter to create brand loyalty, interact with their audiences, and show off their personalities. We can help companies create effective, long-term strategies for Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms such as Tumblr, as well as visual social platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, and help show your customers that your company has a voice and personality with which they can identify. As with Facebook, Twitter now meters out your Tweets to your followers – only about 10% of your followers will see a given Tweet in their stream if you don’t pay to advertise it.
Video Content
Video on the web is very powerful. Companies like Red Bull use videos to show a visual story for their brand and help build brand awareness and reach. Videos can also be used to create direct responses to your audience’s questions and concerns, and we can create video material for potential viral distribution. We can assist with the creation, execution, syndication and optimization for your online videos. We frequently post and optimize videos on YouTube for clients, but sometimes other video platforms make more sense.
When approached properly, social networks can be used as extremely effective channels for building product evangelism, managing your reputation, retaining loyal customers, and extending your corporate branding. However, social media should never be a stand-alone strategy. It should always be an extension of a brand’s overall marketing strategy – a tool to further the brand’s reach among its target audience.
Social media is powerful, and in conjunction with a solid online marketing plan, it can bring your business new customers and retain loyal ones. When thinking about your social media plan, consider our other services such as:
Contact us and tell us your needs and goals for social media. We can help your company make the most of social media marketing tools and help you show your customers and audience that you’re more than a logo.
