Making Social Media Work for You - Part 1
Social media is undoubtedly a cost effective way to market your products and services and an easy way to connect with your customers. Many people now consider social media channels to be a way to obtain customer service and help with product related problems and they expect a quick response. This means that using social media to market your business and create customer relationships entails making a commitment to checking your page(s), to responding to queries and messages and to posting content your target market can engage with.
If you're going to make this kind of time commitment (or engage the services of an agency to run your social media activities for you then it needs to be a beneficial relationship; choosing the right channel is the first step in leveraging social media to grow your business. Look at the last 20 or so customers you had for a clue as to the demographics of your customers and then choose the social media platform(s) that match these demographics best. You might already have solid knowledge of your target markets but if not, use your recent sales information to work out who exactly you need to appeal to.
There are lots of statistics out there about internet and social media use so it's easy to find current statistics on the use of each platform and what kind of people are most active on each one. It is worth noting though, that UK social media use is at 66% of the population, far above the global 45%, according to a report by Cybercrew. This means that for UK based businesses social media is definitely worth investment at some level.
The average UK social media user spends most of their time on either Facebook (1 year, 7 months in a lifetime) or Youtube (1 year, 10 months in a lifetime) and we know that video is the best performing content medium on social platforms. This tells us that putting time into video content is worthwhile for your social channel. We've written about how you can easily get started with video content in the past, so check out our blog archives for more information about how best to use this format.
The majority of UK social media users are active on their phones above any other device (39 million out of a total 48 million) and this indicates that people are consuming content on the go but also at home. Double-screening, where someone watches content on TV while also using a device to browse the net is easiest when using a phone or tablet than a laptop so consider that your customers will be browsing while active during the day, and while relaxing at night.
In the modern world where the line between work and home lives can be blurred it's quite normal for people to be receptive to work-related content while they are at home and this includes on social media. The old rules, where posting business to business content was most effective during the working day, can be torn up and replaced with a more fluid posting schedule. It is worth knowing that different types of content work on different days of the week with in-depth content working well mid-week, but lighter content, or problem-solving content working at the end of the week when we're all thinking about the weekend.
Join us for part 2 where we look at the practical side of making social media work for you.
