Social media is not one-way communication.
More and more social media accounts are being supplemented with evaluation tools. Facebook is currently introducing this across the board, and the experience reports are also becoming more and more critical and present on Google. If your company, your products or services are rated positively, this has a positive influence on the perception of your company and, in the best case, promotes sales. Similar to word of mouth, there is a viral multiplication effect; your brand is promoted without you spending any money. But the same effect can also occur if you are rated negatively. Here you must react immediately and take the criticism seriously.
However, anyone afraid of criticism should consider that this also exists outside of the social media world – with the difference that here you have the chance to experience the complaint. In this way, you can turn things around for the better. Of course, you must monitor the processes on social media platforms and react quickly.
Marketing goals in social media marketing
• Increasing awareness
• Improving the image of the company or brand
• Improving search engine results
• Increasing the number of visitors to the website
• Gaining insights for product development
• Customer acquisition
• Increase in sales
Requirements for social media marketing
• Knowledge of the target group
• Willingness to offer readers added value
• Openness to new tools/developments/opportunities
• Flexibility to adapt to changes
• Time to enter into dialogue with the target group
• Freedom to try new things
• Courage to make mistakes
• Discipline to avoid getting bogged down
• Willingness to invest in social media in the long term
Activities in Existing Services
There are countless ways to do social media marketing. There are two different approaches: setting up your platforms such as corporate blogs or communities or using existing services.
Here are the most important platforms:
LinkedIn and Xing
A simple way to acquire new business contacts is to search LinkedIn and Xing. In return, companies whose employees enter their own (service) performance are found by potential customers. By joining interesting groups, you can find discussion partners, receive invitations to group events and, in turn, make new business contacts.
LinkedIn is ahead (1.1 million users vs. 0.5 million users on Xing). This is mainly because Xing has annoyed users with high fees and unfriendly business practices.
Companies can use Twitter to announce innovations, find employees, or communicate with customers. Twitter is also a suitable tool for internal corporate communication. For this purpose, different accounts are set up for various topics. To increase recognition value and credibility, it makes sense to describe the content briefly.
Nearly half a billion users are logged into Facebook, each with an average of 130 friends. If you manage to bind a user to yourself, every activity appears in the news reports of an average of 130 other users. But numbers alone are not enough in this area. The media data known from banner advertising have little influence on the success of a campaign. Lasting engagement, open dialogue, engaging the target group, mass dynamics, viral spread, direct feedback, and transparency are keywords that describe the core of social media marketing.
Photo portal Flickr, Pinterest, etc.
Every user can post photo albums and make them either public or only visible to a specific user group. Public photos can be provided with tags, i.e., keywords that describe the image, such as architecture, Zurich, business, etc. Interesting for online shops (e.g., shoe shops).
Video platforms YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
YouTube has a similar structure to Flickr, but users post videos online here. These can be rated and commented on. Each user can create their channel – comparable to a profile – and present their videos there. Tags are also used here to find the videos via the search function.
Read our detailed blog article about Instagram: Why, why, why?
Social bookmarking site Delicious
Social bookmarks allow users to find better-filtered pages and information than through traditional Google searches. If company pages or blogs are often listed on social bookmarking sites, it increases the chance of being found on the internet by potential customers.
What Is Tinnitus?
It is an integrated digital marketing agency that offers multiple services to help you grow your business. These are the main aspects on which they divide their expertise:
- Goals & Strategy
- Audience & Targeting
- Messages & Creativity
- Measure, test, and learn
- Acceleration and Optimization
However, social media marketing only focuses on paid advertising and creative aspects when it comes to social media marketing. This means they can help you run effective social media advertising campaigns. They also offer “Messaging & Creative” services, including content for social media.
Overall, it’s a good option if you’re looking for a niche social media advertising agency. However, if you are looking for someone to manage your social media, this might not be the best option for you.