The Blog on Branding

Social Media in Marketing: You Must Give to Receive

The Web is quickly becoming the marketplace of the business world. Consumers are weighing their business options through site comparisons and blog comments rather than television and radio advertisements. Therefore, social media is essential for establishing a relationship between marketers and consumers. But like any relationship, there is give and take.

“Unsure what this means? Don’t worry, Johnny here is too.”




As said in Yael Naim’s song “New World”:

“I’m a new soul/ I came to this strange world/ Hoping I could learn a bit ’bout give and take…”

In this article, you will learn about the “give and take” of social media in marketing.

What Do You Have to Give?

Your business cannot simply expect to be embraced by a community without offering something. So, what does your business bring to the table? Through utilizing social media, your business can offer more than just your marketing message and in turn, build successful relationships with consumers and other businesses.

When integrating the tools of social media, strategy is the name of the game. Increasing RSS subscriptions, page traffic, and links cannot be done through search engine optimization alone. In order to achieve a successful social media marketing campaign, part of the strategy must include thorough research and unique content.

Finding, Understanding, and Targeting Your Audience

First, your business must identify its target market. Ask yourself: what are the types of people who are most likely to be your customers? After you have defined who your customers are, you must study them.

Whether they are stay-at-home moms or tech-savvy entrepreneurs, understanding their preferences and what they value is paramount in gaining their support. By observing and listening to it, research the potential market to learn what it is most responsive to.

“I’m not sure she wants to buy the most recent ‘Call of Duty’ game…”




Once you have established your target market and what they value, how will you get them to your page? Hoping that your business reaches its intended audience is like hoping your crush takes notice of you; you need to get his/her attention if you expect anything to happen. By optimizing your site to show up first in search engine listings of search terms your target audience uses, your business will attract its attention.

The Importance of Content

Now that you have its attention, you better have something to offer your audience in order to retain it.

The most important thing to offer your target audience is content. The overused phrase “content is king” holds true in social media. Unique, quality content is crucial in determining SEO and other tenets of social media success. Creating effective content will ensure that people will return to or link to your site.

Utilizing Research for Content and Creating Diverse Content

The research you’ve done on your target audience will be helpful when figuring out how to formulate content. It’s all about what your audience finds valuable. The way in which you present your content must appeal to your target audience or community in order to keep them engaged.

Visually-engaging content such as photographs, graphics, and video can prove to be effective forms of content and more visually stimulating than text. Breaking up text with visual content will make your content easier for your readers to digest.

“Note our sweet image of the digestive system below.”




Whether using text or visual content, your content must educate. The more useful and informative your content is, the better. To ensure that your content is as informative as possible, linking to other resources is a good way to add to your content.

In addition to visual content, allow people to interact to further diversify your content. Using comments or ratings allows for discussion and buzz.

Maintaining SEO

Use terms that relate to your site’s subject matter so your target audience will find your site easily. Remember to put key phrases you hope to rank for into the title of your content.

As mentioned in regard to content, comments will improve SEO and page views. The more people that comment on your content and view your page, the higher your ranking. Also, getting people to link to your page will increase traffic and SEO.

Promotions

Aside from content, the give and take of social media is furthered through promotions. Offering promotions is a great way to entice people to purchase your brand or product. However, coupons are not effective for social communities.

Unique and community-specific promotions are an effective way to make people feel special. For example, offering a limited time promotion that is tied back to a specific community proves more valuable than a generic promotion for an unlimited amount of time.

It is also important to:

• Limit distribution
• Surprise people with the promotion
• Make it different from other promotions.

Factors of Social Media

Now that you’ve learned “a bit ’bout give and take…” when it comes to social media in marketing, keep in mind the following factors:

• Research
• Content
• SEO
• Promotions

If you adhere to the give and take philosophy of social media, your business relationships are bound to blossom.

Julia Cowher “Social media is a gift for all occasions! Julia offers social media gift wrapping free of charge.” Want content written for your Brand that shows up #1 on Search Engines and brings you new customers? Contact us.