To Facebook or not to Facebook? At some point, all businesses are faced with this question, as social media becomes increasingly hard to ignore. Social media has become a tsunami of new technologies that are permeating the very fabric of our lives. With time, businesses have become aware of this powerful and cost-effective way of marketing. But social media, by definition is a form of media – not a strategy. As with any media that you wish to utilize for a successful campaign, it needs to be part of a larger marketing mix. Whatever channel you choose to use, you need to send the right message to the right target market, through the right media channel to achieve your goal.

So...should I be using social media?

The first thing you should ask yourself is where are your customers? If they are hanging out on social media, you can bet your competition are too. It only makes sense to establish your own presence on the platforms your target market are already frequenting, so you don’t lose business opportunities to competitors. More than 50 million businesses are on Facebook with about 10% of that number paying for Facebook ads.

With a bit of research, you can find out if your competitors are taking your piece of the pie on social media. To figure out where your audience is located, a good idea is to first figure out who your audience is. We like to call this a buyer persona. This is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer, and there can be multiple types of personas that fit with your business. When creating content, these are the people you have to keep in mind. They will be the ones that need to read, share and follow your content. If this is something you need to develop for your business, DMM has a handy downloadable worksheet for you to use to create your own marketing plan. 

In New Zealand, the major social media channels that are being frequented by users are:

Source: Statista

What does social media actually do for my business?

With social media we can make sure we reach the right audience and engage them on the platform that they are already using. This gives you the opportunity to win new customers, talk to your loyal customers and get the ones back that might have been won by your competition.

There are multiple social media platforms that all specialize in different sorts of communication, which give you many options to market your business. Images and videos are becoming increasingly important since they tend to get more user attention. This gives you the opportunity to capture your prospect’s attention and then lead them with a link to your preferred content on your website. This is great to build brand awareness, but also leads them to newsletter signups and promotions that you want them to see. It also builds a community around your brand. This is where brand ambassadors are born - the people who will likely share your content and recommend your brand to others.

One of the main benefits for a business is that social media does some of the work for you. When you create sharing opportunities for your clients, they take the content out of your hands and then extend your reach to whomever they are connected to on all the platforms you are engaging on. By creating quality, engaging content like blogs on your website that people want to share and having social sharing buttons on your site, there is even more chance of your content organically reaching more people. This compounds the social media effect so that the more your content is shared, the more followers you gain. That in turn extends your reach even further. Another benefit of social media is where your brand gets recommendations or reviews from individuals who mention you or tag your brand on social media, so that someone else learns about your company.

At the end of the day the goal is to get people to your website so they can buy your product or service. Increasing traffic to your website seems like an obvious win, but social media has a multitude of benefits that aren’t so obvious. The biggest one is that search engines prefer websites that have more links from outside sources. It is like a recommendation by someone that the search engine trusts to say that you are trustworthy and authoritative in your field. This increases the likelihood of your website ranking on the organic search results, and it also helps your Google Ads Quality Score increase. That brings down the cost of your Google Ads, saving you money every day. You now can use more money to run more ads and thus increase your incoming website traffic even further.

Together with the Search Engine Optimization efforts that you have already put in place, optimizing your social media with the same strategy will increase your chances of success exponentially.

To recap, social media:

• Makes you visible where your clients are
• Increases trust and brand awareness
• Builds brand loyalty
• Creates opportunities for your clients to share your content with their friends
• Increases the likelihood of recommendations to your business
• Creates feedback opportunities for you to engage your customers and learn what they want from your brand
• Creates links to your site from all over the web
• Boosts your SEO authority score, which brings down your ad-spend on Google Ads
• Gives you more opportunities to advertise your business
• Ultimately contributes to your revenue

Now that you know why, you want to know how

Dynamic Multi Media has a team of experts who can help you to get your social media presence to sparkle. We know what works and, to be quite honest, we love doing it for you! Get in touch with us today to get started on your social media strategy.