Real Brand Value Within Social Media Marketing

Social media is changing and is no longer a megaphone directing conversions to clicks, rather it is becoming a conversation. Social media strategies are changing based on the current climate surrounding most social platforms today.

This, however, arguably holds more brand value on one-to-one conversations rather than clicks and this is why business owners should make use of it. If you already do content marketing then you should easily be able to implement that into your brand on social media and other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin.

Even having your own YouTube Channel can help in building your brand with behind the scene shots or tutorials on how to do something.

What Makes Social Media Marketing Important?

There are many features of Social media which businesses utilise on allowing their business to be successful. The reason for this is because the social media platform can reach and engage people all over the world who have the same interest as you do. In 2013, there were 90 million users who used social media. 

According to Datereportal, as of January 2020, there are now 3.8 billion social media users and this figure is to be growing by the day.

In other words, there’s a lot of potential to get your business known to many people and that is just by working on your Social Media. All that you need to do is create content and start expanding on your social media activity. In a matter of a month, you could have a targeted audience that you would not have had before. 

Around 40% of the world population uses social media so for businesses, the bigger the audience the more likely you would get visitors and potential clients into your businesses. 

That is only if you promote yourselves on social media appropriately. Those who like your content are likely to share it amongst their friends which would then appear on their friends feed. In other words, your content being shared would have a chain effect where more and more people would see it and there is a good possibility people would want to do business with you or potentially even gain a sponsorship.

Now that we know the potential of social media marketing, let’s talk about the few features that you can gain from social media marketing.

Brand Awareness

Brand Awareness is precisely the main point to why social media can hold real brand value today. If a company on a social media platform is known for having senses of humour, friendly, transparent content with people who respond to comments with an approachable characteristic manner. It is easily guaranteed that your business would get more attention from social media posts that are consistent and fresh. 

How can humour be effective? Well, let’s look at some social media profiles who make use of it.

Humorous Social Media Profiles

Major brands like Wendy’s, Taco Bell or Innocent Drinks use humorous branding strategies which drives more conversations between peers online and in real life. Their social media presence is shared and gives an opportunity to positively promote their business through typical conversations about their posts in a humorous way.

Humour can be used to lighten up the mood with funny content which instantly establishes a positive response with your brand. In business terms, this is known as ‘feel-good marketing’. 

However, when doing tweets like these, there’s a line that must not be crossed. One small slip up on a tweet will put you on blast for first-class criticism online and can affect your brand image online. Understanding these limits is a difficult task, which is understandable to why some businesses don’t take this root for their social media brand online.

Here’s a good example of a humorous post. From this image, you can tell that this airliner gives out a lot of newsletters with the titles making it sound like they’re trying to get in a relationship with a customer. 

Some would take that as spam, however, this person took the opportunity to post it on Twitter and from this, the airliner replied in a way that is humorous but acknowledged that they needed to lessen the number of times they send newsletters.

Professionalism and Transparency

People who explore social content online love brands that can be as professional and transparent with them as possible, whether this ranges from issues they’ve had, complaints they’ve got or a simple inquiry. It is important no matter the brand to live up to this standard. It is another form of customers being able to contact a business.

If questions are ignored, or complaints aren’t responded to in a professional and friendly manner, the effect of it being a part of your brand images is a huge negative. The chance of it being shared around online can severely affect your business allowing this negative to breed in conversations online and in real life. 

Managing your presence online between consumers is significant and difficult to do. But this is what makes using social media important. Social Media Marketing works and you should do it. Making your own content and having a business account is free!

Effective & Less Annoying Marketing Efforts

Social Media Marketing is effective and having an effective marketing effort online is great. People can get annoyed with seeing multiple promotional offers in their inbox. So instead of posting multiple email promotions, posting it on social media means you’re in for a long term success.

If people know you post promotional offers regularly, rather than being annoyed with constant notifications in their emails, with one tap to follow your social media, they can see what you post and just scroll up without being annoyed.

Hitting a quota of promoting your brand without it being a ‘stereotypical’ business post online sounds hard when in reality, it isn’t.

If you can be clear, short and concise with what you post online, along with other types of content such as; videos and images, it can grab the attention of the person scrolling. The use of colour and composition within the content is what matters the most. Look at other big brands and competitors such as McDonald’s online to see examples.

Engagement

As mentioned before, you can get a lot of engagement. But to add onto this, you have to do it strategically and make sure it is at the right time. Right now, we are in a time of crisis, if you were to post a product that is unnecessary, it either would flop, or cause backfire. Therefore you should be aware and plan what you post.

Furthermore, positing useful or helpful content on a consistent basis can help you gain attraction online. For example, if you are a restaurant business, consider posting recipes online people can use from home, or perform video tutorials. This makes people think that you care about people by giving out free recipes they can try at home. This is the sort of thing that can get you more engagement.

This way people are being brought to your brand by useful content and further pushes your brand into conversations online and in real life. This helps those to search up your brand name for other tutorials, tips and tricks or any other useful content they can find. This will help bring your engagement up online.

This then falls into a full circle of having a positive reputation and characteristic online that drives further engagement. More engagement means more chances at getting conversions.