How Social Media Can Grow My Business
Chris Mulvaney is the CEO of CMDS. I make things... I’m the creative entrepreneur with passion for (re)making brands and inventing solutions to problems no one knows exist.
Tips from a NJ Social Media Marketing Agency
Having a strong social media presence has become a staple of successful marketing strategies everywhere. There’s no better way to communicate with your customers than with tools like Facebook, Twitter and professional blogs. The number of companies using social media as a major part of their marketing and advertising strategies grows every year, and it’s expected to continue growing.
Everyone is Using Social Media – But Are They Using It Right?
According to a recent report by eMarketer, 88% of companies currently use social media for marketing purposes. This number is up a full percentage point from 2013 and is expected to rise another point in 2015. However, while more marketers are investing in social media every year, many still are unsure of how well it works. So the big question is, Why don’t marketers know whether their social media strategy is working? The answer: Because they aren’t doing it correctly.
Many companies have their most junior level employee, or even worse, a high school intern or college kid doing it. In these cases, there is no campaign. There is no strategy. There is just chest pounding posts and little to no value in it for the user. There is no consumer being targeted in their efforts. They aren’t building relationships in those social channels with the right audiences. They aren’t finding social leaders and using their audience to get their message out.
That’s what a social media marketing agency like CMDS can do.
Growing Your Business with Social Media
Social media can take many different forms, but all of these tools have one goal in common: targeting the right audience with the right message. Where old school marketing and advertising methods tend to target large audiences in order to get noticed by as many people as possible, social media allows you to narrow in on the consumers that are most relevant to your business. In other words, the money you spend to market your business won’t be wasted on people who have no interest in your company.
Social media marketing is about more than just having an online presence or a LinkedIn account. It is a responsive and effective customer service; it is a way to build mindshare; it helps you maintain customer relationships between points of purchase. In short, social media is an integral part of every company’s marketing mix – and one that needs just as much thought as the rest of your communications.
Capturing Mindshare Through Social Strategies
You need a strategy in place to effectively target your audience and capture mindshare in your industry. Your company’s mindshare is based on how often consumers associate your company with a product or industry. Social media is one of the best ways to ensure that customers think of your brand when it’s time to make a purchasing decision. By building relationships with consumers through social media, they will start to defer to you instead of a competitor.
Building a Relationship Via Social Media
Social media is not just about sending a message or promoting a brand. It’s about creating relationships with customers so that they trust you. Establishing your brand as a thought-leader in the industry will encourage longer-lasting, more engaged interactions between you and your customers.
By starting a conversation, you can lead that conversation. If someone is not satisfied with a product or service you provided, social media gives you the chance to provide a solution. Socially active brands appear proactive and responsive to their customers, and are more likely to gain actionable feedback for their products and services. This type of social behavior gives consumers confidence in your ability to do business and to meet their growing expectations.
Be Engaging, Attract a Crowd
The key to a good social media marketing strategy is engagement. Don’t just decide to have a Twitter account for the sake of having one. You will not successfully grow your business through social tools without being committed to using them.
A corporate social media account should frequently post useful content relevant to your business. Marketers sometimes have a strong urge to post self-promotional, ‘salesy’ content in an effort to gain followers or build their brand. Yet, as any social media agency can tell you, the most effective social media accounts do the opposite. Your messaging needs to focus on benefit-oriented content that followers would be eager to engage in. Once an account has been established as a useful content provider, marketers will be able to push their brand more frequently.
Mismanaging a Social Media Account Can Hurt Your Company’s Reputation
One of the biggest mistakes your company can make is trusting your social media accounts with someone who is not qualified to manage them. Just because someone has a twitter account does not mean they know how to run your social media for you. In the eyes of your customers, you ARE your social media account. If you do or say the wrong thing on social media, it can do a lot of damage to your brand.
Even large corporations get into trouble when their social media account is not run properly. British Airways, for example, took some heat last year for failing to respond when a customer actually paid for a Promoted Tweet that trashed the airline after losing his father’s luggage. Over 76,000 people saw the tweet, but it took more than eight hours for British Airways to respond. Situations like this are easily avoidable with proper management.
A Social Media Marketing Agency Will Help Your Company Grow
Often, managing this level of social media ends up taking more time than a company has available. In these cases, it’s important to turn to a proven social media agency to implement a social strategy on your behalf.
Not only can a social media agency keep up with the volume and quality of content and posting that your account should sustain, but it can also create a strategy that is in line with the goals of your company. Social media agencies will look at what is working best based on likes, clicks, traffic driven to your site, shares and conversions – and then tailor your content in that direction.
Don’t just do social media for the sake of doing it. Do it right with the help of a NJ Social Media Agency.
Contact CMDS, the leading social media marketing agency in NJ, to launch a social strategy that propels your brand to the next level. Call 732-706-5555 today.
