Pascal Oparada
There is no questioning the power and value of social media. It is a venerable powerhouse, supporting nearly every facet of brand development and growth.
Research from Sprout Social, a social media-sharing tool, shows that 77 per cent of social media users will buy from or patronise brands they follow on social media.
According to them, marketers need to dig deep to understand their audience.
Social media marketers say a major challenge is identifying and understanding their audience.
Consumers want to be engaged and entertained before they can buy. So, brands need to devise a means to make this happen.
So what can brand marketers do to ensure they grow their audience on social media?\
READ ALSO:http://The colour pink
Identify the big players
Facebook remains the biggest player in social media.
The social media giant with over two billion monthly active users continues to dominate the social scene. Its other family apps of WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are all big players in the industry.
Eighty-nine per cent of marketers polled by Sprout say they use Facebook. Sixty-six per cent of consumers say they like or follow a brand on Facebook.
The next three social media platforms which consumers follow for brands are Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.
Brands are only scratching the surface of what social media can do, the report says.
Seventy-one per cent of social marketers believe they can offer insights from teams outside of the marketing department.
Watch the trends
Analysing and understanding how your brand can latch on to trends on social media are critical to growing your brand’s presence.
Most platforms like Twitter let you know almost real-time what is trending and who are the ones behind the trends. There is a need to be tactful and purposeful in targeting audiences who engage in trends on social media.
Steer clear of scandals and controversial conversations on social media. Your brand needs to identify quickly enough how they can take advantage of trends on social media to build and create brand awareness around the trends.
Recently, Facebook decided to remove likes from brands’ Facebook pages. This means it is no longer the number of likes a particular brand accumulates that makes it popular on the platform.
Brands need to devise a means to get around this algorithm tweak by Facebook to grow its audience on the platform.
Engage with visuals
Some of your audiences are not ‘text-friendly’. That is text bore them. You can use short video or crisp images to engage them on social media.
Many consumers are data-savvy. Use infographics to analyse and tell them how your brand can benefit and have a positive impact on them.
The power of visuals cannot be over-emphasized. Most impulse buyers do so through the use of visuals.
Study shows that both marketers and consumers agree that live video will become a significant factor in a brand’s social strategy.
Forty-two per cent of social marketers already have a strategy for Facebook Live, while 31% of social marketers plan to build strategies for Facebook Video and Instagram Live.
READ ALSO:http://North must tackle Almajiri to solve security challenges –Lalong
Despite the push for video content, marketers are still behind the curve when it comes to nurturing their presence on YouTube, creating a missed opportunity to connect with younger consumers like Generation Z.
Less than a quarter of marketers (24%) intend to create a strategy for YouTube Live. If marketers are concerned about sustained growth, it doesn’t hurt to start building strategies that directly address tomorrow’s consumer.
Private communities like Facebook or LinkedIn Groups also offer brands a unique opportunity to connect directly with their audiences. More than two-thirds of consumers (67%) will join a private group because they want to connect with people like themselves, while almost half (46%) join to communicate directly with a brand or business.
In addition to nurturing connection, private groups can help the 48% of marketers who want to increase community engagement in the coming year.
Tools within the social space, such as analytics and listening, are also maturing as marketers find themselves responsible for data analysis. With listening, marketers can drive customer research at scale, and 63% of practitioners say listening will become more important over the coming year. As the role of the marketer continues to evolve, analytics and listening tools will become must-haves for the data-driven marketer.
As brands seek ways to become visible on the social scene, they have to know to drive conversation and move their brands to the consciousness of the target audience.