Social media is a lot of fun. Articles, Videos, GIFS, Memes, Skits, Goofs and Gaffs. Just take this GIF of Greta Thunberg giving President Trump the death stare. Hilarious.
But from a marketing perspective, social media can be a dark and terrifying jungle – filled with endless dead space and pitfall monsters. Or maybe that’s an exaggeration. But the following, we argue, is true:
- It’s hard to manage consistent content on all popular social media sites (especially if you don’t have a social media expert on your payroll)
- It’s hard to measure ROI from social media marketing. According to Smart insights report, only 48% of marketers claimed to have seen a return of investment when using social media as a marketing platform. This could be attributed to a lack of analytics tools or simply not using their social posts in the right way.
- Whatever you post has to be according to that specific site’s rules and regulations. For example: (1) You have to use their video player and built-in browser. (2) Sometimes you can’t link to external websites without having a specific number of followers (or at all). (3) Different sites support different file formats and sizes. The list goes on.
So how should you be using your social media channels?
1. Use videos to lure people in
This isn’t really news anymore. 87% of marketers use video content (or at least they did in 2018 – let’s assume the number is even greater today.) ONE THIRD of all online activity is spent watching videos. Videos on social media generates 12 times more shares than text and images combined. People love videos. It is now our preferred way to consume information.
This means that people are way more inclined to stop and watch your content if it’s in the form of a video. And if they’re stopping their browsing to watch your content, that means they’re much more likely to buy what you’re selling.
What may be news to you is: you should be making videos in all areas. External, internal, for recruitment purposes, for company educational purposes, for investors, for product showcases, for client use cases, and so on. But let’s talk more about that some other time.
2. Save time by using one platform where you can post the same content to several social media sites at once
Like we mentioned previously, it can be really hard to manage several social media channels at once. Especially if you’re not a huge company with a “social media marketing division”. Look into a platform that allows you to store all your video content in one place – and from where you can share the same content to all channels at once. It’ll save you a lot of time and effort; time that you could be spending on making more content.
Qbrick Video Platform
3. Direct viewers to a platform that you control.
Don’t simply post an image or video on Facebook and leave it at that – use that post to link prospective clients to your own website. There you can control what content you want them to see, and how.
For example: you can have interactive videos (thanks to a player like this) , showing your core message in a visual way, and allowing your viewers to interact with the content by clicking on the subjects they’re interested in – and perhaps contacting you with a form embedded in the video. That’s the kind of content that you can’t use on social media platforms.
Your website is your domain (quite literally), which means you have more options to customize how you introduce your brand to your clients, and you have a much bigger chance of getting them to contact you for further business.
Interact with this video! (SWE audio)
Let’s all agree that social media marketing is important. It helps increase brand recognition (since it’s viewed on a platform with a wide user base), it allows you to reach different target audiences quickly, everyone is there (including your competition) and it’s very cost effective if you do it right. Use it all day, everyday. Just remember to use it in a way that boosts your company in the way that you want it to.
Basically: Don’t ask what you can do for your social media channels. Ask what your social media channels can do for YOU.