Hello there. This is Monique. This is episode number 2 and in today's episode, I
want to answer
an audience question. Now, this is something that I'm planning to do regularly, and
I'm happy to
help you out and answer all your digital marketing questions. So this question comes
from my
dear friend Samantha. Her Twitter is @samantha_stb. You can go check her out, and
her question
is: "How can I leverage my social media accounts?" Well, social media marketing is
one of the
most requested topics. So let me start with why social media marketing is so
valuable and what
social media marketing actually is. Social Media Marketing is the use of social
media platforms
to connect with your audience, to build your brand, increase sales, and drive
website traffic.
Now, a social media platform and a social network are not the same thing. Let me
clarify this. A
social network is a type of social medium. There are several social media, right,
it's plural,
and a social medium in any medium that is somehow related to society. That's an
informal, social
gathering where people who have something in common can hang out and exchange views
and find
companionship. That's what social means, right. So, you can do all of those things
on social
networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok,
Whatsapp,
Pinterest. I mean, you name it. However, you can also do those things on for example
bookmarking
sites, or news sites, or media sharing sites, blogs, forums, customer review
websites, and
basically any site where you can leave a comment and thus engage and chat with
others. When you,
for example, take the time and answer all the questions related to your industry or
niche that
are asked on a question-and-answer site like Quora, for example, you can gain
credibility from
that and put yourself out there as a subject matter expert and build your brand.
That's
something most people wouldn't even think of when they think of social media
marketing, right.
You can see it is really multifaceted. I want to answer the question: "Why do you
want to do
social media marketing in general?". Let's start there. Actually, let's take a step
back and
answer the question: "Why do you want to do digital marketing in general?" first.
Marketing is
about connecting with your audience at the right place and at the right time. And in
order to
connect with someone and communicate a message, you have to meet them. And since you
can't
expect people to just magically find you, you have to meet them where they are
spending their
time. And today, this is on the internet. People spend time on electronic devices
browsing the
internet. A lot of time. And it's continuously increasing. Here are some numbers
from a study
done by the University of Southern California. I'll leave the link below. The
average American
spent 9.4 hours a week online in 2000 and today it's 23.6 hours. The number of
people accessing
the internet for mobile devices has risen from 23% in 2010 to 84% now. Smartphone
email use went
from 21 to 79%. The time people spend on the Internet with their devices is
continuously
increasing. When we want to reach people with our marketing, we must meet people
where they are,
which is on their electronic devices and most likely on the internet. That is why
you want to do
digital marketing in general. Now, Social Media Marketing as a type of digital
marketing is
important because people spend time on social media sites in particular when they're
online.
Social media allows you to reach people locally, regionally, nationally, and even
internationally. And if you understand the characteristics of your target audience,
you will be
able to personalize your messages to resonate with that audience. More
appropriately, social
media marketing is the process of creating content that you have tailored to the
context of each
individual social media platform in order to drive user engagement and sharing. You
gaining
traffic is only the result of social media marketing. Now, let me get into how you
can do social
media marketing. You have to determine your goals. You have to know what you want to
get out of
this and why you're doing it. Why are you doing social media marketing, or why do
you want to do
social media marketing? Are you trying to generate leads or are you trying to
generate direct
sales? Do you want to offer a form of customer service through social media? Do you
want to
build customer relationships and boost customer loyalty? Do you want to create
user-generated
content? Is your goal to collect reviews and get feedback? All of those things can
be goals that
you can have with social media marketing, and this greatly affects the type of
content you post
and the activities you participate in. You see that you need a strategy to approach
this. You
cannot just post anything and expect something specific to happen. A social media
marketing
strategy is a summary of everything that you plan to do and hope to achieve on
social media. It
guides your actions, and lets you know whether you're succeeding or failing. Every
post, every
reply, like, and comment, et cetera should serve your goal. You need to have
everything mapped
out and strategically work towards your goals. You can see your strategy as your
competitive
game plan. You also wanna evaluate your resources. Who's going to create your
content? Are you
going to do it yourself? Is another person inside of your company going to take care
of it
in-house and maintain your accounts? Who's going to respond to the questions and
who's going to
be the face of your business online? All of those were questions that you want to
consider when
getting into social media marketing. And if you do not have the technical ability
and the
know-how to join and engage in the online conversation on social media, are you
willing to learn
it, or are you willing to hire someone to do it for you? You have to be sure that
you have the
necessary people in place to execute a social media marketing plan before you start.
