Social media. Now, I’m sure that if you’re reading this blog you have some sort of social media account. Whether that be a Pinterest account for those inspiring home decor posts or a Facebook profile to connect with friends on the other side of the world. But, have you ever thought of what life would be like without social media? Yes? Well, me too.
Social media has either affected our lives in a positive or negative way depending on who you ask. But that’s up to you and your own opinion. But in the wonderful world of digital marketing, social media has definitely left its mark. It’s changed the way we as digital marketers, go about our campaigns.
via GIPHY
So, how exactly has social media impacted and changed marketing? Well, let’s delve in and find out.
Brand Engagement
Social media has built a community. A community which thrives off users interacting with content and their favourite brands and businesses. Over the years, social media has become a popular source for information, whether that be on your favourite YouTuber or global news. With social media, we have vast amounts of information at our fingertips.
Social media is a great way to promote your business. With over a billion active users using social media every day, it’s key that your business is presenting itself in the right way. Social media is the perfect tool to build and strengthen your brand engagement. This is because it’s a platform where you can interact with your followers and audience.
Social media provides your business with the chance to express your personality and show all sides to your business. Whether that be a behind the scenes video of production or a relatable meme, your audience can interact with you and you can interact back. Building those oh so important relationships with customers is referred to as relationship marketing.
Social media is a great way to grow a business by helping you to create a new customer base. You can use both organic methods or paid advertising. Either way, it’s going to help people notice your brand and engage with your account/website.
Now, let’s talk hashtags. They’re a powerful tool dating back to around 2007. They’re an effective way to get people talking about your brand. Now, this may have all started with the #barcamp (the first-ever hashtag), but they have become a tool which everybody and their dogs now use. Campaign hashtags can go viral, leaving you in an excellent position to engage with your target audience.
Customer Service
Customer service tends to fall into the brackets of brand engagement, but I thought it deserves its own little segment! Social media is a great way to contact businesses. Users are using it to have their queries answered, or quite often to vent their mountains of anger… we’ve all done this or thought of doing this at some point I’m sure.
To put it simply, sending a quick tweet to a help team on Twitter, instead of emailing a lengthy paragraph or submitting a form is just easier and less time-consuming. Which is why so many people prefer to go to social media when they have a problem. This also makes replying and solving the issue much easier for you, simply by swapping a few DMs (direct messages) you could have the problem solved in minutes… depending on the situation of course!
Many larger brands have dedicated social media accounts just to deal with customer service. As you can see from the images below, clothing brand, BooHoo, have a dedicated customer service account to deal with any queries. They have even linked this in their description to make it easier for their audience to find.
Now, of course, BooHoo is a global business with thousands of orders each day, so it makes sense they have a dedicated customer team. However, for smaller businesses, it makes sense to run your customer service through your main account. This could bring other benefits too, such as trust signals. Trust signals are key for brand engagement, they help potential customers and audiences see that you’re willing to help and resolve issues.
Unfortunately, like most things, there are two sides to a story. Social media is a powerful tool and if you use it wrong you can cause more harm than good. All it takes for a bad review to go viral is just a few clicks of a button, and next thing you know hundreds and thousands of people could be talking. It’s a public domain, so there’s very little you can do this to prevent it…
The best way to deal with negative comments is to respond as soon as possible and be polite. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Make the message personal, use a name if possible and ask for them to message you privately, this will show you care and want to help but also takes the problem away from the eye of the public. See an example below:
Never, and when I say never, I mean never, delete negative reviews unless they’re fake, of course, or break the social media platforms rules and regulations. Deleting reviews can result in reviewers becoming more vocal and expressing their opinions louder. It’s best to address and deal with their complaint.
Advertising
Social media is a great way to push your brand for free and can, as we know, have great effects on a marketing campaign. But, social media companies are now offering the opportunity to advertise your business. This is a great way to boost your marketing campaign even further, reach new audiences, and gain brand recognition.
Paid advertising allows you as a business to refine and tailor your target audience, based on their behaviour, interest and demographics. As some of you may be aware Facebook’s targeted advertising software has revamped the entire world of advertising. Facebook has many advertising options, so you’re able to better suit your campaign to your business and objectives. This includes brand awareness campaigns, video advertising, engagement campaigns, app installs, traffic, conversions, and even store visits.
Advertising your business has never been easier than now. Social media has enabled businesses of all sizes to reach an audience which, to be honest, is endless, immeasurable. The number of users you reach all depends on how much you can spend, so get those numbers crunching and work out your budget.
Can Social Media Help My Digital Marketing Campaign?
To put it simply, if you’re not already on social media, where have you been? Social media has become one of the central contributors to a marketing campaign. It has the potential to transform your business.
If you’d like to find out more about how Loop Digital can help your business online, why not give us a call today on 01604 806020 or use our live chat to get talking with a team member today.
That’s all for today, but if you’re still looking to learn and build your knowledge around digital marketing, check out our other blogs.
