how to do social media marketing

5 tips to build a solid online presence

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have gained massive popularity and it is important for a venture to be active on these platforms for an extensive influence

In the modern day, all businesses are going digital and are engaging in a race to build a strong online presence. The reason one should have online popularity is because it is easier to target your audience online and it serves a base for a huge outreach. With the growth of social media, having strong online presence has become a necessity. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have gained massive popularity and it is important for a venture to be active on these platforms for an extensive influence.

Here are some ways in which one can build a strong online presence:

1. Great content is the way to woo your TG

Attention span in the digital era has considerably reduced and you have very less time to actually grasp the attention of your audience, so, your article or video needs to be packed with entertaining yet informative content. Also, platforms like Twitter have only 140 characters so the content needs to be crisp and attention-grasping.

Great content packed with keywords and information also leads to better search engine results of your company.

2. Branding is the way to go

In an era, where your venture is capable of becoming a brand; you’d be stupid not to adopt branding. A combination of a logo of various colours, tagline, font, style, ads etc helps you brand your product/service. This ensures higher recall and better recognition of your brand.

Almost all e-commerce sites are branding themselves such as Myntra, Flipkart, Amazon, Shopclues, Romwe etc. This increases the value of the offering and also helps the customers associate themselves with the product or service being offered. Hence, to build a strong online presence, branding is crucial.

3. Track your analytics

One can use various SEO told such as Google analytics, Followerwonk, Google Panda, Iconosquare etc to measure the performances of your brand individually and in comparison with other brands in the same market. It gives you a fair idea of important metrics such as engagement, new users, users who have left popularity etc. These tools are mostly free but charge nominal fares for a premium version.

Also, tracking your analytics gives you a fair idea of what strategies are working and what tactics need to be worked upon. These analytics also give you a clear idea as to what time your audience is online so that you can engage them better.

4. Keep up with the dynamic trends

The digital world is dynamic and the trends keep changing and one needs to constantly evolve with them. You might want to put up a kick-ass article but you can’t be uploading only one in weeks; your target audience demands more than that. Videos on Vine and Vimeo are catching up steadily and all brands can definitely tap the video market. Also, not to fall behind, one should understand how hashtags work and not use them for the sake of using.

To be updated about the on-going trends, an entrepreneur needs to keep researching and monitoring the inclinations of the virtual world.

5. Engage your audience

It is not sufficient to just gain a huge base of followers, you need to constantly engage them and keep them interested in your venture. If this step is not implemented properly, users will switch to other products and brands. Social media is the best way to create engagement online. Through hilarious and informative posts, videos, dubsmashes, pictures, articles etc, one can easily captivate the audiences.

For instance, through their varied content, pages like Scoopwhoop and Storypick keep their audiences engrossed via Facebook.

You don’t have to be omnipresent in the digital world but make sure you deliver and keep the Target audiences interested and in the process, increase your growth.

8 beneficial social media marketing tools every company should use

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram etc have proved to be the best to promote products or services.

Social media marketing is an important form of marketing for all ventures today as the audiences on social media are growing and sharing content on the platforms is a good way to make people aware about products and services. Social media marketing allows a marketer to target his audience and keep them engaged for a long time. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram etc have proved to be the best to promote products or services.

Here are 8 social media tools a marketer could use:

1. PostPlanner

PostPlanner is an app built in Facebook which allows free flow of your strategy without hindrances. It offers a dashboard which allows you to manage and increase the value of your Facebook page or group. PostPlanner also gives you a list of status ideas, access to the most viral posts on Facebook and insights on trending content based on your industry.

2. Followerwonk

Through this brilliant tool, you can find analyse the growth of your followers on Twitter. Along with that, it gives you a fair idea of your follower demographics for more comprehensive understanding and lets you know what time they’re online at so that you can tweet accordingly. Also, if most of your followers are online at one time, you get an idea of when to engage them in a discussion with the use of this tool.

3. Inforgr.am

This tool allows to make simple yet very professional and great-looking charts or graphs of various infographics. The free version of this tool allows to you to choose from various designs and embed the infographics onto your website. To down the infographic, you need to use the paid version.

4. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a very handy and cool tool which all social media marketer need to know about and use. This tool gives you all the information about “most shared content and the key influencers” on social media. There’s a free and a paid version of this tool. The paid version allows you to export data and access domain reports.

