This is NOT the first time you’ve been told this – social media is one of the most effective marketing tools Singapore entrepreneurs and solopreneurs can use to grow their audience and get to interact with throngs of prospective customers or clients. All with minimal effort on their part.
The problem is that many of these entrepreneurs don’t get it right. Come to think of it, if you’ve been using social media for quite a while, but you’ve yet to realise its true potential, odds are:
- You’re using the wrong social media platform
- You’re NOT using the social media platforms correctly
- You’re being over-salesy and pitchy on the platform, and the bulk of your online followers are annoyed by it
There could be other reasons, but these are among the most common ones.
The most important thing about managing your social media account is growth. You want your followers to keep on increasing. And the bigger they grow, the more your brand gets recognized, the greater the number of loyal customers you get to win over, and the greater the opportunity of converting even more followers.
On the other end, a lowly count of social media followers screams doom. Your competitors are likely to crush you, and there’s a greater possibility of you losing some great marketing opportunities that swing your way.
Granted, social media is by far one of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal, provided you know how to use it. Ever been confounded by the sheer number of accounts that manage to garner millions of Twitter followers?
What’s the secret, you ask…
Whether you’re just getting started or you’ve been struggling with the account for quite some time and you’ve still NOT figured out the trick people use to grow their number of followers, don’t fret. There’s a whole lot you can still do to grow your online fan base and even live to achieve the same level of success as the people you admire.
Understand the Nature of Your Audience
Start by identifying your target audience. Dig out for as much info about them as you possibly can.
Here are a number of things to consider checking out:
Their demography
Where can the bulk of your target audience be found? What’s their gender, age, and level of income? What is it that they do for a living?
Psychographics
Psychograph is all about understanding their personality. Are a good number of people introverted, religious, or parting type?
Their Behaviour
By looking into their behaviour, you get to learn something or two about their likes and dislikes, leave alone what they do for fun.
The nature of their Business
If your primary target is other businesses or companies, it’s important that you dedicate some time to dig out as much detail as possible about the nature of what it is that they do. How many people have they employed? How do they generate their revenue? And what’s their geographical market scope?
Look for Customers
Where can the bulk of your customers be found? Is it on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook? The answer you come up with should help you know where to pump the bulk of your marketing effort for boosted sales and stretched-out profit margins.
The Buying Behaviour of Your Customers
It’s important that you understand how your customers react to the products and services they’re interested in. Are they impulse buyers or do they take time to plan for it before finally deciding to go through with a purchasing decision?
Are they among the bunch that prefers looking for referrals or asking around for recommendations? How do they carry out their research? Can their decisions be influenced by a special offer or generous discount?
Interview Existing Customers
There’s no harm in interviewing your existing customers. All the information you dig from them should be able to help you make necessary adjustments to your marketing strategy.
Start by asking them how they came to find your business and what made them choose you over a long listing of other businesses you’re competing with. Most importantly, ask them about what motivated them to be loyal to you or consider doing another transaction with you.
Take Time to Analyse Your Competitors
Find out who your competitors are on social media and take time to study them and the strategies they employ to attract a greater following. What kind of people follows them? What kind of content do they share the most? Which one of their posts attracts higher levels of engagement?
Producing Valuable Content
76 percent of all shoppers have admitted to preferring buying goods and services online. Of this, 46% rely on social media for the decision they make while shopping around.
By profiling potential customers, you get to understand their interests and how best to adjust your marketing strategy to win them over. With social media, you only have a few second to grab the attention of prospective and may convince them to skip scrolling further down their newsfeed and check you out instead.
Here are some nice ideas on how to achieve this:
Use Infographics Where Possible
Infographics help to make your content incredibly appealing and more engaging. That’s important as it makes your content shareable and even more informative to those reading it.
Make the Content Interactive
Go the extra mile and make the content interactive. Whether it’s by including a quiz or integrating with a relevant piece of video or game, you’re likely to get even more noticed when you steer clear of inundating your account with lazy posts.
Use Images or Memes
Images get more clicks, retweets, likes, and comments and even attract a greater number of social media followers. So make good use of them while you still can.
Use of Hashtags
Hashtags are crucial for increasing your social media exposure. Commonly used on Twitter and Facebook, you can use them to get your brand all over and direct even more people to your page.
What happens is that whenever someone searches for your business, they’ll be presented with a list of posts bearing your hashtags. They can then click on the hashtags and be directed to a number of links directing to your social media page or channel.
It’s NOT necessarily important that you comment on all the posts bearing your hashtags. Just pick on the relevant ones instead and you’re good to go.
You can also look for trending hashtags and join the bandwagon by using your creativity to fuse it with a message that’s relevant to your brand. That way, more and more people get to learn about your brand, thus increasing your social media exposure by tenfold.
Hold Competitions
Holding online competitions gives you an opportunity to interact with potential customers in a manner that they’ll start seeing the value of following you or subscribing to your channel.
The competition you run doesn’t have to be complicated. Just ask your followers to either like, comment on, or share a post you made, and in return offer them a chance to win a prize.
By sharing your posts, they’ll be exposing your product or brand to their followers as well, thus increasing your exposure even more.
Here are a number of tools that you can use to run a successful social media competition: Hootsuite, Woobox, Rafflecopter, ShartStack, Pagemodo and Wishpond to name a few.
It’s a Wrap
We get it – managing a successful social media account can be a challenging and daunting task for many marketers, considering you’re competing against larger brands, most of which have already established themselves and solidified their place on the various social media platforms.
Even so, it’s still possible to take your fair share of the social media cake if you stay committed to the techniques we’ve identified above.
For further clarification on the points made, make a point to get in touch with one of the customer representatives at MediaOne for a free social media and SEO consultation.
