social media
Deployment, management and brand consistencyWe Know What Works
Social media has taken the world by storm over the past two decades, and similarly to websites, if your organization is not on social, you may be behind.
That being said, making an impact on social media is not the same as it was even 5 years ago. There are over 3.5 billion internet users and each of them has on average about 7 social media profiles. That’s about half of the world’s population on the internet, and that is equally a huge market opportunity as it is a conundrum as to how to find your place. Facebook and other social media platforms update so quickly with user demand that it can be hard to keep up.
The good news is, that with a digital marketing strategy focused on data you can still make an impact via social. Social media algorithms change as frequently as Google’s. But what is the original appeal of social media? Interaction! As interested prospects interact with you, you can still close sales through social media. Our experience with our clients has been that as long as you don’t try to be everything to all people and focus on helping your verticals you can still be successful.
Another key is finding the right social media platforms. Linkedin is very good for business to business and professional services, such as accounting, finance, marketing, and the like, while Instagram may not be the best platform since it is focused on pictures.
Instagram might work better for creative or outdoor industries sharing photos of art, outdoors, or products. Like everything we do, we can help you determine which platforms will work for your organization by looking at the results of your interactions and determining if they lead to sales.
A great advantage we have is our use of marketing automation in conjunction with social media. SharpSpring has two new features: SharpSpring Social and a Content Calendar. SharpSpring Social brings social scheduling and marketing automation together making it one of the most powerful tools currently available. What does this mean? Not only will you be able to schedule social media posts in the Content Calendar, but you can assign lead scores to social interactions, trigger automations from social interactions, and measure true results of your social media strategy. Imagine a follower on Facebook automatically receiving an email from you when they like a post! These tools allow you to move beyond vanity metrics such as likes or follows and track the interactions that are actually leading to closed deals.
Additional features of the Content Calendar is the ability to see all scheduled social posts and emails together in one place. There is also a social listening feed where you can follow topics, users, or brands to watch their social activity.
In our experience, SharpSpring Social is the most comprehensive tool on the market right now that truly allows you to fully integrate social media into your overall digital marketing strategy. Get in touch with us today for a free demo!
Answers to Your Questions
How do I get more followers?
There are a lot of ways to gain more followers on different social media networks. You can run a “like” campaign on Facebook for instance and gain potentially 5000+ followers in merely days with about $25. The problem with this is that you usually end up with a bunch of followers who are not actually interested in your product and won’t interact with your posts. Would you rather have 300 followers who interacted with your posts and lead to one closed sale per month or 5000 followers that lead to nothing? We still encourage our clients to gain loyal followers organically. This takes longer than buying them, but followers gained through the effective posting of content that your prospects actually want to see will more likely lead to actual closed sales.
Should I buy ads on social media?
The competition to show up organically on Facebook is ever increasing. Before the new algorithm updates in early 2018, only about 8% of your followers would see your posts. Now it will be even less as Facebook is shifting to show users more content from friends, family, and groups. This will make it even harder for businesses to market on Facebook. Boosting posts or purchasing ads can increase your reach, but with anything other marketing activity you do these should have a strategy behind them so you don’t waste your money. One way to increase reach to your followers is to boost a post after it has been up for a little while, allowing it to reach it’s organic extent first. You may also create an ad that points users back to your website. At the end of the day, you want this spend to gain a return on your investment whether that be in actual closed sales or strategic measurement of awareness stage followers gained on social media.
What content should I share on social media?
The ultimate answer is, of course, content that your audience wants to see. How do you know what that is? Test and measure the data! Social media and blogs are for sharing information. Think of the many times you have searched for something on Google, and imagine your followers doing the same thing and then coming across your content. Does your title grab audience attention? Is your article relevant to the title? Do you have rich content with resources and research? Is your article relevant to your industry? There are many layers to a content calendar strategy (read more on our Content page), but for starters share your own content that always points followers back to your website, and share other relevant industry news, blogs, and articles. If you are tracking your interactions through a tool like SharpSpring Social, you will be able to see which content is effective for your audience and leading to closed sales.
How do I find the time to post on social media?
Social media marketing can be very time consuming, but we can help you be more effective. A marketing strategy that incorporates all of your platforms (social media, emails, blogs, ads, etc.) can help you plan your Content Calendar and streamline your workload. This prevents hours of searching for articles to share that people may not even read or don’t fall into your marketing strategy. With SharpSpring Social, you can quickly schedule your posts in advance. It can take just 30 minutes to schedule one to two weeks of posts if you have a strategy laid out, or you can schedule as far out in advance as you like.