22 Jan How to Use Social Media Advertising for Your Brand
How to Use Social Media Advertising for Your Brand
We won’t be suggesting you how to create your profiles on all popular social media sites.
We won’t be telling you to be active there and start posting, tweeting, etc.
We won’t be sharing some tricks to grow your followers.
Because we are pretty sure you have been doing this for years now (and probably you have got bored of it!).
When planning a social media advertising strategy, most businesses, especially the smaller and medium scale ones, stick to the most convenient posting content method.
This has helped them a bit if not much. But, people are bored of hearing about your products or services.
They aren’t bothered about your CSR efforts, your recruits, or any internal happenings.
A little bit of self-promotion is a good thing, but that shouldn’t be your social media marketing plan’s sole objective.
According to a survey, around 45% of people said that they would unfollow a brand if they do too much self-promotion.
If you continue posting too much content every day, you could even lose your followers.
It’s time for you to upgrade your social media advertising strategies because your current plan has reached a saturation point.
This blog will tell you how to create a social media strategy that will work in 2021 and for years to come.
Our tips will help you build a positive, influential reputation on social media.
They will help emerge as a customer-friendly brand, which will further help you grow your business.
Here is what you need to do in 2021 to advertise your business on social media:
1 – Respond to your customers
Well, most of you must be doing it, but not correctly.
Your social media team must be responding to the comments and feedback that you regularly get on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, etc.
Your team must have been doing a great job dealing with social media backlashes.
Did you know many people do not tag brands or use their official social media handles while posting about them?
Those who tag brands or businesses often use incorrect social handles.
This means, many of your customers and prospects may be talking about you somewhere and you don’t even know about it!
They may be complaining about you or maybe asking about your services, and you haven’t been responding to them because you don’t know about them.
Buyers and prospects may have misinterpreted your silence. They may be assuming you are irresponsible and careless.
In 2021, this is what you need to do.
You need to identify every mention of your brand across all social media platforms; whether you are present, there are not. And, it would be best if you had tools for it.
Social media notification tools such as Notifier can help you track every mention of your brand across all popular websites.
It can track your mentions even though people haven’t tagged you or have used incorrect social handles.
Once you know what’s buzzing around your brand, you can participate in those discussions that you otherwise have missed for so long.
You can respond to questions, solve complaints, and make people feel a customer-friendly business.
These days, buyers have become rude and impatient. They love to blow up minor issues, and the instantness and reach of social media help them.
1 in 3 social media users prefers to reach out to a brand on social media rather than via email or phone.
If you don’t respond to their social media complaints (or queries) immediately, you will give them more time to blow the issue.
They will start hunting you on multiple social media sites.
Soon, other buyers or even your competitors will join them. Some may even unfollow you or leave a negative rating.
Yes, even a slight delay can cost you a lot on social media.
Thankfully, a prompt and efficient response is enough to avoid such a crisis.
Social media monitoring tools can instantly alert you about such situations so you can act immediately. This is what we call social listening.
It means you don’t monitor your social media’s effectiveness and actively communicate with your social audience and build a healthy relationship with them.
This is where most brands, especially the small and medium scale ones, fail.
Numerous businesses take their hands off social media as soon as their buyers start venting about their defective product or slightly mismanaged services. That’s a wrong approach.
You don’t need to leave social media because your buyers aren’t going to stop venting about you on such open platforms.
Instead, you must stay there and respond to their queries and comments as promptly and politely as you do through emails and phone calls.
One part of your social media team has to serve as your social media customer support.
It has to participate in every discussion regarding your brand or business, whether it is a positive talk or a negative one.
When you start doing that you will realise how powerful social interactions can build your brand’s image and a loyal customer base.
2 – Find and target your prospects
People may not be talking about your brand, but they may be discussing the services you offer or the products you sell.
You need to track and participate in those conversations too.
Let’s say you have a small-scale business of eco-friendly products.
Now, your prospects may be discussing alternatives to plastic straws or disposable cups.
They may be talking about the changes they have made in their daily lives and how they have helped them minimise the amount of non-biodegradable waste they create.
It’s an opportunity for you to introduce them to your brand and your products.
How about appreciating them for making an extra effort to save the planet and then introduce them to your bamboo toothbrushes?
Explain to them how our discarded toothbrushes are contributing to the heaps of non-biodegradable waste.
Tell them about your bamboo toothbrushes and maybe offer them a discount so they can buy and try.
If someone is complaining about the disposable coffee cups that Baristas and Starbucks use for takeaways, you can quickly pitch them your reusable coffee cups made of silicon.
If someone is looking for recommendations for affordable environment-friendly waste bags, you can brief them about your products.
