Here’s how to use social media marketing in Galway:
- Focus on the right platform
- Look at your performance
- Look at your competitor’s performance
- target your audience
- Post the right content at the right time
- Interact with your followers
When it comes to social media reach, Facebook is the first platform that springs to mind. Surprisingly enough its also the first platform to be cited when talking about the decline of organic reach on social media.
Small businesses can not always be justified to pay for marketing on social media, so organic, unpaid marketing is an alternative, but how can it increase your post reach in your marketing plan?
Focus on the right platform
Most businesses think that because they have free access to social media platforms such as, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Instagram, they have to be on them all. Not true, you could be spreading your business too thinly. So which plat form should you be on?
Where and who is your target audience? Why not ask them. Set up an email campaign and have a survey. You can be direct and call your existing customers and engage in a casual conversation to have a catch up and ask them which social platforms they use for their business and personal use.
Your customers demographics are useful when deciding what platforms would be most effective. For example in order to define your target audience you should consider:
- Location
- Age
- Interests
- Gender
- Languages
- Education Level
- Relationship Status
- Political Views
- Whether or not they are connected to your page
Having determined the information that is relevant to your industry, you will be able to choose the most suitable organic platform to boost your reach.
Analyze your Performance
Once you have chosen your platform/s it makes sense to see how they are performing, if they are not giving a satisfactory reach then certain criteria should be in place to ensure a good reach rate:
- Set your social media goals clearly including your objectives which is the foundation for any successful social media campaign. This would include increasing your Brand awareness and targeting new customers.
- Define your target audience. How many of your customers use social media and what platforms do they use
- SWOT analysis is an indicator to highlight your businesses strengths and weaknesses
- Strengths
- Weakness
- Opportunities
- Threats
- Analyze your competitors
- Defining your companies resources will help you estimate how long you can afford to spend on social media each day, and the key people you can put in charge of managing your accounts to achieve maximum reach.
- Carrying out a social media audit will help assess how well your platforms are performing
- Your website is the base of your business so consistently reviewing it to see whether your social media is driving traffic to your site. Are your landing pages performing. This will improve the performance of your social media and ultimately your reach rate will increase.
How competitors performance can help
Identifying your customers and their social media habits will help with your businesses competitive strategy.
Listing your competitors and researching their presence on social media will tell you what platforms they use and how they are using them. What type of postings are they making and are they relevant to your business. What level of engagement are they achieving with their audience through their postings.
Check your competitors web site, what social media buttons are they displaying and where on the site are they placed, are they prominent.
Having researched your competitors, are you ahead of the game.you need to be to achieve a higher reach rate.
Target your Audience
If you spend loads of money on your campaign with all the bells and whistles, but if you aren’t hitting your target audience, your money will be wasted. If you concentrate on specific areas related to your business you are more likely to engage with your target market. Here are some ways you can categorise your audience on social media.
There are eight options on Facebook you can use:
- Gender
- Relationship
- Status
- Education level
- Age
- Location
- Language
- Interests
- Post end date
Once you have established the demographics of your audience you can choose where to position your business on social media. This demographic will vary across platform to platform and changing the settings of your posts to target your audience will increase your organic reach.
Post content at the right time
You may think posting when its really busy will get you noticed but in reality you are joining a hoard of other posters with the same idea. Posting in quieter times will increase your chances of a greater reach.
- Facebook – (Thursdays/Fridays) between 1pm and 3pm
- Twitter – (weekdays) between 12pm and 6pm
- LinkedIn – (Tuesday – Thursday) between 7am/8am and 5pm/6pm
When it comes to posting , knowing what to post can be difficult, however using tools like Facebook Insights will track your posts and see which ones are the best performers. Below is an illustration of an average organic reach.
Engage with your customers
Without your engagement with your customers you cannot build a relationship and trust, and cannot gain organic traffic on social media.
When posting make sure your subject matter relates to your business and industry.
By responding to questions shows your commitment, especially if they relate to complaints. Be positive and not confrontational, this will show you are human.
One of the keys to a long successful business is consistent level of customer service. You invested time and money winning customers, don’t loose them by ignoring them.
Lastly, be active and post regularly on social media. Engage with your audience, be their friend and see your organic reach skyrocket.
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