Use Social Media Marketing Correctly This Is How Customers Become Fans

Social media has been part of the marketing for companies for several years. Depending on the business model and target group, every company should be active on suitable social networks and interact with potential customers.

Here you can find out which social media you should use for your company and which strategy you use to make it visible.

What Is Social Media?

The term social media came up in connection with the term web 2.0: instead of allowing communication to take place in one direction only, users can create and share content themselves on social media platforms. One speaks of user-generated content.

Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Co. made social media a mass phenomenon and opened up new communication channels for companies beyond classic PR. User’s network with each other or with media and companies, so that many-to-many communication arises.

We would like to give you a small first overview of the various possibilities of social media marketing.

Turn Users into Real Fans with Social Media Marketing

Around 90 percent internet users in USA actively use social networks. Most of these people consider it useful and useful to receive recommendations and tips from their own environment. There are groups and forums on the platforms for almost every topic. Depending on their size, some of them are considered institutions for forming opinions about services and products.

Therefore, companies should use social networks to interact with so-called users. Only with active social media marketing is it possible to observe how consumers view their own offer and is constantly working on a positive reputation – online public relations.

In addition to the advertising options, the further development of our own offering through a constructive feedback culture on the Internet is also an option. Especially for start-ups, this is an efficient and cost-effective way to increase the level of awareness of the start-up and the offers. However, this will only succeed if a credible and trustworthy channel is created in social media that does not communicate in one direction – or worse – only plays advertising.

Social Media Marketing: Areas of Application

Companies can influence the public perception of the company on social media. Social media marketing can be used for customer service and market research. This form of marketing is also suitable for the areas of HR / HR and Research & Development. In addition, it can even be used for internal company communication.

The tools include the social networks and video platforms already discussed. The application areas also include corporate blogs, micro-blog platforms (Twitter), location-based services (Foursquare) and so-called wikis (web blogs with no access restrictions).

Web blogs, online magazines, webinars, video tutorials and podcasts increase the interaction between the company and potential customers. The activities in social media marketing also improve the placement in the popular search engines.

What You Should Pay Attention To In Social Media Marketing

• Creating a strategy: what do you want to achieve on social media?
• Define goals (SMART) and target group: who do you want to reach?
• Choose platforms consciously: where does your target group prefer to be?
• Create content with added value: avoid advertising
• Don’t get bored: playful elements like competitions bring more feedback
• Plan budget: even small budgets can help to significantly increase the reach and shares of your contributions
• Keeping an eye on the competition: Learn from your competition!
• Evaluate results: use the network analysis tools
• Be prepared for any crises or criticism: when you should react
• Define internal responsibilities: don’t leave your fans alone
• Establish guidelines for consistent communication: the company should speak with one voice.

In social media marketing, quality should always come before quantity. This is the only way to ensure that the feedback from your fan community is also constructive. Because positive reviews from the fan community are known to be the best advertising, while criticism – whether justified or unjustified – can get around quickly and cause a real crisis.

Your communication in social media must therefore be characterized by a high willingness to engage in dialogue on your part. Always respond kindly and openly to feedback, especially negative comments. Admit mistakes and stay factual with unfair allegations. And: refrain from buying “fake fans” or “fake comments”. Because here the old saying applies: “Honestly lasts the longest”. Internet users quickly notice when something is fake and bought fans have no value, quite the contrary: they can damage your reputation.

Analysis and Success Measurement in Social Media Marketing

There is a valid risk for companies in the network losing control and posting past their target group. The negative effect: your posts are not shown in the feed and hardly get any organic visibility. It is not easy to be visible in the news feed of the target groups. It is therefore important to constantly monitor the performance of posts and to derive strategies. The providers themselves offer the necessary tools for this. Contributions that are particularly well received should be advertised in the target group with a small budget.

Success Factor: Emotion

Anyone who only posts factual information or flat advertising on social media will not be successful. Social media is mainly used on mobile devices and on the side. This means that the user’s attention span is very small and emotions often trigger attention.

Social media posts should therefore not overwhelm users, be very simple, short and address the message as emotionally as possible.

The following strategies rely on emotion and are therefore particularly successful on social media channels:

• provocation
• We feel
• Do something good
• anxiety
• Grief
• malicious joy
• Gameification
• astonish

Check whether your post covers one of these aspects and then analyze which type of post is particularly well received on your channel.

Conclusion: Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing as part of social media marketing is actually not a reinvention. But in times when the social media channels can hardly be imagined, there are completely new opportunities to use “influencers” of your own target group for its advertising purposes – especially for founders who – like – do not place on a well-known Saturday evening Can finance TV show. For founders, influencer marketing can not only save costs, but also save time. Because the content is created by the influencer (for example, in comparison to content marketing). In addition, the scatter loss in influencer marketing is extremely low. Find out everything about influencer marketing here and be inspired by examples.