- Unmetric
- Meetey
- Kenshoo
- Whisper
- Sharewell
- Bubbly
- Line
- Rinbwq
- Heard
- Space Tag
- NOKNOK
- Frilp
- Quicket
- Viber
If you’re familiar with five or more, you not only have your finger on the pulse of social media innovation—you’re also ready with the defibrillator.
If you aren’t familiar with them, don’t feel bad. Frilp and Space Tag aren’t around anymore (or never launched,) and it’s likely only people with “social media” in their job titles have heard of, let alone used the others.
Though older social media platforms can give us new features, new apps that can increase productivity, offer more capabilities and boost companies’ social media presence are constantly invented. However, most of us aren’t even aware of these new tools.
Here are the most important things to know about social media to speed up your success:
The decline of organic reach
In the past year and a half, most big social media platforms have moved to an algorithmic feed instead of a chronological one. This development discourages organic reach.
You once could promote your content to a list of people who subscribed to your channel, but now even people self-identified as wanting your content will not get it, because social channels require that you spend money for your content to reach your entire subscription list.
If you post an article or blog on Facebook or Twitter, not everyone you know will see it. The only way to ensure that a larger audience sees your content is to put advertising money behind it.
WEBCAST: Get social media "next practices" from the big four platforms.
This fact will affect every marketing budget: If you want to get your content to your entire audience, put ad dollars behind it. Don’t forget to integrate your marketing to combine lead generation and thought leadership.
Advertising and targeting in a changing milieu
The audience for earned media used to be limited to people who happened to see an article where it was published.
After the rise of social media, content was also posted on companies’ social channels and websites, where more people saw it.
Today, earned media is more integrated into a sales channel via email "custom audience" advertising. It builds brand equity in combination with product offers to drive sales. Enhanced advertising features enable brand managers to target an audience with content the audience has identified as interesting.
Social media platforms are more sophisticated about targeting people with unique interests. For example, Tech Image promotes its clients’ bylined articles that have appeared in publications. We’ve tripled their readers by reaching people who’ve self-identified as being interested in the articles’ topics.
This same technique applies to every industry. When you set up the media mix for your next promotion, make sure to check out the highly refined targeting capabilities of social media.
The right social media mix
One of the biggest conundrums in marketing and PR is where to invest money. The diversity of channels has created more confusion than ever in PR.
To solve this problem, understand the social channels where your customers spend the most time. Know where they are and what they do so you can build your marketing budget around them.
Distribute what you create on social channels as well as to your sales force for distribution. Content will vary based on your business needs; you might invest in lead generation to increase sales or in YouTube or Pinterest if you’re looking to boost branding.
The percentage of investments you make in PR, content development, lead generation and social media marketing should be calibrated on the combination that provides the greatest reach of the customers you’re targeting.
Seamless integration of other marketing techniques
One of the oldest formulas in advertising says that we have to find the proper reach and frequency to increase sales.
Customers once had to see a message three to five times before they decided to buy. That number has risen to seven, which means the more you promote your content in highly targeted channels, the more success you’ll have.
Technology allows greater integration on more marketing channels than ever, but the strategies to deliver your brand on these channels have not changed.
Always begin with a strategic message that differentiates your brand. Then create unique supporting content (i.e., no other competitor talks about this issue this way) that trends (i.e., a highly provocative, oft-discussed topic that challenges the industry’s status quo). Create a unique perspective for your brand.
Once you have this content, look at distribution. Consider every piece of content a new chance to publicize your perspective in blog posts, direct marketing, email marketing, web copy, PR outreach and advertising.
The efficiencies of slicing and dicing one idea or theme into proper formats for distribution on several channels are amazing. It’s never been easier and more affordable to use several channels to reach a highly targeted audience.
It’s surprising how many brand managers isolate the work they do by putting blogs, email marketing and PR into separate silos. They create different content for each channel. They don’t cross-pollinate. Even worse, some leave videos or thought leadership pieces sitting on their website collecting dust instead of sharing them across channels.
You can get great ROI on your investment in high-quality videos: Promote them on targeted social channels where you’ll affordably reach tens of thousands of new viewers.
Integrating social advertising into your marketing is easy to execute.
Use web traffic and email lists to push both thought leadership and sales information to customers, as well as third-party data from Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon to reach highly targeted new audiences. Add interest and demographic targeting to refine and increase your social media efficiency.
Social media will continue to change; apps will come and go. There isn’t one secret ingredient to get a business where it must be on social media; every company is different. Though there are no cookie-cutter solutions, these tips can guide your social media strategies to better target the exact audience you want to reach.
Dan O’Brien is president of Tech Image, a digital PR agency. O’Brien can be reached at dan.obrien@techimage.com.
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