Is Social Media Marketing (SMM) a real field of marketing?
What kind of benefits can social media marketing bring to my business?
What about sales- can I get real, tangible sales from Social Media Marketing?
Is it necessary to invest money in social media marketing services? Can my office intern do it?
The above questions point to a mentality. This mentality generally results in brands and people heading them being labelled as dinosaurs!
With more than 4 billion users across multiple social media platforms, social media marketing is a reality. It is a reality that any business or brand in their right senses would not want to ignore.
A grate social media marketing strategy helps in-
- Reinforcing your brand message and recall value
- Builds on brand awareness and publicity
- Helps in reaching the right Target Audiences
- Generates the right kind of leads for your business
- Increases traffic to your brand website
- Results in tangible sales and revenue generation.
With declining organic reach across multiple social media platforms, a social media marketing strategy needs to be- clear-cut, definite, actionable and affordable.
SMM is not easy. An intern cannot do it.
It is a highly complex and complicated field of expertise that rewards less and penalizes more. This is a field, which digital marketing experts are grappling to master.
While some of their strategies have worked brilliantly, others have backfired terribly.
In the following list, we have concentrated on strategies that aim to increase organic reach. Once the reach is established, traffic, engagement and conversions take place consequently.
Let us now look at the 7 top social media marketing tips in 2019 for brands.
Social Media Marketing Tips in 2019: The List
1. Live Streaming Content
With declining organic reach across social platforms, Live Streaming still enjoys the highest organic reach as a content type. Instagram’s relatively new Instagram TV (IGTV) along with Facebook Live should enjoy a strong presence on your social strategy.
In terms of audiences, Live Streaming helps reinstate a brand’s authenticity and originality. Users on social media want their brands to promote trust, loyalty and genuineness. Live Streaming helps build all these core pillar of faith.
Live Streaming in various forms, including Q&As, Reviews, or just general Events of the company are beneficial for boosting engagement on your pages.
2. Push as many Videos as possible
If you casually browse through your feed, you will see brands experiment with more and more video content. This is because videos have a higher reach than static images (3x). Creating quality videos in both long format and short format should always be a part of any social media strategy.
Integrating videos to your social strategy improves engagements and drives better ROIs on campaigns. This is especially true of Lead gen campaigns and follower campaigns on social media.
The growth of videos is simply the way human beings assess and engage with media. Videos will always have a higher reach and engagement than images. This is just because of how human psychology behaves.
3. Start using Stories on a regular basis
Stories are small, crisp and engaging content forms on social media. For most brands, they serve to function as a recall for users.
For example, a brand typically posts 5 to 10 stories a day. This means that a user will see your story beeping every time he opens his profile. This will help your brand increase its recall value and create an imprint in the mind of the user.
Brands have started experimenting with stories. They tend to avoid doing outright product stories. Most brands use stories to make a ‘New Post Announcement’. This is because brands and agencies know that stories are shown to everyone who follows the page. However, posts do not follow a similar reach.
4. Have a Voice and Opinion on Social Issues
Gone are those days when millennials used to be the centre of attention for brands on social media. Generation Z is slowly the new TG watchword in the social media world. Gen Z is young, enthusiastic and eager.
They also want their brands to take sides, talk on social issues and become meaningful allies in a changing world. This means talking heavily on ‘Topical’ issues like LGBTQ Rights, Global Warming, International Relations, Gender Equality, etc.
This is also the reason why sentiments and emotions are becoming a big part of social media. Gen Z wants to identify with and buy from brands, which espouse ideals that the generation believes in. In 2019, brands should start taking a stand and shed their conservative baggage.
5. The Rise of Micro and Nano Influencers
The fake follower and paid engagement controversy rocked social media hard in 2018. With Unilever and others calling out mega and macro influencers on their fake followers and paid engagements.
The biggest beneficiaries of this scandal are the small brands. These brands could never afford to work with the biggest names in the industry. However, nano-influencers (>1000 followers) exhibit better engagement, closer follower base and more sales.
This is similar to micro-influencers (>10000 followers). The next wave in Influencer Marketing on social media is going to focus on micro and nano influencers, Brands do not have to worry about fakes, and benefit from better engagements, conversions and the affordability factor.
6. Use Data and Analytics in your Strategy
You might be investing quality time, effort and resources in crafting a social strategy that doesn’t work. As you are so invested in the project, you might not be able to get a perspective. This happens on many social accounts in an agency.
This is where agencies and brands need to be prudent and smart. Data and analytics from social platforms itself can help you in a big way. It can help you analyse what is working and what is not. It can also tell you small things that are invaluable like-
- The timings of posts
- The demographic that is engaging the most with your content
- What kind of content is getting the highest engagement
- What hashtags are getting the right reach and traction
A social media marketing strategy that does not pay attention to data and analytics is incomplete.
7. Regular Boosts through Contests and Giveaways
The hashtag #contest has 7,487,552 posts on Instagram.
That means that it is highly discoverable, boosts engagement and many brands are doing it. By creating a simple contest every fifteen days, you can increase the traction of your social account significantly.
Hashtags like #contest #contestalert #contestgiveaway and #contestprep will give you a reach that is astronomical to say the least. This can also contribute to your branding. For example, you can have a product giveaway that carries your brand’s logo (please make it small).
You can also ask the winners to post the gift on their social pages. You can then re-share the same on your social media. This will help build credibility and faith in your brand.
Conclusion
Social media is constantly evolving. What works today might not work tomorrow. This is because social platforms are always changing their algorithms. In their quest to show people the right content and manage advertisements, social platforms are constantly updating themselves.
Any social media strategy is highly dynamic. It can never be a one-strategy approach. It always needs to be a multi-pronged approach. This is where most brands and agencies fail to stay abreast of the changes.
If you are following the above seven tips for crafting a social media marketing strategy in 2019, remember that it needs a simultaneous execution.