Also make
sure that you thoroughly acquaint yourself with the topic. You don't have to do
everything
manually. If you decide to do it all yourself, there's automation. There is post
scheduling in
advance, etcetera, etcetera. There are so many things to help you out and support
you. A cheer
for technology. Also, you should really know your audience and know who your target
audience is,
and where, and how they spend their time online. What kind of content and
conversations does
your audience value the most? What kind of information do they want from you? What
do they like
and dislike? Remember, you're not just publishing marketing messages on the social
web. You need
to find out what your audience wants and needs so you can provide the kind of
content they find
useful and interesting. However, you need to also be personal, so they actually want
to interact
with you. For this, it is so incredibly helpful to have a buyer persona. A buyer
persona, also
called a customer avatar, is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer
based on
market research and real data. It allows you to group your audience into different
segments, and
you can create more targeted content for each of those groups and then get more
effective
marketing campaigns and stronger results. Not sure how to create a buyer persona and
what
questions to ask? We have a free, customizable buyer persona template that will let
you easily
organize your information to create your very own buyer personas. And you can start
right now.
Download the free template by clicking the link below. You don't want to miss out on
this and
get your copy because you'll end up with beautiful, well-formatted buyer personas
that you can
share with your entire company. Every social media platform is not the same, so it
doesn't make
sense to share the same content on every platform. You can look at it like this.
Every TV
channel is not the same, right. ESPN has different types of content than MTV, and
vice versa.
That is because ESPN has a different audience than MTV. It caters to a different
group of
people. Hence the whole set up, the show topics, the formats, the way the content is
cut, and
the sets, and the sounds, and even the language used by the presenters. It's all
different and
tailored to the audience that consumes it. The same person in your audience can be
interested in
music and sports, which means that there can be overlaps of interests. However, that
doesn't
mean that you should mix things together. Social networks each have their own vibe,
which is why
they can coexist in the first place. Twitter, for example, is a great place to share
industry
news. Why? Well, as the slogan says, "It's what's happening". The platform is all
about news,
current events, and it is mostly used by adults. That's right. 38% of Twitter users
in 2020 are
over 35 and 67% are over 25. That is, according to a recent study by Statista. I'll
leave the
link below as always. You can go check out the sources. So Twitter is a great place
to share
industry news and add a personal human touch to it. Use it as a micro blog and post
about your
interests, too. In contrast, more than half of the global Instagram population
worldwide age 34
or younger, Instagram is mostly used by teens and young adults. It is also a lot
more visual
than Twitter. Twitter is about text. Instagram is about pictures. When you have a
lot of visuals
to share and are in the business-to-consumer business as opposed to the
business-to-business
business, Instagram is more relevant for you to help you achieve your goals.
Facebook is the
social network with the most users and the second leading country, based on the
number of
Facebook users as of January 2020, is the United States. The leading country is
India by the
way. Plus, Facebook allows you to target people in the most advanced way. Now, I
don't want to
get too deep into Facebook ads manager and the Facebook ad center in this episode,
but it's
definitely one of its kind. And in my opinion, you should be on Facebook to engage
what your
audience before you even consider expanding your social media presence to another
network. The
second on the list is Twitter by the way. And you can actually go see a ranking of
the top 11
social networking sites that we recommend to be on, in that order. So if you want to
know the
full sequence that we think makes the most sense based on data, go check it out. The
link is
down below in the show notes on dragon-digital-marketing.com. Here's another
example. Pinterest.
