The idea behind social media marketing and management is fairly simple to grasp, but despite its user friendliness and familiarity, the task itself can often be taken for granted. With its steady global takeover, social media has become a great resource for online marketing and companies are now tapping into its trove and using it to direct traffic to their sites and gain exposure, an audience and clients all in one fell swoop. The only trouble is, while our clients are busy actually running the business, the last thing on their mind is tweeting about it, and that’s exactly where we come in.
Introduction
Effective social media marketing is about cutting through the clutter to find the real value in social media and using it as a work tool without getting lost in it. Like any marketing pursuit, strategy is crucial to success and there are a number of things to consider before diving in. Specifically, we need to find the most effective channels, the most effective messaging and most effective users that will enable our clients to improve their own business. This comes down to developing a strong and consistent management strategy that can be executed over a long period of time for sustainable results.
How it Works
After getting properly acquainted with your brand ideals, company goals, audience interests and industry standards, we’re able to develop customized content specifically catered to you and your target audience. With interesting content being one of the top reasons people choose to follow a brand, we consider what your audience would find compelling through a process of backwards engineering to understand the client-company relationship. The aim is to engage current and potential clients that will eventually bring more brand awareness, traffic and ultimately revenue for your business. Depending on your marketing goals and your target audience, we also consider the best platform for the job. Each platform has its own strengths, weaknesses and in some cases, demographic, so it stands to reason that each should be used to the best of its ability. Sometimes the best post for Instagram won’t have the same result on Twitter and vice versa. Typically most outgoing posts will extend over multiple platforms but we believe in quality over quantity so we take note of what kind of content works best where and use that knowledge to our (and your) advantage. Finally, we utilize social media for its original intended purpose: socializing. The idea is to draw up a new community of friends and followers all the while building your brand awareness. Which is a complicated way of saying that we initiate conversation, whether that’s engaging more with your audience or reaching out to the community to get to know your digital neighbors. Most importantly, we approach these interactions gently and respectfully, seeing it as a means of building a relationship as well as developing a positive brand image. Our application of social media comes from the headspace of quality over quantity.
There is a lot of cyber junk out there and if social media is used incorrectly to represent your brand, you’re doing actual harm. We take your goals into account, create a social media strategy that matches you with your target market and continually work to refine your social presence so that it truly becomes an extension of your company essence online.
Why It’s Effective
The success of social media marketing isn’t something that happens overnight, but as the saying goes: good things come to those who wait. Although you won’t see immediate results, success will come in the form of a consistent management system that will stand the test of time, achieve tangible results and make the whole wait seem worthwhile.
One of the biggest benefits social media marketing can offer you is brand recognition. Social media allows you to be in charge of how your company is perceived and with the right content and consistent effort you’ll be able to build a solid reputation that will in turn attract a loyal following.
Cultivating a following is the bread and butter of any social media marketing pursuit and having that community gains you instant and direct access to discovering more about the very people your business relies on. This is a prime opportunity to refine your marketing methods by communicating directly with your audience, finding out what they love, what they hate and most importantly what they value in your business; having the ability to converse with your audience is a two way street and believe us, the appreciation is mutual. Good content will only get you so far but if you’re there to interact, answer questions and actually serve your audience you will undoubtedly build a loyal fan base in the community.
The reality is social media marketing tends to be put on the backburner more often than not. Though many companies understand the benefits of having this marketing platform oftentimes they don’t fully realize how grand the ROI can be simply because they aren’t investing the right amount of time and effort to see any tangible results. Dedicating time and energy to social media marketing will not only make you stand out amongst the sea of competitors, it’ll also gain you an advantage over them by being ahead of the curve.
Last but not least on our list of big wins is the level of traffic that will subsequently increase to your site. Sharing your own web links encourages users to click through to your site which in turn provides an opportunity for you to invite them to take further action, whether that be joining your mailing list, purchasing your product, or reaching out to you directly to find out more about your services. Essentially social media marketing increases the potential of turning your audience into actual clients.
How to Implement
We’ve had time to master the art of implementing social media marketing, but we realize that while it’s second nature for us, some of our client’s don’t necessarily share the same sentiment. So out of the goodness of our hearts and for the love of our clients, we’re offering up a little insight into our process.
