Once thought of as just a passing fad, social media has had a tremendous impact on business over the past decade. Social platforms like Instagram and Facebook have transformed the way that people communicate and, in the process, have changed the way that businesses interact with customers.
If a campaign doesn’t return the same results, we’re quick to assume that we did something wrong. But that’s just the nature of social media; no two campaigns are created equal. Before you get too discouraged and throw in the towel, take a look at 7 of the most common social media challenges and our tips on how to solve them:
1. Developing a Social Media Strategy
There’s no surprise that this is high on our list of challenges. Creating a social media strategy can be daunting. The first thing you need to know is exactly what it is. A social media strategy is a summary of everything you plan to do and hope to achieve for your business through the use of social networks.
Start by creating a list of social media objectives and goals. The more specific you are, the more effective you’ll be at implementing them. These objectives should align with your broader marketing strategy and business goals. Keep it as concise as possible and make sure they’re attainable. The purpose of a social media strategy is to guide your actions, but it’ll also be a measure by which you determine whether you’re succeeding or failing.
The metrics you choose to monitor will be influenced by the goals you set; however, we recommend that you look beyond vanity metrics like your number of followers. To really get an idea if your efforts are paying off, focus on things like leads, link clicks and impressions.
If you already have an established presence on social media, we recommend kicking things off with a social media audit. This will help you assess your current social media use, what’s working, what’s failing and what can be improved upon. Once your social media strategy is in place, repeat your audit quarterly so you can keep tabs on your performance.
2. Measuring Social Media ROI
Social media ROI is what your business gets back from the time, money and resources you’re putting toward social media marketing. The tricky thing about it is that social media ROI is different from traditional online marketing. It can be hard to see the value of your Tweet or post getting shared compared to clicks on an ad.
Social media ROI is based on your specific business goals, so how you’ll go about it will differ from other businesses’ approach. Before you can start measuring your ROI, you need to have clearly defined goals in place. This is why your social media strategy is so important. Make sure you have one in place with quantifiable goals. You have to be able to attach a number to them in order for your goals to be tracked. For example:
Newsletter sign-ups
Purchases
Downloads of a whitepaper or app
With strategic goals in place and the right tools, understanding what you’re getting back from social media isn’t too difficult.
3. Knowing Which Social Media Platform to Use
Over 50% of people in India use social media.
74% of consumers use social media to make a buying decision.
90% of people use social media to communicate directly with brands.
With stats like those, it’s obvious that your business should be active on social media. Deciding which platform to build a presence on, however, can be a bit of a challenge. Fortunately there’s an easy solution, and it all comes down to one thing: your audience.
On which social networks does your target audience spend their time? You need to familiarize yourself with the demographics for each social network and see if your target audience is among them. It’s not enough to know where they are; you need to know where they’re active.
Amassing hundreds of followers doesn’t necessarily mean that you have an audience. There are abandoned and fake accounts to consider. You need to find out where your target audience is actively contributing because if you’re not reaching the right people, then you’re not meeting your business goals.
You’ll also want to be aware of which social networks offer targeting capabilities in case you want to reach specific subsets of your audience.
4. Improving a Decline in Organic Reach
The key to driving reach is finding the right content mix for your audience. Use a social media management tool to monitor the engagement with your posts. Track which posts are performing well and which ones aren’t. Do you notice any performance trends? For instance, are posts with photos performing better than those without. Use these insights to make data-driven decisions about your content strategy moving forward.
Regardless of which platforms you’re using, your goal when it comes to content is to keep it engaging, educational and entertaining. Never publish content just for the sake of making an update. Think back to your social media strategy and focus on publishing content that fulfils your business objectives. Always track your performance and be flexible enough to make adjustments where needed.
5. Having a Humanistic Relationship With Your Audience
Social media is a great way to build awareness and attract new customers, but you have to think about what you’ll do to retain them. While 86% of social media users follow a brand, almost 60% of them are annoyed with too many promotions. You can’t always be selling. In order to increase brand loyalty, you need to focus on developing a rewarding, humanistic relationship with your audience.
One of the ways you can achieve this is through storytelling. Your outreach efforts on social media shouldn’t always be about selling. If you want customers to stick with your brand for the long haul, you need to give them a reason to. Through storytelling you can introduce your core values, giving customers relatable reasons to stick around.
You can also increase brand loyalty and strengthen your connection with customers by being responsive. The best way to humanize your brand is to act like a human. When people reach out, whether it’s positive or negative in nature, reach back—and do so in a timely manner.
6. Pushing Your Content to the Next Level
People only retain about 10% of the information they hear, but when paired with a relevant image, that number jumps to 65%. You want your message to stick with people. Photos and videos have become powerful tools for marketers looking to communicate effectively with followers.
Visual content has taken over almost every major social network, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.
Not only can adding an image to your social media posts increase engagement, but it can also help you tell a great story. Visual content can easily distil complex information and helps brands tell stories quickly with impact and emotion. Tapping into emotions can drive deeper engagement, so make sure that the visuals you’re using align with your broader objectives. In other words, make sure the images or videos you’re using are relevant and aren’t there for the sake of taking up space.
7. Increasing Your Reach Through Shares
Social signals like reposts and Facebook shares help generate brand awareness, but it’s not always as easy as asking for them. If you want to increase your reach through social shares, start by optimizing your content. For example, make sure that the content you’re publishing is interesting and something that your audience would find valuable. Keep up with trends and monitor which posts your target demographic is engaging with.
Engagement is a huge part of marketing. Not only is it a major metric by which you measure your effectiveness, but it’s also used by several platforms when deciding which content to deliver to a user base. Want your Facebook post to appear in more News Feeds? Make sure it’s something people can engage with. Experiment with different types of content and explore new ways of capturing the attention of your followers.
If you’re consistently posting interesting, entertaining and relevant content, you’ll have no problem driving engagement and boosting your reach. Equip your brand with the right tools and follow the tips we outlined to avoid social media challenges that hold so many businesses back
DigiSWOT can help you take care of all the above things and help you build an online presence for your business. Whatever be your digital marketing goal; DigiSWOT can help you achieve them with various research techniques that work amazingly for our clients and aids their business growth.
Opmerkingen