3 Powerful Social Media Marketing Tactics That You’re Ignoring
Marketers have to work hard to
promote visibility on social media but without using the right strategies and
tools, their attempts may be in vain. They also have to keep up with trends because
social media changes all the time and what worked in the past may no longer
offer effective results.
Any social media presence needs to be
as meaningful as possible and deliver content that provides value and has a
positive, memorable impact on an audience. Here are three tactics you may be
ignoring that will help propel your engagement to new heights.
Harness the voices of
your employees
Did you know that 64% of companies say
that employee advocacy helped them to attract new business? This is why more
companies are leveraging employee advocacy today for authenticity and social
reach. The best brand advocates will always be the people who believe in the
product they are promoting and this could be your employees.
If you have 500 employees and they
all have social media accounts, think about how many people you will reach if
you encourage them to share brand communications. If each of them has 100
followers, you could reach 5,000 people instantaneously.
Employees of a company often tend to
have more followers than the company itself and more people trust
a regular employee or a company’s technical expert than a company CEO.
A study by Cisco showed
that employee posts can generate eight times more engagement than when the same
content is shared through a brand handle.
An employee advocacy program requires
guidelines, resources and rewards. You need to make it easy to share brand
content and standardize how it’s done. Hootsuite offers a free employee advocacy guide that
will teach you how to plan, launch and grow an employee advocacy program.
Creating an employee advocacy program
starts with creating a fulfilling work environment so employees will want to
post on social media. Claude Simmons, a marketer at a dissertation writing service,
suggests first testing a program with a few selected employees
and only implementing it once you’ve identified a working formula that’s
successful.
You can create hashtags to promote a
specific employee advocacy campaign, a leaderboard to show who is getting the
most engagement for a hashtag and organize a prize for the leader.
Starbucks is one of the most
well-known brands with a strong brand advocacy strategy. It even refers to its
employees as “partners,” immediately giving them a sense of belonging and
accountability.
Employees need to get something out
of such a program, whether it’s positioning themselves as industry experts,
enhancing their credibility or receiving recognition or rewards. When Cisco encouraged
summer interns in 2019 to share using the #WeAreCisco hashtag, they offered the
prize of an Apple Watch.
An advocacy campaign should promote the company’s business goals and it is important to track the social media metrics. This may include which individuals or teams share the most, how many people are seeing the content, clicking links and leaving comments as well as how much traffic shared by employees generates.
There are various employee advocacy apps, such
as LinkedIn Elevate, that can help you to manage an employee advocacy
program. Many of these apps have built-in gamified leaderboards to encourage
participation, accessibility to content steams and analytics to measure
results.
Build social media
communities around your content
Many brands appear to have large
social media followings but look more closely at their individual posts and you
are likely to see that engagement levels are virtually non-existent. The brands
that see more engagement build communities around their content.
Social communities are not a new
concept but the way brands are using them is changing. They realize that there
is no guarantee that creating a group and having people join it means people
will engage. Brands have to create content that encourages conversations, gets
people talking and cultivates that feeling of community.
If you want to create this type of
content, you must make sure each post contains valuable takeaways, such as
knowledge, actionable tips or inspiration. You also need to provide a mix of
content in varying formats, including blogs, infographics, videos, graphs,
quotes and more.
As a content marketer, you must give
your audiences everything they want, so they don’t have to look for it
elsewhere. To understand what your audiences are talking about, it helps to use
a social listening app, such as Social Mention, that searches user-generated
content to find out what people are saying about an industry, brand or
topic.
If you are studying and trying to
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A social media suite can provide you
with a way to see everything in a central place, from creating posts to
distribution, monitoring and analytics. This helps you to see what is working
and what isn’t so you can pivot if necessary and try something new.
One brand that has a flourishing
online community is Sephora. Beauty Talk is
its huge forum where users can share ideas and ask questions about their beauty
issues. Sephora also has a Beauty Board where users can upload pictures of them
wearing Sephora products. The products link from the photos to a product
page.
Lego Ideas is
another inspired online community where anyone of any age who loves lego can
vote on favorites, check proposals, submit ideas and leave feedback.
Xbox Ambassadors is
another example of a brand with a highly engaged brand community. It has
a forum with many devotees who provide a support
network for the brand.
Tell stories on
social media
Social media storytelling is the use
of text, videos, photos, and other elements to craft a narrative, rather than
just presenting facts about a product. This is so effective because humans
connect with stories that resonate emotionally with them. And emotions can
influence what they purchase.
Stories on Instagram are visual,
highly engaging and designed to be created and consumed in the moment. As of
January 2019, Instagram had 500 million daily active Stories
users across the world. Big brands appear to favor
Instagram Stories for marketing purposes.
Why are Instagram Stories so popular?
They are seen as more authentic than other posts that can be edited and
altered. The content is only available for 24 hours so it is current. This
up-to-date content satisfies the desires of consumers for live, real-time
content. Sharing other people’s Instagram posts through Instagram Stories is a
function that helps people to connect easily with other businesses or
accounts.
Lululemon used brand storytelling
effectively on social media with its #justmymat campaign. It began with
an Instagram video of a woman doing yoga in different settings and inspired
followers to upload photos or videos with the hashtag showing them practicing
yoga all over the world.
Gillette worked with Shaquem
Griffin, a linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks, who doesn’t have a left hand.
They didn’t use him to sell their razors but told his story in a campaign
called “Your best never comes easy” to send a message about having the courage
to overcome obstacles.
A final word
Whether it is inspiring your
employees to become brand ambassadors, building engaged communities around
content or telling stories that humanize your brand and tug at people’s
heartstrings, you need to find new, more creative ways to make more of an
impact on social media.
If you want your company to survive
and thrive in a more organic social media context, you need to work on adding
that human, personalized element to keep consumers engaged and coming back for
more.
Justin Osborne is a writer at best essay writing service and college paper reviews, he loves to share his thoughts and opinions about education, writing and blogging with other people on different blogs and forums. Currently, he is working as a content marketer at high school research paper and do my assignment.