When you participate in discussions related to your business:
- People will start assuming you as a knowledgeable, reputable, and modern company.
- You will be able to build your brand’s reputation.
- Your prospects may also get impressed with your eagerness and promptness and may choose you for their needs.
This type of passive social media advertising has more success rate than active social media marketing.
Wondering how you can track the discussions relevant to your business? That’s what social media listening tools do.
Say you own a hotel in New York. There are high chances you are only focusing on generic keywords such as ‘hotels in New York’ or ‘best place to stay in New York’.
But, people might be searching for the ‘best cafe for business meeting’ or ‘best banquet hall for conference’ or ‘hotels that serve wine’ or ‘restaurants that serve seafood in NY’.
You can identify these keywords using the Google Keyword Planner tool, which is free.
Once you have a list of relevant keywords and hashtags, you can use social media monitoring tools to alert them.
These tools can send you a daily, weekly, or instant report, and then, your social media team can participate in the relevant ones.
This way, your social media advertising will be more focused and powerful.
Even if you are doing reasonably well on social media, you can still learn a lot from your competitors.
You must keep track of their social media strategies so you can learn from their mistakes and experiments.
This will help you create a positive, impactful, and winning social media advertising plan.
You need to collect the following data:
- Which social media platforms they are using? Which one of them is helping them the most? Are you there?
- What keywords and hashtags are they targeting and which ones of them are benefiting them the most? Are you using these keywords too? If not, start using them.
- How many followers do they have? How does it compare to yours? What can you do to get more followers?
- How fast their followers’ list is growing or decreasing, and why?
- Are they frequently communicating with the buyers and prospects on social media? If no, that’s an opportunity? Approach their unhappy buyers and prospects and pitch them your services or products. Also, approach their followers who like and comment on their posts. They are your prospects.
Social media monitoring tools can be of great help in this.
You can set up Notifier or any other tool of your choice to monitor your competitor’s brand mentions and the keywords and hashtags they are using.
This will make your work much easier and faster.
Remember that you don’t need to copy your competitors’ social media advertising plan.
It would be best if you had it to improvise your already existing plan.
For example; you might not have been targeting those keywords that are benefiting your competitors the most.
You might not participate in Reddit discussions about the products or services you offer, but your competitors do.
Your competitors may be getting excellent feedback on their ‘tips and tricks’ videos, but you are not making them at all.
Your competitors’ social media advertising plan can give you great improvisation ideas, which is why you must track their social activities.
By figuring out their mistakes, you will be able to create a fool-proof plan within your budget.
4 – Influence the influencers in your industry
This is an old-school marketing strategy.
Brands pay hefty fees for celebrity endorsements, and it works!
You can do ‘almost’ the same thing on social media using the influencers in your industry.
Back to owning a hotel in New York. If you keep praising your property, location, food, etc., it will be counted as advertising.
If you keep posting such advertising content frequently, your followers will get irritated and may unfollow you. Moreover, you won’t be able to convince your prospects.
It would help if you had someone else to market you; someone whom your buyers and prospects trust more than you.
You can contact travel bloggers and Vloggers and request them to visit your hotel.
You can offer them a free stay and request them to share a genuine post on you.
You can even ask your hotel guests to share their genuine feedback on your social media handles.
Note:
- Tell them to share a genuine post and not a biased one.
- Tell them to mention their dislikes too (if any).
- When they do so, make sure you go to their posts and appreciate them for their feedback. Your prospects will get influenced by their genuine experiences.
So, instead of branded advertising content, in 2021, you should be creating genuine content about your brand through someone influential.
This will help you sound more reliable.
Wondering how you can find such influential people?
Social media monitoring tools can help.
You can use these tools to track the persons who frequently use keywords and hashtags relevant to you.
You need not contact all of them, but you can always evaluate their social activities and decide which ones are worth approaching.
Wrapping up
The latest social media advertising trend is to stop advertising and start listening to your buyers, prospects, competitors, and industry influencers.
Once you start listening to all the buzz that matters most to your business, you will be able to market your brand in a positive, influential way.
You will be able to serve your buyers well and make them loyal.
You will be able to emerge as an industry leader and a trendsetter.
For social listening, you will require some social media analytics tools such as Notifier. These tools can help you track every activity that may be in the interest of your business.
Most of them have a fundamental, user-friendly operation, so even if you are not tech-savvy, you will still be able to use them fully.
From a single dashboard, you will be able to govern your whole social media advertising strategy.
The best part about these tools is that they are pretty affordable and most of them come with a trial period so you can choose which one will work for you.
Don’t hesitate; try them today.
