We understand what makes you tick as an organization, and we review your website and all your other marketing materials and sales collateral (such as corporate presentations, brochures, leaflets, and corporate videos). This will quickly inform us about the key features and benefits of your products and services. If you can share your business plan and sales forecasts with us, even better.
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We will also need to get a good feel for your target market in terms of customer segments and customer personas, so we can identify the social platforms they are using and the messages that are likely to resonate well with them. We will review competitors’ activities too, as this can be an efficient way to find out what you should or should not be doing.
"Thanks to your dedicated brand planner, our team ensures you are involved throughout the creation of your social media calendar – as much or as little as you wish."
It’s a good idea not to be too pushy.
Maybe one post in five could be a goal-focused call to action. Whilst you want instant sales, your followers want a relationship to be developed first. Trust and respect are the names of the game when it comes to a good social media strategy.
So, which social media platform are best for your brand?
Well, that depends on the type of business you are, the goals you want to achieve, and the profile of your customers. Once we know these factors, we can determine which platforms are right for your business. There are a lot of social channels to consider – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, and SlideShare to name but a few of the most popular ones.
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Some are a better fit for B2C channels, and others are better suited for the B2B marketplace. It’s a good idea not to spread yourself too thinly by creating too many social channels at the same time, especially if you don’t have adequate resources to deliver strategies for them all.
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When it comes to goal setting, the world is your oyster. Are you looking for extra sales, or for quality leads to fill your sales pipeline? Is your primary purpose to drive high-quality traffic to your website or to build a social community? Are you sharing content to improve SEO performance or to build long-term brand awareness?
Gaining good quality followers can be achieved via paid and organic means. It goes without saying that we can create and deliver strategies to grow follower numbers on all your social channels using both of these options. A mix of both approaches tends to deliver the best results. Paid activities to get you up and running with a credible follower volume, and organic to build steadily over a period f of time.
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You will also need to create regular content to make sure your social media channels look as if they are alive. There’s nothing worse than a social feed that hasn’t been updated in months. We can create and post content on your behalf if you don’t have the resource to do so internally, and our studio is always on hand to deliver creative assets as and when required.
Social media advertising is a another option to consider.
This is a great way to target people matching your audience profile – all you need to do is to select the demographic and psychographic profiles you are looking for and you’re ready to go. Our creative team will create audience-specific ads, and our digital advertising experts will set up, run, test and optimise campaign performance.
Social media promotions are a great way to generate noise around your brand.
Unlike social media advertising that is heavy on budget and light on time, the reverse is true for promotions, so you need to make sure you have the people in place to run them properly.
Social media is a potential minefield when it comes to corporate reputation. Get it wrong and you could end up with some nasty PR. Deal with criticism badly, and a small problem can quickly escalate out of control.
Whoever said that there was no such thing as bad publicity was wrong – it can cause irreversible damage to a brand. It’s a good idea to put a social media policy in place to guide those who post on your behalf. It is almost always possible to turn a negative into a positive with the right approach.
Alongside content marketing, social media marketing is also a core element in the delivery of a successful search engine optimization strategy. Therefore, if you wish to be found organically on Google for certain keywords, your SEO approach will benefit from having a social media presence. It also provides you with a great opportunity to share content from your website – and, if you do it well, you can really amplify the benefits on social media.
Hashtags allow social media channels to group your posts by subject matter and can be of significant benefit to your SEO activities too.
The Essence
Social media marketing can be a highly effective way to improve brand awareness, generate leads and increase sales – authenticity is probably the most important thing to bear in mind. If your corporate behaviour is incongruent with your brand strategy, beware the wrath of your followers.