Seven out of 10 Pinterest users are female. So if you're marketing primarily to
women or people
who identify as female, Pinterest is a social network to consider in your social
media marketing
strategy. Another stat to consider is the time spent on those platforms. On average,
a user
spends, 4.96 minutes on Facebook and 3.39 minutes on Twitter and only 3.7 minutes on
Instagram
and 1.85 minutes on Snapchat. Design your content accordingly because you want it to
be read,
watched, and not just skimmed, right? You want it to be so on point and perfectly
targeted that
it makes a person stop scrolling on and pause for a moment and actually take the
time to
understand your message and feel so delighted they want to share it with their
friends and
engage with it and give you a like, give you a comment, and just spread it instead
of just skim
it and keep on scrolling on in their infinite feed. You have to create amazing
content. Once you
know where your audience spends time and what kind of content they want, give them
more of that
kind of content. Don't give up. You need to continually offer your audience amazing
content.
Amazing content also comes in the form of conversations. With conversations, you can
build a
loyal following of people who trust you as a source of information, and you can meet
their needs
and expectations. It takes time and you have to be consistent. Everybody has started
from
scratch once. Everybody started with zero followers and used to get zero likes and
no comments
and had no subscribers at one point. The key is perseverance. So keep going and
don't expect
things to happen overnight. It takes time. I believe in quantity and quality at the
same time.
And I've said it many times that I believe in posting several times a day
continuously because
you want to create every opportunity possible for a person to interact with you and
gain
insights from your content no matter how their day looks like and what time zone
they live. Also
make sure to integrate your marketing efforts. All your efforts at social media
marketing should
feed off each other. You can cross promote your efforts both online and offline, and
make sure
that your social media efforts and your other digital marketing efforts as well as
your
traditional marketing efforts work together seamlessly. Then you also wanna work out
a schedule,
allocate specific times during your day or doing your week to devote to social media
marketing.
You need a plan, and then you also need to stick to it. Have you ever heard of the
80-20 rule?
I'm pretty sure you have. And here's what I mean with adopting the 80-20 rule in
this context.
80% of the time, you should provide value to your audience and not promote yourself
and try to
sell something. 80% is just pure value. Provide valuable information to your
audience. Be
helpful, put useful content out there, high-quality content that is well researched
and
well-written, et cetera. And don't think about yourself. But think about your
audience first and
what's in it for them. And then 20% of the time, you can endorse your products and
services and
actually pitch and sell and do all the self-promotional activities. I think that
this is a
healthy ratio here, you know, the 80-20 rule. Also don't chase having many
followers. It can be
easy to get caught up in the numbers, but you don't want to become a slave to
followers and
subscribers. It is better to have 300 highly engaged and loyal followers than
100,000 followers
who just signed up to follow, but then never acknowledge you again or, you know, are
just
inactive because they're bought followers or whatever. Also give power to your
audience. You
must let your audience take control of the online conversation and make it their
own, so they
develop an emotional attachment to you and your business and your brand. Also think
about
user-generated content. Create and promote your own branded hashtag that people can
use when
they post a picture or video whatever with your product in it or talk about their
experience
with your service. Last but not least, keep on learning. That is so important. You
never want to
stop listening and learning, and that is so crucial for success. No matter if it's
about social
media marketing or anything else in life, stay hungry and keep on learning forever.
Summing up.
Here's what I want you to take away from this episode. These are the 10 things you
got to do to
leverage your social media accounts. Number one. Set your goals. Number two. Know
who does what.
Number three. Get to know your audience and create your buyer personas. Number four.
Create
amazing content. Number five. Make your marketing efforts work hand in hand. Number
six. Work
out a schedule. Number seven. Used the 80-20 rule when it comes to self-promotional
and
non-promotional content. Number eight. Don't chase having many followers. Number
nine. Give
power to your audience. Number 10. Keep on learning. I hope that answered your
question,
Samantha. Please let me know. Also everybody else please let me know how this
information was
helpful to you. I love feedback. And if you need any help with your digital
marketing, check out
the Dragon Digital Marketing Agency. I wish you all the best. Until next time.