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3 Powerful Social Media Marketing Tactics That You’re Ignoring
Marketing on social media has become a great boon for companies in recent years. Its inherent easy accessibility and wide reach have completely changed the way businesses approach marketing. In today’s marketing landscape, an impressive social media presence is a game-changer, and is almost imperative for success.
1. Employee Advocacy
Employee advocacy is essentially the promotion of a company by its own employees. While this has always been quite effective, it has become newly empowered by the way we use social media.
People tend to trust reviews and testimonials from other customers like themselves. We check them before we eat at restaurants or before we purchase new products. In the same vein, people place more trust in people rather than brands or companies, which is what makes employee advocacy such a powerful tool.
Extend Your Reach
It makes sense to utilize the social media networks of your employees: you increase your reach exponentially compared to just using one brand account. Engagement goes up as well: people are more likely to read and share a post about a brand from a friend than from the brand account itself, and brand messages get shared 24 times more when shared by employee advocates.
Genuine Advocacy
The most important thing to remember about employee advocacy is it works best if it is organic. If people can see how employees genuinely advocate for the company, trust in the brand goes up.
This involves creating a company culture that is encouraging, inclusive, and diverse; building a supportive culture and a healthy workplace environment where employees feel appreciated and empowered inspires authentic employee advocacy. If employees are content to work at your company, they will be proud to say so.
What are the benefits?
The benefits of successful employee advocacy are profound:
Increased brand awareness. The company’s visibility is amplified and you can easily reach a wider array of audiences and attract new customers. This leads to increased marketability and a larger pool of consumers.
Improved business. Both the quality and quantity of engagement is dramatically boosted. Since employee advocacy is seen as more authentic, a greater number of people will positively interact with the content, leading to more opportunities for business.
Better optics and recruitment. Your brand gains better optics overall, which is great for your reputation. You build trust with customers and with prospective employees as well. More people will be encouraged to try and work for your organization, giving you access to potentially better and more diverse talent.
2. Utilizing Trending Content in your Industry
Keeping in touch with what is currently trending in your market is a no-brainer: it keeps you well ahead of the game and gives you a pulse on your audience’s interests.
Keep an eye out for trends in the content that you share. These days, consumers look for content that is interactive and entertaining. Marketing is a mercurial landscape that tests a team’s adaptability, and you should be able to keep in time with what’s currently in vogue.
Mass Appeal
Trending topics and content come with an audience that is already interested and engaged by default. Taking advantage of this gives you increased visibility, giving you more opportunities to reach potential audiences that you otherwise would not have been able to. Bonus points if your content goes viral!
Trends Done Right
Sharing the appropriate trending content on your social media pages encourages brand awareness, and consequently improves interest and interaction with your business. But don’t just jump on every single trend there is; make sure that your content coincides with your brand’s identity and appeals to your target audience in the right way. Make a blunder and you might end up hurting your brand rather than helping it.
Engaging Content
Each market is different, and it may be beneficial to explore how you bring your content to your audiences. For example, posting Instagram and Facebook stories drives up a lot of engagement, using polls, trivia quizzes, teasers, Q&A sessions, and the like. You must also consider the interests of your audiences, and taking advantage of niche topics that will attract engaged communities.
3. Use Visual Content
Social media is a veritable marketplace. We spend hours scrolling on our feeds, watching for interesting posts that catch our eye. With all the time we spend on social media, it just makes sense for marketing to capitalize on all that screen time.
But with thousands upon thousands of countless posts on social media, how do you make sure your posts get the engagement?
Visual Appeal
Across most platforms, social media posts with appealing visual content are more likely to gain engagement. Visual content is much easier to process and remember. Statistically, people are 65% more likely to recall information if it is associated with an image. Because of this, posts with images are more likely to net you the likes, comments, and engagement from your audience.
All About the Details
Pay more attention to the way you use images in your posts. Make sure your images are appropriate for your audience and your brand’s identity. The platform also matters: posts translate differently between various social media websites, and what works on one might not work on another. It helps if you have an overall theme or distinct style: a well-curated feed that is visually appealing overall is good for the brand’s image.
Creativity is King
Invest in creative resources: know the basics of what makes an image visually effective and attractive. Understand how to properly use colors, lighting, text, and other tools in your disposal. Watch for emerging trends like incorporating AI tech (or even memes!) to make your posts interesting. Having designers or artists on board will help immensely. Subtly incorporating your branding onto your posts, even in a small way, will help increase brand recall.
Illustration/Designer: Meryll Reyes
Research by: Emerald Singh
Writer: Chris Ignacio