If your business hasn’t already seen all the hype about marketing via social media in today’s very digitally focused world, then you could be missing out! Each part of the customer experience process, including ongoing communication, needs to be a rewarding experience for your customers if you’re trying to drive new and repeat business. Social media gives you one more platform to communicate with and get to know your customers on a personable basis, so that you can establish a strong, long-lasting relationship with your audience. If you’re looking to get started, take a peek at our first blog, about how social media can help your business, in order to get the ball rolling. In this blog, we’ll talk about nurturing your relationships with social media and other advanced social media tactics that will help you build a strong presence online for your business.
Nurturing your Audience
It’s important that you think before you post, because if you post topics or subjects that aren’t appealing to your audience, you’ll be getting nowhere fast. Social media is about communicating with your prospects and customers in a way that they would want to be communicated with. It would help to create marketing personas, so you can understand your audience properly, and use human-centered marketing to your advantage. We’d also suggest taking a look at how to create B2B buyer personas from our friends at CustomLogoCases before you get started as well!
Now, when we say that you have to think before you post, you not only have to appeal to your audience, but you have to have a healthy balance when it comes to what types of content you push out. Of course, you’re going to want to push out content that will drive new business for your company, but if you only post very sales oriented content, it will be much harder for you to build a following. You have to balance your “sales” posts with your “personable and connectable” posts. You can offer your customers advice, post motivational content, or something entertaining as long as it pertains to your industry. The key to balance is that you must post enough content that is warm and welcoming for people to follow you, and then use your sales posts here and there to remind your audience of your products and services after you’ve earned their trust.
#Hashtagging
Now that you understand what type of content you should be posting, and you’ve established your social media networks, it’s time to start building a following. One way you can get your posts more visibility is to use hashtags in your posts, which basically means you are putting a # symbol in front of keywords or phrases that make your posts more discoverable. For example, if we were to make a post about classic car insurance, we would use the hashtags #CTInsurance, #ClassicCarInsurance, and #ClassicCars to try to get discovered. You have to consider what keywords or phrases your audience would search for and use them to your advantage. If someone searches for a specific keyword or search term using social media, posts that have the right hashtags will get discovered. You won’t want to use more than three or four hashtags a post though, or else your audience could be turned off by it. If you’re ever stumped about looking for a good hashtag to use for your posts, you can checkout hashtags.org to see what hashtags are trending and use them if they are appropriate for your content in order for your posts to get more exposure.
Pay to Play
Initially, it may be a bit difficult to establish your presence, but that’s alright, because there is an answer. If you have a marketing budget established already, you’re on the right track, but if not, we would suggest putting one into place. For social media boosting, a decent starting point would be about $200 a month between all of your social media platforms.
To boost your posts on Facebook, you can select the “boost post” button on any one of your posts. Once you do, you can select who will see your posts based on location or interests.
You can also sponsor your Facebook page to get more likes, by selecting the “Create Ad” button in the upper right hand corner, and the selecting the “Promote Your Page” button on the screen that comes up.
If you’re interested in doing sponsored posts on Twitter, you can check out this article on Twitter for Business, and the same goes for Instagram with this article on Advertising on Instagram.
Branding in Social Media
The last piece of advice we’d like to give you is that everything you post, whether it’s visual, written, or other forms of content, should all tie back to your company’s brand. Branding is powerful, because any time a prospect or customer sees a visual cue that your brand is being represented, they will think about your company or business. Not only that, but your brand may also stick around with your customers too, and they could be more likely to give you referrals if someone else close to them is in need of your products or services.
Your brand should be presented in all aspects of your social media. When you are speaking to your audience, think about speaking in a tone that reflects your brand, and speak about subjects that speak to your brand’s core message. When it comes to posting graphics or pictures, they should all follow your visual branding guidelines, and if you don’t have visual guidelines, you should talk to a branding professional or graphic designer about creating and implementing some. The videos that you post should all visually represent your brand as well. Other than that, be sure to link back to your website when you have a good opportunity to, this way your customers can experience your full brand when they arrive on your homepage.
As you can probably see, social media is a great asset for any business in today’s digitally focused world. Social media can get even more advanced than what we discussed if you’re looking to optimize, but we hope we gave you a great place to start. Remember, no matter how much more business you drive leveraging social media or modern day marketing strategies, no business is free from worry unless you have the protection you need. If you’d like to discuss your insurance options for your Connecticut business insurance, feel free to give us a call at any time with any questions you may have.