The ever-evolving world of Social Media can be difficult to jump into- just when you think you’ve got a plan in place for launching an online presence, the world shifts and you need to reassess all that you thought you knew! Coupled with thousands of How-To articles, and dozens of management platforms, it’s easy to lose sight of the basic question; how do I want to interact with my community?
All Social platforms are not created equal, and even the juggernauts like Facebook and Instagram may not yield the most productive results. A hundred followers can be far more effective than a hundred thousand. At its core, Social Media should not replace interactions with your customers, but should act as an extension of it. It should be another step in the public’s education of who you are, what your brand represents, and what it can offer the consumer. To this end, you need to examine the answers to those questions.
As of December 2017, statistics show that peer review and social proof are the most effective conversion tools in our toolkit. This holds especially true with Generation Z, which has the least amount of brand allegiance than any generation before it, but will make purchases based on whether they believe that the brand understands them. According to IRi Solutions and Shopify, 84% will take action based on the opinion of others, and 90% of shoppers will trust peer recommendations. Take a moment to process of that kind of influencing power.
Do you offer the kind of How-To knowledge that has been the focus of exponential increases in Search? In 2015 alone, searches for How To videos grew 70%, and have been on a steady increase ever since. Considering that 1.5 billion people use YouTube every day, there’s an audience for nearly everything, just waiting to be found.
Do you offer products that are visually-engaging, creative, and apt to be shared among friends? Then Instagram and Pinterest may be the platforms to focus on. With perpetually-evolving updates that are easily linking potential customers with products, merchants are able to hone in on their target audiences and place the perfect ad right on their phones. If you have a daily narrative that users may find interesting, keep in mind that – as of November 2017 – over 300 million people are using Instagram Stories every day, compared to 178 million Snapchat users. With Instagram’s current audience of 700 million users, a number that is growing at a feverish pace, the potential outreach is truly awesome.
Then there’s Facebook; the Goliath of them all. It’s mistakenly thought that this needs to be the focal point of your social efforts, but that is simply not so. This is even more true in 2018, as Mark Zuckerberg has put emphasis back on the shared content of family and friends, making the organic reach of businesses even smaller, and accounting for a 5% drop in overall daily traffic as of January 2018. This puts the pressure on businesses to create even higher quality content, and rethink the old strategy that brought them success even two years ago.
If you offer a wide arrange of inbound and outbound content, events, products, and more, then Facebook is probably the keystone in your strategy. Facebook Shop has made purchasing easier than ever, and the Insights section of the Business Page gives a great baseline for determining your audience, and how you can best interact with them. Just don’t fall into the trap of believing that the sun rises and sets around a daily Facebook post.
Here at Marine Media Partners, we can help you with your first steps into the world of Social Media, or help reassess your current situation and find a new path to pursue. There are agencies out there that will tell you that their plan will guarantee you quick success and a huge following, but the hard truth is that every business needs a different approach, and a large social following isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Our first step to helping you is in listening to what your goals are, where you want your vision to take you. We want to make sure that when crafting a strategy, it’s being broadcast in your voice, not in ours. By being objective and inquisitive, we work with you to understand our methods and make you a part of the process, rather than shrouding it in mystique. Call or write us below if this is the next step your business is looking for!
