It is no doubt that Social Media marketing has taken the entire world by storm. Words such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have now become a part of our everyday conversations. We all are competing in an unspoken of race to get the maximum number of friends or followers in our social circles through social media marketing.
But it is not just individuals who are competing for mind space on social media, there is perhaps a much fiercer war going among brands, national and international, to be relevant, have top of the mind recall and the best engagement through effective social media marketing. However, in this mad race, brands must understand that Social Media marketing isn’t for everybody. It needs to be done with enough forethought and strategy to have the intended effect. Following are 5 things brands must keep in their mind before they get on social media: –
#1.
As a popular saying goes – If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t. Though Social Media marketing may be cheaper than campaigns on other conventional media such as television and print, this doesn’t mean that Social Media marketing is free. Gone are the days when just having a Facebook page was enough for a brand. That is now a hygiene factor. Now, brands need to have a clear social media plan for campaigns and engagement, and they also need to utilize analytics and other tools being offered by major social media networking platforms to truly get the maximum value out of their social media marketing strategy . In our experience, this is best done by working with social media marketing agencies, which obviously, isn’t free.
#2.
Unlike some other media channels where campaigns have immediate effect, social media marketing requires substantial planning and patience to begin with. But once the initial effort is put in and the brand has enough following, campaigns will provide much better returns on investment than other forms of advertising.
#3.
The biggest strength of social media marketing is its capability of engaging the target audience and getting immediate feedback. However, most brands commit this cardinal sin where they only use their social media presence to disseminate some or the other kind of information. To truly gain from social media, you must listen and engage your social media audience!
#4.
Most brands don’t consider Social Media Marketing an important enough activity to assign a full time resource to it. Instead, they think it’s just about putting up pre-decided messages at pre-decided times. However, things can go horribly wrong if the social media strategy is not monitored properly. You can see some examples below:
Therefore our sincere advice – please leave it to the professionals!!
#5.
A lot of the benefits of social media marketing are actually intangible – because they add to the brand’s image, but don’t usually encourage users to buy more products or services. Therefore, if you are only going to judge social media marketing on return on investment, you’ll probably never invest enough in it. But it’s not always about ROI!!
Once you’ve got these basic points covered and have a general idea about how you want to use social media platforms, we are quite sure it’ll be a great journey and a rewarding destination!