The Alakazam Guide to Social Media Marketing

The Alakazam Guide to Social Media Marketing

With billions of users on social media (and many more joining every day), every business under the sun is seemingly forming a strategy to engage new audiences.

Getting noticed online is a complicated process, and it requires that you not only ‘do social,’ but ‘be social’ –  i.e. it’s important to remain active if you want to build a strong following.

Maintaining an ad-hoc virtual presence is simply not enough. Social media has morphed into a highly interactive experience where consumers expect to be captivated. It is an experience you must be a part of if you wish to create the personal connections and emotional interactions that engage consumers and create customers.

Managing Multiple Profiles

Engaging the consumer is just one small aspect of a social campaign, especially across multiple platforms. Every digital marketer knows the headache of having to track relevant feeds, ensuring a unified voice, constantly creating unique content, frequently integrating new social resources, and continuously updating profiles. Not to mention the difficulties imposed by the expanding diversity of social networks; each one boasting its own layout, parameters, and style requirements.

Fortunately, by using social media management tools, like Hootsuite and SocialOomph, you can easily update multiple networks and respond to various consumer enquiries from a single interface.

Although these tools are great for managing several profiles from one platform, they’re only useful once your campaign has a plan. Below, we address some issues to be aware of during the early stages. Issues that are vital to establishing a solid foundation for your social strategy.

Know Who You Are

If you don’t define your brand, the consumer will never know who you are. Is your company revolutionary like Virgin, or is it capable of great achievements like Google?  Defining your company and establishing a brand archetype is one of the surest ways of generating a unified voice and establishing integrity with consumers.

Know Your Audience

The importance of knowing your audience cannot be understated. Are they watching short digital movies at work or reading long online articles at home? Do they view Vines on their phone or follow blogs on a desktop? Knowing your audience will enable you to focus your marketing strategy on relevant devices and social media platforms.

Defining Goals

A marketing campaign without pre-established goals and metrics of success is like an archer without a target. Do you want to focus on expanding brand awareness, creating conversions, or increasing web-traffic? Defining the purpose of your campaign and designating your individual goals and metrics early will help ascertain your campaign’s success. 

Combine Emotions and Facts

Emotional content is capable of establishing an intimately personal connection with the audience, and is one of the surest ways of engaging the consumer. Combining the potent pull of sentiments with the logic of facts can result in a powerful online response.  People love buying from people, so share your stories and personalise your output.

Seed, Seed, Seed

Ensuring that your digital content is properly packaged and easily distributed is essential. Although customising your material for each platform can be costly, being able to share and expand the reach of your media content is a vital part of the marketing process.

Defining your identity, ascertaining your audience, and reaching consumers are just the beginning, though. Operating a successful social media campaign is a complex process, but dedicating time to doing it right can pa dividends.

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