First thing’s first and that’s understanding your brand identity and style. Who are you? What makes you unique? What is your voice and how do you want to be portrayed? Using talonX as an example, we’re a motley crew of young, inspired, sometimes unconventional yet always original talent who have summed up our brand into four simple words: we design cool sh*t. Now obviously swearing on your homepage isn’t always the best route to take or the most appropriate for some, but it works for us and taking the time to understand your own brand message is the first step in figuring out what works for you.
Next you want to make some moves (finally!) and create your social accounts. Consider what each different platform can offer you and by extension your audience, for instance think about what kind of content you’ll be posting and which outlet can better your engagement rates. All of this again, is dependent on your marketing goals and your audience interests, which leads us into the next stage of setup.
After you’ve figured out who you are, now’s the time to figure out who your audience is. Chances are you already have some inkling as to who these people are, specifically in terms of age, gender or geographical location. Unfortunately we humans are complicated creatures and we want to be known by more than just our chromosomes and how many years we’ve graced this planet, so once you’ve gotten your basic demographics down it’s time to determine what interests them, what bothers them and what they want from you. Finding this out could be as simple as conducting a survey, reviewing industry publications or seeing what you can glean off your competitors. At the end of the day the goal is to interact with real people, not just their statistics.
Once you’ve been armed with the knowledge of who your target market is (specifically) and who you are (specifically) it’s time to go forth and develop your strategy. Your newfound understanding of your audience and yourself will help you to determine where to post in terms of platform, what to post and even when to post. Now that you have all your puzzle pieces flipped up and in order it’s just a matter of putting them together in the most effective way possible. Your strategy will undoubtedly involve a variety of factors not limited to interesting content, platform choice and communication with your audience as we stated above but also the visual aspect of it.
Obviously we’re somewhat biased when it comes to this, but all feelings aside, there is no denying the power of a good visual. Living as we do in the time of the Internet, people have evolved to become visual communicators and studies have shown that engagement in Twitter posts with visuals are 18% more likely to be clicked, 89% more likely to be favorited and 150% more likely to be retweeted than those without. Now there’s some food for thought.
Last on our guided implementation process is tracking your results and remember: analytics are your friend. Despite their reputation, analytics can be the most interesting piece of data you will come across in this grand adventure. This is your guide to how well your posts are doing in terms of clicks, shares, likes and even how many people saw it pop up on their feed. Facebook for example, offers specific insights to company pages where you can track the success of your posts and ultimately gain some insight yourself into what type of content your audience engages the most (or least) with.
In Conclusion, when it comes to creative problem solving we’re well versed in the art and effective use of marketing tools, like social media, that provide us with new ways of reaching target markets and increasing the business potential of our clients. Our social media marketing plans are specifically structured to meet the shifting needs of businesses both big and small with goals that range from simplistic to ambitious. We’re here to help you make the most out of your marketing methods so if the talk got too technical or you simply don’t have the time, give us a shout and we’ll hook you up with the best minds in the biz.
Pricing
Lite
Brand research and tone discovery
Audit of current social media channels
Targeted content and messaging
Customized updates for up to two social media accounts
Active up to three days a week
Three or more interactions created on a weekly basis
Public domain stock photography research and acquisition
Standard
Social media audit current/competitor channels
Social media marketing strategy development and implementation
Highly targeted content and messaging
Customized updates for up to three social media accounts
Active up to five days a week in real-time
Five or more interactions created on a weekly basis
Continuous trend research for a variety of platforms
Custom social media graphic creation or professional photography
Stock photography research and acquisition
Premium
Social media audit current/competitor channels
Industry best practice research
Continuous trend research for a variety of platforms
Social media marketing strategy development and implementation
Active follower acquisition, engagement and interaction
Highly targeted content and messaging
Customized updates for up to four social media accounts
Active up to six days a week in real-time
15 or more interactions created on a weekly basis
Custom social media graphics, outbound messaging and header / profile designs creation
Professional photography as needed
Stock photography research and acquisition
Analytics and detailed feedback on performance
$700/mo
$1,200/mo
$2,700/mo
*or email studio@talonx.com