Do you want to be where the people are? Then you’d better get on social media before you decide your next marketing campaign!
Adults spend 95 minutes a day on social media platforms. We learn about new brands on it, get our news from social media, and engage with other users. Other users are seen as more trustworthy than celebrities, making micro-influencers an important asset. These and other statistics provide a compelling argument about the advantages of social media for marketers.
Read on for more information on why social media is the future of marketing.
1. Spread the Message About Your Brand
One of the main benefits of social media is that you can talk about your brand without needing to invest money in an ad campaign. When you post consistently, you bolster your online presence and can keep your company top of mind for the minor investment of an hour (or more) of your time daily.
If you take advantage of social media management tools, you can do more in less time by posting across multiple platforms.
2. Get to Know Your Customers
Any marketer worth their salt knows to do research on their customers, but with social media, it’s even easier than before. You can ask about your customers’ thoughts on a new product or feature, and get their feedback right away. Done properly, social media can be a customer service dream come true: allowing you to answer questions and handle complaints before they result in lost customers.
You can also:
Conduct polls about client preferences
Track hashtags that are relevant to your industry
Follow posts about your company/products
3. Make a Splash with Your Target Audience
Social media marketing offers a way to connect with your target audience on another level. You can create targeted ads for people who have expressed interest in the products or services you offer, even before they know you exist. Here’s how it works: if you’re a graphic designer, you can create ads targeted to users who have searched for a graphic designer or logo design.
By targeting ads to the right people, you increase the likelihood that you’ll get a return on your investment.
4. Show Off Your Level of Expertise
You’re a leader in your industry – and social media gives you the chance to prove it. By publishing content about industry trends, you build brand credibility with potential clients as well as other businesses. You can also use SEO to post content that will boost your company’s ranking, giving you even more opportunities for networking and conversions!
5. Quickly See What Works and What Doesn’t
Social media is like a wave, and the best brands make a habit of riding each wave while learning important information about their target audience. By staying on top of the latest trends, you increase the likelihood that one of your posts will go viral, bringing your message in front of lots of new eyes.
Emulating popular trends, creating a “meme of the day,” or talking about the latest news are great ways to get your name out there – just make sure that you don’t stray too far from your brand, or you run the risk of alienating your followers.
6. Get More Done with the Help of Technology
There’s no shortage of tools that you can use to enhance your marketing superpowers. With a CMS, you can post across channels – and there are some platforms that will allow you to manage multiple assets, including video, text, images, and code.
In the future, marketers will have even more social media tools to connect with their customers.
The Future of Social Media
Now that we’ve covered why social media is the future, let’s talk a bit about the future of social media itself. Word-of-mouth has always been a powerful tool for marketers, but social media has become a way to communicate via “digital word of mouth.”
Social media has already become an “omni-social” phenomenon. Proof of this trend is the influence of social media on our current culture. Influencers and micro-influencers are also symptoms of the trend toward social media.
As cited above, integrated customer care will become an important part of social media in the future. Prompt, compassionate, and personalized responses from brands will be rewarded with more customer loyalty. Social media managers will become important team members – doing more than leaving posts, but creating a positive brand image by interacting with customers.
Social media will take a larger role as a political tool in the future. For better or worse, politicians see the advantages of sharing their ideas online. Many politicians have already made an impact on social media, including Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. One of the challenges that we have yet to overcome is the challenge of combating fake news/echo chambers without censoring free speech.
Looking even further into the future, social media will likely become more of a sensory experience. From AR and VR experiences to haptic technology that uses the sense of touch by using vibration or motion, to audio options, social media will likely become a more holistic experience, involving as many senses as technology will allow.
Elevate Your Social Media with APS Marketing
If you’ve tried to post across multiple social media platforms to stay top of mind for your customers, you know how exhausting it can be. Whether you’re the head of a marketing team or the founder of an industry unrelated to marketing, finding a knowledgeable team to do the job for you is a huge relief.
At APS, we live and breathe marketing. We’re happy to help with all things social media: whether you need help setting up and writing paid ad campaigns, or with social media management. Our pricing is reasonable, and social media is included in our base package, so contact us today for help with social media!
