Welcome to Metta3’s 2019 guide to social media marketing. From beginners to seasoned marketers, we hope that you’ll find some pearls of wisdom and useful insights that you can apply to your business today.
In today’s digital age, social media marketing is more relevant than ever before. Social media represents a virtually endless and scalable opportunity to market your content, products, services and brands to over 3 billion individuals worldwide.
Yet despite its prevalence, it is also a complex marketing medium spanning across multiple unique channels and platforms, making it an often overwhelming strategy for many business owners to pursue.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that the team at Metta3 is here to help. We’ve compiled this guide to help you jumpstart your social strategy in 2019 and beyond, helping you and your brand remain relevant, prominent, and impactful.
Welcome to Our Beginner’s Guide to Social Media!
Table of Contents
- Social Media Marketing Defined
- How To Choose the Right Platform (s)
- Establishing Realistic and Meaningful Goals
- Metrics Your Must Pay Attention To
- 5 Key Strategies to get you Started
First, Social Media Marketing Defined
In its simplest terms, social media marketing is that form of marketing which leverages a social media platform (such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or others) in order to:
• Promote products and services
• Build or engage with an audience
• Establish trust and credibility
• Improve brand recognition or authority in a market
Here are a few examples to get your creative juices flowing…
EXAMPLE 1: Local Pizzeria
A local pizzeria might be looking for ways to get more patrons in the door. They might make fun videos of their chefs tossing pizza dough up in the air and photos of fresh pizza right out the oven. The combination of tantalizing images of sizzling pizza and fun personality of the videos may help them connect and resonate with their audience.
EXAMPLE 2: Local Gym
Let’s face it, no one WANTS to go to the dentist, but what if social media could demonstrate how caring, compassionate, gentle and friendly their local dentist was? Video testimonials and interviews might be a great way to begin a relationship with new prospective patients.
EXAMPLE 2: Local Dentist
Let’s face it, no one WANTS to go to the dentist, but what if social media could demonstrate how caring, compassionate, gentle and friendly their local dentist was? Video testimonials and interviews might be a great way to begin a relationship with new prospective patients.
Now that we’ve explored a few ways in which social media can earn businesses more business, an engaged audience and brand visibility let’s dig in deeper…
81% of all small and medium businesses use some kind of social platform. People aged 55-64 are more than twice as likely to engage with branded content than those 28 or younger (Brandwatch.com).
The Basics of an Effective Social Strategy
Just like a good story, we need to start from the beginning. Taking time to perfect the initial stages of your social media strategy will provide you with a solid and effective foundation upon which to build your social media empire.
Mapping a game plan will provide you with an actionable set of tasks that is prioritized and tailored towards meeting your specific goals.
1. How to Choose the Right Platform(s)
At this stage, it is also worth noting that what “works” on one social media platform or channel may not be effective on another. As such, you may need individualized campaigns tailored to each specific platform you intend to promote on.
The platform that will be most effective for your business will be defined by:
• Where your audience “lives” or “hangs out” online
• That which matches your target demographic
• Those platforms where your competitors are seeing success
Platform Demographic and Targeting Overviews
1. Facebook
Good for targeting both men and women ages 25-55. Useful for virtually any industry or niche. Highest performing industries include: fashion, entertainment, real estate, sports, health/wellness/medical, news and marketing.
2. Instagram
Good for targeting men and women with a slightly higher preference towards women. Age range of 18-35. Best for those niches or industries where visual content performs well. Best performing niches include: travel, fitness, health/wellness, beauty, fashion, weight loss, arts and crafts.
3. Twitter
Equally useful for targeting both men and women. Typical age range of 18-35. Commonly promoted news and industries include: news and information, telecom, technology, finance, retail/deals, and sports.
4. Pinterest
Best for targeting women ages 18-45. Requires visuals and images. High performing niches include: photography, health, fashion, food, beauty, weddings, arts and crafts, gardening, home design, and more.
