Words: Jess Mouneimne. This article appeared in the April/May issue of Your Business.
When it comes to branding, social media is giving smaller businesses the chance to compete with the big guys.
Large businesses have traditionally been able to flex their branding muscle by pouring money into advertising designed to increase customer awareness and build a positive reputation. Today, social media has handed power to the consumer, and many choose to skip established marketing channels, thus diminishing large business’ stronghold on the market.
Consumers now rely on information from their peers, which limits the power of advertising, making it difficult for companies to justify large upfront investments. Social media also makes buyers more demanding and discriminating – power has clearly shifted in their favour.
Social media can strengthen or kill a brand and the key to success lies in how quickly you change your mindset and adopt new strategies in response to consumer preferences. The question is no longer whether or not you should have a social media presence, because your customers will talk about you anyway. The real question, is how well are you doing on social media?
Last year Twitter and Instagram saw massive growth in South Africa. However, Facebook remains the number one platform where customers choose to interact with brands for the moment.
1/ Engage
■ The best way to use your Facebook page for business is to engage with your audience. Your audience is comprised of a variety of people – fans of your content, fans of your business, potential customers, current customers, and former customers. With this in mind, create posts and content that engage these groups of people.
The traditional rule for audience engagement is 80/20. Eighty percent of your content should be for your audience, and 20% should be for your business (sales, marketing, self-promotion, etc.). This means that the majority of your posts should be aimed at getting your audience to engage with your page. You can do this by encouraging audience participation and sharing content relevant to your niche or industry.
2/ Be authentic
■ Don’t hide behind a corporate logo and post in anonymity. Let your audience know there are real people behind the scenes. Put a collective face on your brand by introducing yourself and your team. Who you are as people is of utmost importance. Your interests and emotions count as much as the facts and information. Show that you have more than just a pulse, show that you have a personality.
Your social media accounts are run by human beings, not logos. So talk that way.
Refer to your brand in the first person – the collective ‘we’, or if you’re your own boss, ‘I’ – not the name of your company. Be available, responsive, and conversational. If you personify the qualities you admire in a best friend, you’ll not only spark more meaningful engagement, you’ll build a lot of trust.
Forget the buzzwords and jargon. You don’t have to impress anyone with your vocabulary. This is your chance to come across as the colleague next door, someone who’s as down to earth as they come. It’s OK to talk business. You certainly want to establish yourself as a credible authority. Just be sure to speak in layman’s terms. Small talk can be a big deal on social media.
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. Names are that important, so reply and address your fans by name.
Most of us schedule at least some of our posts in advance using automation tools. That’s how we maintain a consistent, ongoing presence across the social landscape. But planned content shouldn’t make up the majority of your stream. The more spontaneous you can be, the more props you will earn for your timeliness and authenticity.
3/ Target
Facebook has the best-targeted advertising features of all the social networks, so make use of this. Not only can targeted advertising on Facebook grow your fan base, but it can directly affect your sales as well as provide valuable market research data down the line.
Narrowing your target audience is always a good idea in terms of getting higher quality social media ad results. On Facebook, you can target followers of specific brands. This is helpful when you are trying to sell to the same customer base as other well-known businesses or if you are trying to target the customer base of other non-competing brands in your market.
Using this filter is a simple solution when you do not know other details about your target audience such as age, likes, job titles, etc. To become even more effective, create separate campaigns for each brand that you are targeting the followers of. That way you can create a more personalised and engaging message.
When you choose to display ads to a custom audience instead of to the masses, you are targeting people who know you and have already had touchpoints with your brand. You will likely have a higher conversion rate among those who are on your list but haven’t purchased from you yet. This is a great way to keep the customers you already have.
It costs up to seven times as much to get a new customer than to keep a current customer, so why not use your Facebook ad campaigns to keep the customers you have by using the Custom Audience feature?
Jess Mouneimne founded Jam Media in 2012 after quitting news to start a family. Jam Media offers 360 degree outsourced communication solutions to companies who no longer want to deal with multiple service providers for their communication needs.
Tips
» Help for getting started: For small businesses and marketers new to Facebook, take a moment to check out the resources at Learn How, an online learning centre that helps businesses do more with Facebook Pages and Ads. Using videos, images, and step-by-step instructions, Learn How offers answers to frequently asked questions, like how to create a Page or how to create a Custom Audience.
» Manage multiple mediums: The Hootsuite social media management system is a great tool that allows you to manage your Twitter, Facebook, Linkedln In, Google+, Foursquare, MySpace, WordPress, TrendSpottr, and Mixi interactions from a single dashboard. Hootsuite now also has a mobile application.
» Customise your target lists: Through Facebook’s ad manager, businesses can use customers’ Facebook IDs, email addresses, or phone numbers to create customised lists. The point of this tool is to allow businesses to better target their promotions and ads at similar types of customers rather than broad, varied groups of people.
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