Social Media planning
For organizations it has become highly important to follow a specific strategy that will help them achieve their company goals. Strategies are nothing but a set of defined rules and methods that organizations will follow at a given point of time to achieve strategic goals. Social media strategy regulates the use of methods supporting platforms and tools. Social strategies play an important role in engaging your audience to your business. Some businesses do not make use of planning but important is to know that strategies will help them to stand out even if they are not actively involved, because their competitors are. Let us discuss few of the key points to consider Why Social Media Strategy is a useful for your Business
Social Media is vast and growing
Social Media is stealthily growing quicker than we think. The key factors driving the social web according to Global Web Index study are the use of Mobiles and Older User Adoption. The mobile internet usage increased to 818.4m that is by almost 60.3% between 2012 and 2014. The people in the age group of 55-64 years age group are adopting Twitter at fastest demographic rate of 79% since 2012. As compared to this, the fastest growing demographic on Facebook and Google+ stands at 45-54 years of age. Overall globally there has been an improved mobile connectivity; people are using mobiles “on-the-go”. People are using social networks like never before, they are getting online, sharing the watching the videos. The Ruder Finn social media usage research in the US shows why people go online and why social outings are the driving elements.
A targeted social media strategy helps to focus on using relevant platforms to connect with new and existing customers.
Social Media influences Buying Decisions
The Social media trends keeps changing, right now the focus is on commerce and personalization. Earlier it was audience building and engagement. The platforms increasingly lured marketers with improved APIs and smart targeting. It included the ability for uploading email lists for running personal remarketing campaigns. With the use of Facebook API marketers’ helps to manage audience data for custom audience targeting, creating the campaigns and ads, building custom dashboards and run analytics. The Crowdtap research shows 64% of 3,000 people surveyed make use of social for shopping purposes, it is driven by retailers to target consumers with personal offers and deals on social networks.
Almost 46% of social media users are using social platforms while they are thinking of making a purchase. 40% of users are deciding of buying while already making use of social media platforms, this also includes reviews and recommendations. The recommendations from peers are influencing factors when it comes to holiday purchases. Each social network plays a vital role in the purchase cycle. Some social networks works better with visual products where people find inspiration. Facebook is better for businesses for sharing content and finding promotions.
Strategy Absence gives Competitors the benefit
Every organization today is following some kind of strategies that aligns with their business goals. Marketers prepare a strategy that has a framework through which they can plan, prioritize, execute, measure and optimize. A proper framework will give better results because the activity has been designed and has a direction.
The absence of proper social strategy will not give a clear idea if the campaigns are successful or not. Simply posting social content would not always show results, the efforts that are being put up should have some direction and some objective in mind.
A non-structured approach will lead to gap in communication and measurement. The marketing team would not know what to post, when to post, how, to whom and why to post. The savvy competitors’ works smarter by engaging customers having clear objectives, goals and targets to perform better and give better measuring tools.
Active Customers on Social Media
The new technologies have emerged as a manifestation of all social tools that work with integrations to give finest benefits to the users of the technology. People can access, use and share the information based on their choices. Many people simply make use of Social platforms like Facebook to read content rather actually reading any blogs. It doesn’t amount to a total number of audience, although a subset, some customers may want an information from a social network. Twitter is highly known amongst brand for providing customer service, it acts as a good backbone for brands looking to solve customer enquiries and act as a problem resolution channel.
Strategy is required by brands to connect with its customers through strategic thinking. The social strategy needs proper aligning with other communication channels to define its role and understand.
Social Networks have Key Influencers
Influencers can turn tables in a matter of just few minutes, hours or days, so never underestimate the power of peers. It is a known fact that over years, retailers have seen increase in conversion rates by the power of peer influence. The feedbacks from other customers are seen as worth. Endorsements from experts help to increase brand credibility. The high-end tech markets have led to more people relying on opinions from experts in the field or celebrity or a famous person’s endorsements.
It is highly important for brands to be part of influencer’s world, if you don’t; you have the bigger risk of losing out on market share that has more aware competitors that are creative and innovative with their campaigns.
Social networks can Make or Break a Brand
Social networks help brands to deliver an experience to users, they are good valuable resource to uphold a particular reputation hence reputations are enhanced or destroyed on social networks. Social platforms give voice to the users to have their voice heard on the networks. They are transparent and portable and are readily available to users. The below example shows Aldi social team; launched a genuine marketing campaign which attracted a lot of negative tweets and trolls.
Many companies have faced social media backlash and they literally struggle to cope with negative comments and feedbacks. Some companies having social media strategy with crisis response have failed at giving handling such backlash and bring back the same reputation to the brands. The damage is irreparable so it is best advised to have a social media strategy that helps to take effective steps towards maintaining online and offline reputation.