5. Bit.ly

Bit.ly is a very important and handy social media tool which allows marketers to shorten URLs. They can take a long URL and shorten it into something remembrable and more feasible for platforms like Twitter which allow 140 characters. Also, Bit.ly allows you to see how many times the link has actually been clicked on and from which network platform.

6. Iconosquare

Iconosquare is a useful tool on instagram which helps the marketer to analyse the followers’ statistics. Through this tool, they can learn about the followers’ engagement as well as track lost and new followers on Instagram.

7. Tagboard

Hashtags are a huge phenomenon on social media currently. Tagboard is a hashtag-based search engine that lets you monitor mentions and related content on all platforms. If you have a custom hashtag for your venture, all you need to do is register it on Tagboard and add a description. When anyone uses Tagboard to search your hashtag, your description and image will pop up immediately.

8. BulkBuffer

BulkBuffer is a brilliant tool one needs to know to use if they’re uploading content in bulk on the platforms as it allows you to upload a huge load of content without any hassle. For weekly schedules or videos to be uploaded with minimal ease, BulkBuffer is the way to go.

9. PosterMyWall

PosterMyWall is a simple, end-to-end solution for social media marketers that helps them promote their brand effortlessly, efficiently and affordably by creating eye-catching social media graphics using its free online editor in minutes. Not just that, you can repurpose your social media graphics by resizing each design into as many different sizes as needed in a single click with the free Resize button. Once all your content is ready, you can directly publish your designs to your Facebook or Twitter pages without even leaving the platform, or even better, upgrade to the Premium plan and schedule all your posts at once.

Image credit: sellorelse.ogilvy.com

6 ways in which social media can benefit startups

Even though traditional methods might be helping to you garner attention, social media comes with other benefits as well.

As a start up, it’s easiest to reach out to your target market through a combination of social media sites. Even though traditional methods might be helping to you garner attention, social media comes with other benefits as well.

Here are few reasons you should be using social media as a start-up success tool:

1. Gaining visibility

We live in the times where social media has evolved greatly and gaining visibility through social media is one of the most important objectives every start-up should have. With a thoroughly constructed social media strategy spread across all important social media platforms, gaining visibility and spreading goodwill amongst different sets of people is a piece of cake.

2. Social Media Marketing is the new marketing

With traditional methods of marketing slowly going out of trend and social media marketing catching up, every start-up should instantly know which way they want to go. Social media platforms such as Facebook thrive on ads which are designed to attract a large number of people. You can check out the different facebook interests list where you can decide the group you want to target. What is unique about such methods are that you can make sure that the designed message reaches only your target group which you can classify in terms of age, gender, location, likes/dislikes etc. Hence, for a more targeted marketing, social media is the option every start-up should look to tap.

3. Saving money on customer service

Building a website or a Facebook/Twitter page to handle complaints and issues of the customers is a cost-effective method as your social media manager can double up as your customer service representative. Also, you ability to address and respond to complaints makes or breaks your start-up’s initial reputation.

For example, companies like HDFC have a different Twitter page only to address complaints.
Dominoes has also been known to respond to customer complaints very well via social media.

4. Lead generation

The ability to grow according to the market you want to cater to helps you in generating leads. To be able to take control conversations which ultimately lead to lead generation, a start-up should educate and provide solutions to the problems people are facing.

For instance, before Xiaomi launched its first phone in 2011, they created a forum called MIUI OS and turned their first few buyers into loyal advocates by calling them “MI fans” on the portal. The portal soon became lively with all the discussions and feedback from MI fans which garnered attention from non-users as well. As a result, Xiaomi sells more than Apple in China currently.

5. Helps you build an online community of brand ambassadors

Every successful market requires human connect and you can achieve this by appointing a band of social media influencers. Calling them brand ambassadors will make them happy and in return, they will provide your start-up with much required exposure on social media forums helping it build into a big brand.

For instance, Zomato hires campus ambassadors from colleges who promote Zomato through various social media sites. This in turn provides Zomato with a great reputation through influential platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

6. Gives you a chance to experiment

While it’s always easier to go by the tried and tested conventional methods, don’t be afraid to experiment with social media. Using the same techniques will soon seem monotonous to your followers. Instead, think out of the box and go for crazy ideas like making a Vine or a snazzy snap story to catch attention quicker and gain attention for a longer period.

Image credit: eetme.de