Grasp of Social Sedia Fundamentals

When we say social media, it is not enough to be familiar with the various available platforms and channels. To succeed in your attempts you need to have a good grasp of the social media marketing fundamentals and upgrade yourself with all the evolving trends in social media. With technology changing every day, it challenges businesses as we have to adjust social strategies simultaneously and continuously to build brand visibility and also generate leads. Situations change every day, the thoughts of your audience shift every hour and strategies change every second in social media. It is these factors which make a compelling case for businesses and businessmen to increase their social media acumen. In other words, there is a dire need to tighten the grasp of fundamentals to harness social media for business.

It is said that people are on social media for at least 2.5 hours a day. What are some of the social media sites that people primarily use to connect with people? Anyone with a smartphone definitely has an account on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tiktok. It is on these platforms they share their thoughts with a big audience. It is here where business owners and entrepreneurs reach their captive audience and key stakeholders. It gives the business community a great opportunity to connect with one and all by adhering to best practices. Social Media Marketing agencies have to adhere to social media fundamentals and keep themselves well-informed about evolving social media trends. Let us discuss a few of the trends business owners should follow to harness social media for business.

Recognise audience in social media

Brands are vying with each other to capture the attention of target audiences in social media to improve their businesses. When you talk of social media or looking at a screen, what is important is, how long can you look at it. Right, the attention span matters. According to studies, it has been found that the attention span of human beings is said to have decreased over a period of time. Even a goldfish (9secs) is said to have a better attention span than humans (8.2secs). This calculation gains importance as you have to capture the attention of your target audience on a social platform within a few seconds. Knowing your audience is the first and foremost factor to successfully keeping them engaged. There has risen severe competition for mind share among brands to effectively connect with your audience, within a few seconds, to harness social media for business.

What social media marketing agencies should precisely know about the audience is:

• The social media platforms preferred by them
• UX/UI Design
• Front-end Development
• Copywriting
• Shopify Development

It is essential to take help from social media analytics or surveys or even customer data to refine your social media strategies to find out if you have targeted the Right audience, with the Right content and at the Right time. Relevant and personalised content always works well for harnessing social media for business, provided you KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.

Find Brand Voice

Brand voice is nothing but your brand’s personality. Therefore, creating a personality for your company is very important if you want to harness social media for your business. It is an identification factor that people use to recognize your brand. Consequently, the voice should echo uniformly across all social media platforms. From your email communications to your Facebook or Twitter or even the packaging, the message should be similar and clear, in order to ensure that the customers have a similar brand experience.

The voice should be one that will build trust and resonate well with the audience. The brand voice should show your audience how effective your services are and how well you treat your customers and how much you can deliver, despite any odds.

The Right approach will beckon better prospects.

The Right attitude will help build relationships.

The Right thinking will attract new customers.

Your distinct brand voice will give you a distinct personality and identity. To draw customers, the strategy is more about, you know what your company is and what it represents. Surveys say that brands that have impressed customers are definitely those that have memorable content and a discrete personality on social media. If you want social media marketing agencies to harness social media for your business, connect with the audience deeply with clear brand messaging.

Consistently Post Content

Only if you post content frequently, you can attract more audience and keep them engaged. Never forget that loyal followers are a must to boost brand awareness. Follow this table for posting on each platform.

• You need to post thrice a week on Instagram
• People tend to look at Facebook every now and then. Try to put up two posts or at least one daily
• People love to tweet and read tweets often. At least 3 tweets a day will keep your audience engaged
• LinkedIn is a preferred platform for any employed person or those who look out for better prospects. Even 5 posts in a day will not be missed by your audience

What people need to do for carrying out the postings diligently every day is, to draw out a content calendar and schedule social media posts for every month. The content calendar works efficiently and helps the company to analyse the content that works and the strategy that clicks. You need to tweak and fine-tune your content across the platforms so that it is able to engage and resonate among your target audience. This is the most effective strategy for harnessing social media for business

Engage in Social Listening

If you are curious about what is being said about your company on the Internet, then resort to Social media listening. It is turning out to be a customer intelligence tool to gain insight into the following

• Encourage customers to give new suggestions
• Customers can give upvotes
• Gather comments from Facebook and Twitter
• Monitor customer support forums

Digital interactions and conversations with your competitors can be analysed with social listening. You can also keep a track of the increasing or decreasing mentions of your company in a given month, content engagement of users, current trends, and positive or negative feedback

Social media trends are evolving every day. A peep into some of the latest that social media marketing agencies can take up:

Stories

Stories are one of the compelling features which create a lasting impact on social media. The photos or videos displayed in stories are ephemeral. Sometimes they are personal too and they turn out to be more compelling to audiences than newsfeeds. These are very useful for brands as the inside story of the company can be easily told or products showcased with their help. Especially, if the stories are immersive and interactive, you can imagine the effect they would have on the customers or your audiences.

Facebook and Instagram are the platforms where these stories make an impact on the audience. These have more than 500 million daily active users. Apart from these two, there are nine other social media platforms that have their own version of stories. Stories are thus a sure way to harness social media for business.

Live Stream

Live streaming is a great way to indulge with your audience. It is a trending tool on social media presently and helps to build good communication with your target audience. In turn, you gain a good understanding of the interests of your audience.

This will help your company to announce new products, host live Q&A sessions, stream behind-the-scenes content, and announce and demonstrate new products. It is said that businesses can inject more personality into social media with the help of live streaming. Seeing is believing. Live streaming is a convincing way for some of the social media marketing agencies to reach out to your audience, about your company and its products.

Tips on how to use the various platforms

Be authentic: Be it any social media platform, it is very important to retain your personality and be yourself. Share, tweet or post only what you want to and not what you think others would prefer.

Engage: Try to build relationships on social media. The content you create must be truly engaging and lure your audience. Share your perspective and respond to comments with respect.

Renew: Never repost. People want to see something new and nice about you all the time. They tend to forget what you did recently and it is new that attracts always. Polish your content to a high sheen so that they are bright and attract the right audience.

Honour commitments: Engage wisely so that people begin to enquire who you are rather than you going overboard about what you do, sell etc. Your content should make you seem knowledgeable and trustworthy. This will get you a receptive audience.

Protect your brand: Do not forget to visit sites, feeds, posts and pages that discuss your industry, product, or service. Use complaints as an opportunity to engage, build trust and grow and do not try to defend unnecessarily.

Reach matters: Above all, it is very important for letting people know how you can be reached. Let your company’s web address, email address, phone number, and social media handle be clearly stated on all social media platforms.

Social media marketing thus helps you to push your sales massively and easily. This enables people to know who you are and how you are, with authenticity. You are likely to get more referrals, than Feet on Street sales force. Harnessing social media for business is definitely an effective way to attract business towards you and your business.