5. YouTube
While not always considered as a social platform, YouTube boasts over 2 billion monthly users and has integrated a number of social features from liking and sharing, to subscribing and commenting, making this platform a real winner for any brand that leverages the power of videos.
2. Establishing Realistic and Meaningful Goals
If you don’t know where you’re headed, who knows where you’ll end up. And when it comes to marketing, not having clear, measurable, realistic and attainable goals in place can leave you treading water, wasting time and spending valuable resources you can’t afford to waste.
Examples of Social Media Goals:
• Growing your audience or fan base
• Establishing a personality for your brand
• Driving qualified and high-value leads
• Positioning your company as an industry leader
• Establishing trust and opening up lines of communication with your audience
• And more…
But having a goal isn’t good enough. In order to make sure you stay focused, on track and get the most out of your efforts you’ll want to make sure the goals are “SMART”.
SMART Goals Should Be:
Specific – being both focused and well-defined
Measurable – knowing your numbers is an essential part of the business
Attainable – dreaming big and aiming for the moon is ok, but be sure to keep one foot grounded in reality. Consider incremental goals towards the final desired outcome.
Relevant – goals should take into context and consideration the current state of both internal and external factors of your industry, market and business.
Time-Based – simply put, when no timeline is attached to a goal, there is a lack of urgency and things tend to move slower.
3. Metrics and Performance Indicators you Need to Track
While the specific terminology may differ per platform, the following will give you a good idea of the key performance indicators (at a minimum) that you’ll want to focus on in order to optimize your strategies and get the most from your efforts.
Targeting:
• Age
• Gender
• Income level
• Homeowner / renter
• Level of education
• Zip Code / GEO
• Interests / Hobbies
Performance / Engagement:
• Likes
• Shares
• Comments
• Clicks / Click Through Rates
• Conversions (leads, sales, downloads, etc)
5 Social Media Tips & Strategies to Help You Get Started
By now you should have an idea about the platforms you want to be on, the audience you need to target and the goals you have in mind.
Next up: content.
In the world of social media, content rules. Follow the tips below to create content that attracts, engages and wow’s your audience.
1. Get Personal
More than ever before consumers are looking to “connect” with brands on a personal level. Don’t be afraid to share your personal stories, successes, failures and develop a personality for your brand that is in alignment with your own. Consumers resonate with honest, raw and genuine content.
2. Don’t Brush off the Power of Influencers
Influencers were given that name for a reason: because they INFLUENCE. While big celebrities might be out of your price range, consider working with smaller everyday individuals that have 5-50k+ followers. You’d be surprised at how fast your reach can grow when you partner with the right people.
3. Video is Powerful!
In a recent HubSpot poll, over 54% of consumers said they wanted MORE video from the brands they love. But that’s not all, 1200% more shares are generated by video than text and images combined.
4. Quality over Quantity
Social media is a crowded space with virtually every brand on the planet competing to get in their audiences’ news feeds. As such, don’t risk diluting your brand by putting out crappy content. Focus on quality over quality or risk losing your audience altogether.
The same goes for platforms. If you only have the time, energy or resources to market on one and do it well, then stick to only one platform for now. Too often brands will try to handle 3-5 platforms at once and quality suffers.
5. Use Relevant Hashtags
Big brands and growing business know how to leverage the right hashtags to build a community following. Take a look at the success of #shareacoke from Coca Cola. It became a viral hashtag and is still promoted by them. Find a hashtag in your niche (EEATS is used by Mims Restaurant) and grow your audience by using the hashtag in all your posts. Be sure to interact with your followers and tag interested fans!
The most Tweeted about hashtags in Asia in 2018 were about Kpop. Koran Bands #BTS #GOT7 & #EXO. Fans can’t stop tweeting.
Ready to go and seriously crush 2019 Social Media Marketing? We bet you are!
Want some friendly help and advice get in touch with our social media experts to see how we can put your social accounts to work for you! #SocialsMadeSimple
