It was in last September when Myntra, one of the top Indian eCommerce sites launched a social media campaign asking their customers’ reasons if they had to return products. A whopping 17-18 tweets popped up every second. Every negative tweet was addressed. This shows amazing levels of customer service. Though it is one of the business tactics to attract customers, customers would definitely love such conversations.
In fact, Social Media has revolutionized the way businesses interact with customers. Marketers have started spending more time than ever on social media to build business.
Social Media Examiner has conducted a study to know the time spent by marketers on social media in a week. The study says that
- 59% of marketers spend 6 hours
- 33% of marketers spend 11 hours
- & 15% marketers spend more than 20 hours
On spending so much of time on social media, marketers have benefited increase in traffic, leads and sales. However there are 31% of marketers who couldn’t get the most out of it. Here are a few things marketers need to follow to build more business through social media:
Define your social media goals:
What is your social media marketing goal? Is it to drive more traffic or to create brand awareness, or to increase the leads? You need to chalk out a plan based on your goals. You can create the plan by doing a backward analysis. If you have been doing social media marketing for a while, you would be having the metrics about the traffic and leads. Based on these metrics, you can set achievable quantitative goals. Now channelise your social media efforts based on these goals.
Social Media channels for your business:
There are many social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest that can be used for business. However, you need to pick the channels that are advantageous for your business. If you are a B2B marketer, LinkedIn is the social media channel you would need. For B2C marketers, Facebook proves to be a great source. To know which social media channels suits best for your marketing, you need to do a bit of market research. Once you have the social media channels you can drill down your goals that you can achieve through these niche channels.
Create content that fuels your social media efforts:
Content is the only aspect that can make you do wonders. Though you have an amazing plan, if you do not have content that compels the audience to take action, your social media efforts are just a waste. So, you should have a stack of impeccable content created for your pipeline. Since social media is very volatile, old content can also be repurposed.
Scheduling is a key aspect:
Once you are ready with your content, you need to prepare a schedule allocating a chunk of your time for social media. Time should be allotted to check out the activity of your fans. And also cater time to observe the content which is more engaging. Similar content can be created to drive more traffic and increase the conversations.
When you follow these tactics, you can be sure of getting awesome social media metrics. But, as a marketer, just metrics wouldn’t serve the purpose; you would need loyal customers to keep your business on the move. To create an impact on the customers with social media marketing, all you would need is a pinch of relevancy.
To create relevant marketing, understanding customers’ behavior is an essential. With this you can create right messages and deliver them at the right time. Going forward, you can create categorize your buyers and based on buyer personas and create niche campaigns for segmented buyers.
As the old cliche goes, if you want to give your customer an excellent experience, you ought to step into their shoes!