Get in on the ACTION! Realize the Benefits of being ACTIVE on Social Media

Marketing on Social Media has many benefits. Social media is free and you don’t have to front any cash for most social media services. But with anything, there are always downsides: Most services require a significant time investment to initiate and maintain a social media marketing campaign, and many limit distribution of unpaid posts, charging for advertising and distributing to your desired markets.

Despite the downsides, it’s important to know that a majority of the US adult population accesses social media daily. By tapping into social media, you might see the following benefits.

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Branding

Social Media marketing isn’t all that different in this aspect. Every marketing campaign still focuses on the same pieces:

• Branding

• Name recognition

• Visibility

• Presence

• Top-of-mind awareness

Social media works for branding as long as you get your name in front of the right people. Make sure you are catering to your audience in providing relevant content that will keep them coming back to your brand for more.

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Building Relationships

You cannot be focused on short-term benefits. Long-term goals are needed to make sure you are connecting to your customers in the way they want to be connected with. To build effective relationships on social media, you are expected to:

• Establish your expertise.

• Create a regular cadence of content while following site rules and abide by whatever conventions have been established.

• Avoid overt self-promotion.

• Resist hard-sell techniques except in paid advertising.

• Provide value with links, resources, and unbiased information.

While you do the above, watch for steady growth in followers, likes, shares, etc. Also make sure to look at your website for growth opportunities too. Many businesses link people directly to their website to get them connected with their brand. Look for increased downloads of articles or other tools that provide detailed information on a topic. All these signs indicate you are building relationships that may later lead to a sale or word-of-web recommendation to someone who does purchase.

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Improving Business Processes

It’s crazy to think that businesses are actually utilizing social media to improve a process within their business. Depending on your type of business, consider some of the following:

• Promptly detect and correct customer problems or complaints

• Obtain customer feedback and input on new product designs and changes

• Provide tech support to many people at one times

• Improve service delivery, like cafes that accept to-go orders on Twitter or Facebook

• Locate qualified new vendors, service providers, and employees

• Collect critical market intelligence on your industry and competitors by watching content on appropriate social media

• Use geolocation, tweets, and mobile search services to drive neighborhood traffic to brick-and-mortar stores during slow times and to acquire new customers

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Improving Search Engine Rankings

Yep. SEO is important for social media outlets too! You should optimize your social media accounts so that you can get your website and social media content on the search engines too.

Search engines recognize most appearances on social media as inbound links, which also improve where your site will appear in natural search results. Make sure to link your social media back to your website to increase your search engine rankings.

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Selling in the Social Media Marketplace

When businesses were starting to use social media for marketing, it was a new and exciting opportunity. Sometimes when things are new and exciting, people tend to get focused on that initial opportunity and don’t stay current with other new innovations. Now, you can use social media as a sales opportunity too! Many of the social media platforms now offer a service to sell your products directly on your profile.

• Sell music and event tickets

• Include a link to your online store on social-shopping services

• Offer promotional codes or special deals to followers

• Place links to online or third-party stores such as Etsy on your profile pages on various services

• Include a sign-up option for your e-newsletter

With features to sell your products on your social media account, creates a completely new sales funnel for the many users that access social media daily. Once they get your product, and they want more, you can easily direct them to your website. This tactic can help new customers learn more about your business.

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Final Thoughts

Although time is money, the magic word is free. If you decide to approach social media as an alternative to paid advertising, construct your master social media campaign just as carefully as you would a paid one:

• Create a plan that outlines target markets, ad offers, publishing venues, and schedules for different ad campaigns

• Conduct comparative testing of messages, graphics, and offers

• Monitor results and focus on the outlets that work best at driving qualified visits that lead to conversions

• Supplement your free advertising with SEO, press releases, and other forms of free promotion

We are your experts in social media marketing. Let us help you!

Audacious Marketing Solutions is a digital marketing agency that specializes in Social Media Marketing. Our simple approach will revamp your current social media marketing strategy and drive customers to your business. We focus on making our customers be the experts in their field by focusing on quality, meaningful content.