5 Tips to Help Your Brand Win at Social

Let’s cut the bullshit - to win at social nowadays you have to pay to play. And I mean that in almost every respect. From utilising the right influencers, to the right distribution methods all the way to the creation of great content, it all costs and Facebook along with other platforms want you to pay to reach your audience. In other words organic reach is dying but it is not completely dead. I have pulled together some tips to help you win at Social. 

Now integrating the right Social approach should be an essential for almost every business. Whether you are a B2C or a B2B there is always a need for a social presence. With over 40% of our daily consumption on the internet being spent on social channels, suggests there is a need to be prevalent within the social space.

So lets get started;

Number One - Deliver VALUE 

As mentioned people go on the Social Space to discover great content. There is so much out there - so many articles videos, images, memes trying to fight for your attention and with recent algorithm changes on the social sites - in particular Facebook - being able to synchronise content in the order they think is most valuable to you. It is now more than ever, “oh so difficult” to capture that elusive attention of your audience. 

It is fundamental to think of your end consumer. You need to give them more value than they give you. If it is a monetary transaction that you want (like most businesses) you need to give them a reason to buy into your brand, product or service. Think of providing value in the form of content. Start with what type of content will best resonate with your target audience, what form of content do they want to see - long form, short form, video, images, memes etc (This will also depend on the platform you deliver it on) and how do you encourage conversation? BUT this all starts with delivering value to your customer whether that is in the form of providing knowledge, humour, inspiration or something else. 

If you deliver daily content that keeps your audience entertained, informed or inspired then you will ensure that your brand stays at the forefront of their mind when it comes to purchasing time. To iterate one last point on adding value - a lot of your followers are not at the purchasing stage when you are posting content, but when they are at that stage, you want to ensure your business is in their head as the go to. If your brand has provided value in some form to your audience they will feel some what obliged to return that transaction by purchasing your product or using your service. 

Finally think from a customers perspective. What information do they seek from a business like yours? What content could add value to them? What form of content would be most easily digested by your audience? If you can figure this out then you can start applying a great content strategy that provides not only VALUE but also creates brand loyalty. 

2. Don’t be a jack of all trades and a master of none. 

Find the right social networks for your business. Now I am not saying that you cannot use a combination of LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and Facebook for your business but identify which one is the biggest asset and where the greatest opportunity lies for your business. For example if you are a brand that creates beautiful products, then Instagram and Pinterest are two highly visual networks on the social space. Therefore investing time and energy into Twitter may be of little value. So focus your time and energy where there is the greatest opportunity for you as a business.

You need to understand where your audience are situated, ask yourself these questions; What platforms are your audience using the most? How are they using social networks to discover brands? What type of content best resonates with them? And how do you as a business divert their attention away from all the other competition on the social space. 

You have to understand that people do not necessarily go on the social space to find brands or purchase specific products - they go on there to discover great content and to see what is happening in the world, in the lives of friends, family and also the people they are interested in. And that leads to our next point. 

3. Leverage the Use of Social Media Influencers

Something that gets thrown around a lot in the world of social media is the use of "Influencers," however utilising social media influencers is one of the most effective ways of increasing a brands presence and awareness on the social space if done right. Many brands have gifted top influencers and expected their product to fly off the shelves and sales have remained consistent.

The key things to look at when using influencers is understanding who the primary audience is, of that influencer. Does that audience align to your brand? More importantly does the influencer align to your brand? How engaged are the followers of that influencer? Do they have thousands of followers but little engagement - (If so they are probably fake followers and of little value). You need to identify influencers that align to your brand, one’s that are trustworthy have a highly engaged audience and that can provide a valuable relationship to your brand. 

It is not to say that using one influencer is more effective than using a number of micro influencers as well. Micro influencers can have a more engaged audience along with more loyal fans. These type of influencers are far more likely to become brand ambassadors as well. It can be difficult to establish who the right influencers are for your business but once you find them, it is key to make sure that the influencers create the right type of content, that is authentic to who they are so it does not look like a piece of advertising content. 

4. Post Consistently 

This is crucial for brands to do. When we say post regularly we mean make sure you stay active on the social space and post valuable content on a regular basis without spamming your followers with invaluable and worthless content. Many people unfollow brands that flood their feed with promotional posts but are unengaged with brands that do not post enough. 

Be consistent keeping your brand fresh in your customers minds without being overwhelming - we recommend a post or two a day - making sure the content aligns with your brand and provides value. There is a number of automation tools that can help with this for your brand or you could look to discuss outsourcing this to an agency. 

5. Win at Paid 

As mentioned earlier, most of the social channels want you to pay to play. Creating a post on your business page on Facebook will only reach on average 20% of your audience (If you are lucky). Facebook recently trialled a new layout for the platform where on the live home feed you would only see posts that had been promoted via paid spend. We are not certain if this is a feature that will be rolled out however we know that the shift has very much gone towards paying to reach the attention of your audience. 

One of the main things about shoppers visiting your store or company for the first time is that they are not always at purchasing stage the first time they visit - by implementing a Facebook pixel to your site you will be able to re target those shoppers with dynamic ads based on their journey on the site. This can be a really effective feature to convert potential shoppers into customers. A poorly executed retargeting campaign however can lead to wasted pounds and annoyed prospects. 

A visitor who left your store without even looking at your product page is no way near to purchasing as a prospect who has abandoned a cart. So your retargeting strategy should account for this and your ads should be tailored to nurture prospects at each stage of their journey. Your strategy will likely fall into 3 types of retargeting 

• Basic / Generic retargeting 
• Intermediate / Behavioural retargeting 
• Advanced / Sequential Retargeting 

If you are receiving limited site traffic it is perfectly fine to start with generic retargeting but as a substantial business driving huge volumes of traffic, sequential retargeting may be a much more impactful way to nurture prospects along the customer journey. Sequential retargeting in essence is when your visitors go through a sequence of ad experiences after they leave your website. Instead of seeing the same repetitive retargeting ad they will see a variety of ads as they move through the sequence. 

The three main reasons why retargeting sequences are so powerful

• They combat ad fatigue - encouraging more engagement with the ads
• They Nurture the prospects more
• They stand out more as prospects expect to see new and interesting content in their feed. 

If you are not sure how to set up Dynamic product ads for your brand then take a look at this post here; 

https://adespresso.com/blog/facebook-dynamic-product-ads/

Or alternatively drop a message to [email protected] and we can discuss one of our paid experts taking a look at running successful ad campaigns for your business. 

I hope you have found this useful and if you can take a few of these points away with you and integrate into your social strategy then we know you will see some great improvements.