A valuable part of any brand’s online reputation is its effectiveness in using social media as a marketing tool. It seems like an obvious strategy for any company today, but it’s important to play to your strengths and create a social media presence that mirrors brand identity.
Before you make a new post on Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media platforms, we’ll go over the benefits of being on social media as well as general best practices that can lead to better customer acquisition and retention.
Find out your brand's online reputation score
Take the guesswork out of your strategy. Instantly generate your brand's online Reputation Scorecard, complete with review highlights, ratings, keyword trends and more.
The Benefits of Social Media as a Marketing Tool
When done correctly, your social media channels are a perfect conduit for promoting the brand and its products as well as boosting consumer engagement, which can eventually lead to a conversion.
This is because there are about 4.55 billion people that use social media so chances are high that your brand appeals to a handful of people online. In fact, Sprout Social data shows 55% of consumers find new brands on social media, and 43% of consumers increased their social media use specifically to discover new products. Brands are already taking advantage of the platform and getting in front of consumers with sponsored content that advertising spend alone on social media amounted to $154 billion by the end of 2021.
As tempting as it is to immediately put down a major ad investment for social media, there are ways to organically get in front of the right consumer and convert them into a customer.
Best Practices for Using Social Media as a Marketing Tool
Taking the time to confirm how the ideal consumer engages with specific content and tailoring it to fit your brand identity can pay off in the long run. To get you started, here are some foundational approaches that can help you get noticed in the feed.
Create Content that Connects
It goes without saying, but your social team shouldn’t just constantly promote the company’s new products or offerings with the standard marketing lines. Instead, find out how your ideal consumer interacts on the platform and how they perceive your brand and others that offer similar options.
With these insights in mind, create copy, images, and videos that speak on multiple levels to the consumer. Don’t just tell them to visit your site and purchase now; connect on an emotional level to further increase the “need” to go with you instead of the competition.
This can be a challenge on platforms with character limits, like Twitter, but this can be the type of challenge that makes social teams (and their brands) stand out in the space.
Engage Frequently
On top of product promotions, you should also make time to directly engage with people on social media. If you’re seeing mentions of your brand or a conversation about the products you offer, feel free to hop in and provide some insight or context. If people are providing some valuable ideas, create a poll based on their contributions or ask if your products can solve some of their pain points.
The goal with engagement isn’t necessarily to convince people to buy from your brand; it’s more about being a part of the conversation to stay in the mind of the consumer. Taking time to interact rather than promote also builds consumer trust. It shows that the brand doesn’t just want to sell its wares but rather be an authoritative source for people.
Over time, this engagement pays off. People then expect you to be a part of the conversation, which provides an opportunity to organically promote the products and services you offer to the right audience. In other words: the right engagement leads to better customer acquisition and effective community management.
Show Off Your Best Reviews
Even after all the consumer research, a major decider for any purchase is social proof. In fact, customer review data shows 92% of consumer use reviews to help guide their purchase decisions.
Put it another way: people want to hear from your own customers that what you’re selling is worth the time and money. This is where your online reviews come into play. Showcasing some of your best reviews on social media can be an easy way to convince people that your brand is worth the consideration.
When sharing these reviews, it’s important to provide some context. Tell readers why this specific review is important. Provide details about their experience and show off the product that made this specific customer happy enough to write a review about it. With enough context, showcasing the right review is more than enough to convince people to convert.
The process of choosing and displaying these reviews on your social feed (and other online locations) can take some time, especially if it’s done manually. However, by capitalizing on some tools, like ReviewTrackers’ Amplify feature, your team can share multiple reviews across platforms with just a few clicks.
Use Social Media as a Marketing Tool Today
The vast audiences available to any brand via social media is impossible to ignore. By taking the right steps today when it comes to creating content, audience engagement, and providing social proof, your team can effectively utilize social media as a marketing tool to better attract and retain customers.
