Are you Integrating Social Media into your Marketing Strategy?

At Bubble Towers, we are big exponents of Social Media. It works well as part of our overall marketing strategy. As Steve often says; ‘If you’re not using it, you’re missing a trick!’ However, there should be a strategy in place for how you use your social media platforms to get the most out of them.

With that in mind, here’s a handy little overview of the purpose of Social Media in business and how to utilise it.

Social Media and Marketing sitting in a tree . . . . . .

Whatever platform you use, it’s all about sharing and spreading the word. Social Media should be an integral part of all your marketing communications; they go together hand in hand! The first rule is to make sure that it is easy for people to connect and follow you. Of course, links should be easily visible on your website pages but also on your blog pages and even marketing emails. If you write a blog, link to it from your social media platforms to encourage traffic to your blog and website. Make it easy for people to connect and communicate with you.

What Social Media Does for your Brand Marketing

Social Media is such a good trumpet for your business in conjunction with your other direct marketing activities and with regular investment can work very hard for you:

Brand awareness – The more you are visible to your customers, business contacts and the wider world, the more visible your brand becomes.

Raising your profile – If you meet a customer, prospect or business contact only once they may forget about you and what you do. This is unlikely if you keep popping up in their stream/timeline, building your relationship with them.

Demonstrating Industry Expertise – Have your say – it’s a great way to build a good reputation and trust. Before you know it, people will share/re-tweet/Plus1/endorse your stuff.

Recommendations and Referrals – building relationships on social media is a formidable networking tool. Leading on from building your industry expertise, social media is a place where recommendations and referrals can be both given and received. Just like networking, it’s not just about who is in the room with you, but who they know who may be in need of your products/services. Nothing builds trust like being able to hand over a lead or referral.

Communicate – For B2C and B2B companies, use your social media platforms to tell everyone your new products or services and the latest special offers to drive traffic to your door.

Getting the ROI from Social Media

It costs nothing to set up and run a Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn account, unless you want to upgrade on LinkedIn or invest in an ad campaign. However, what Social Media does cost you is your time and so you want a return for whatever time you invest in it.

Each platform works in a slightly different way. Bear the following in mind to ensure that whatever you do invest time in will ultimately lead to new business:

How much time? – I don’t think there is a hard and fast rule to this. People can invest varying degrees of time and different times of day will yield differing amounts of success. The thing to bear in mind is to make it –

Regular – There’s no point having a flurry for 10 minutes and then not logging in again for a week or so. Make it regular, as regular as you like, but posting, responding and sharing regularly will build your presence most effectively.

Love is a two way street – Although we are all in it to make new business, it is not a direct sales forum – a constant stream of ‘buy me now’ is not going to be as effective. Social Media is a conversation, which requires active listening skills and willingness to get involved with the network you are building.

Live Time – I am a big fan of staying ‘live’ on social media. Not that there is anything wrong with scheduling posts, they certainly have their place. For me though, it is easier to respond and get involved if I am spending the majority of my time live. There’s nothing more off-putting than responding to a question that has just been tweeted and getting no reply because it is either a scheduled tweet or they have tweeted and flown and have no way of knowing there was someone out there ready to engage! Which leads me neatly on to; –

Analytics – Rather surprisingly, analytics are an oft overlooked part of managing social media. To make it most effective, analytics are an important part of measuring your ROI. Analytics can be used to in the same way as analytics for your website, to track traffic and reach.

Watch This Space!

We love social media and analytics so much that we think it deserves a whole blog of its own! As such, I’ll soon be giving you an insight into how we at Data Bubble use our social media and how we use management tools and analytics to help us manage our campaigns and time effectively.

For free tips and advice, such as our 7 Touch Marketing Plan, why not visit the Help and Advice page of our website