Social Media Marketing has been one of the leading trends for targeted lead generation for the past few years.
Almost everyone is on social media, could it be for professional or personal reasons.
We all know how to post on social media, giving our moods, thoughts on world events, even trying to get our friends to like something or purchase products. Now this is simply NOT social media marketing.
Social Media Marketing Basics
Let’s look at the networks we want to focus on. As stated above, right now we are looking into the basics of social media marketing, so we will learn a little more about networks that are household names, we know there are more that you need to be present on depending what you do.
B2C Social Media Networks – (Business to Consumer)
Facebook is a popular free social networking website that allows registered users to create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues. It includes different features.
- Marketplace – allows members to post, read and respond to classified ads.
- Groups – allows members who have common interests to find each other and interact.
- Events – allows members to publicize an event, invite guests and track who plans to attend.
- Pages – allows members to create and promote a public page built around a specific topic.
- Presence technology – allows members to see which contacts are online and chat.
Instagram is a free, online photo-sharing application and social network platform that was acquired by Facebook in 2012. It allows users to edit and upload photos and short videos through a mobile app. … Users also have the option of making their profile private so that only their followers can view their posts.
Twitter is a free social networking microblogging service that allows registered members to broadcast short posts called tweets. Its members can broadcast tweets and follow other users’ tweets by using multiple platforms and devices. Tweets and replies to tweets can be sent by cell phone text message, desktop client or by posting at the Twitter.com website.
Youtube
YouTube is a free video-hosting website that allows members to store and serve video content.
Pinterest is an online service that allows you to share images through social networking. An example of Pinterest is the website where you have a “pinboard” that allows you to post ideas that you want to remember and then share them with your friends through Facebook.
B2B Social Media Networks
LinkedIn is a social networking site designed specifically for the business community. The goal of the site is to allow registered members to establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally.
Facebook can also be seen as a B2B social network.
There are obviously more that can be more “industry specific” such as houzz.com for the building industry, or weddingwire.com for the wedding industry.
Reputation Marketing Social Media Networks
Yelp
Yelp is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California. It develops, hosts and markets Yelp.com and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd-sourced reviews about local businesses, as well as the online reservation service Yelp Reservations.
Other important reputation marketing networks would be Facebook Reviews, Google reviews or industry specific sites like tripadvisor.com for the hospitality/travel industry.
How to use Social Media Marketing
Organic Social Media Marketing
Organic in this case doesn’t involve kale or lack of pesticides, it just means it’s traffic you are generating without using any specific ad budget. Which means starting your following base by adding your personal contacts, your clients, encouraging them to follow you from your website. Putting your social media links at the bottom of the your email marketing campaigns. That’s the genesis of your social media reach, now you will start adding articles, posts, photos, videos to your profiles. With basic analytic tools, you will be able to get data on what type of reach and engagement each post of yours had. This will help you elaborate the type of posts that works the best.
Sharing is caring
In the case of social media, the sharing type of engagement is key, it will develop a new batch of viewers that will have your post displayed on their social media feed, you will then be reaching past your first degree of separation.
Paid Social Media Marketing
Social Media outlets have, like any other business, and income generation pattern. In this case, it’s advertising from members. Organic reach on social media only goes so far, as for you to have the maximum reach out of it, people have to constantly engage with your social media profile. The more engagement you get, the more reach. So how do you get engagement quickly? By buying advertising space on said social media, or being able to “push” your posts to certain people (selected demographics). It is very efficient as you are able to target precisely who you will be able to reach, and how you will be able to reach them.
Lifespan of Social Media Posts
In 2 hours and 30 minutes, a Facebook post hit 75% of its maximum impressions, and 75% of engagement happens within the first 5 hours.
The lifespan of a tweet is extremely short, the average half-life of a tweet is between 18 and 24 minutes.
Instagram posts by top brands receive 50% of their comments within the first six hours and 75% within 48 hours. Higher-performing posts can take up to 13 hours to get the same amount of comments. That means high-quality content has a longer lifespan on Instagram.
Linkedin posts tend to last a little longer than all the ones above, if it gets commented on, it can actually last a few days.
Pinterest is a social network that allows for long-term engagement. This is largely due to how pins work. Indeed they can be rediscovered, re-pinned and thus put forward by other users well after their first display on the network. Especially if they are optimized with relevant keywords, therefore increasing the overall life of a post.
What Social Media do I need to focus on?
That’s a good question, and honestly, we get it a lot. Before giving you an answer, we will have to look at your current social media presence, and see what type of engagement you are getting from each source, and how qualified are the leads you are using. For one of our Contract Research Organizations clients, we skipped on Pinterest, Yelp, Twitter and Instagram for the first six months we have been working with them. Within the drug discovery industry, we saw that the most engagement came from Linkedin and Facebook. On the other hand for hospitality clients, we focus on Facebook, Instagram and Yelp.
Let’s talk about your business, it’s current social media situation, and develop some strategy and tactics that can be executed by either our team or your community manager.
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