How to be Savvy and Compete in the Social Media Market

For better or worse, social media rules the world in 2019. If you aren’t tapping into the social media population, you’re missing out on a huge portion of potential consumers. This is a guide with some tips on how to get your foot in the door and bust it open.

If you’re currently operating solely on one platform, I’d advise that you expand your online presence — in addition to any platform that your business is on now — to Twitter and Instagram, which are arguably the two most prominent social platforms when it comes to promotion. Those are the two sites that we’ll focus mostly on, but we’ll touch on Facebook and LinkedIn, too. 

How to be Savvy and Compete in the Social Media Market

Promoting tweets and posts is a surefire way to get engagement, although it comes with a cost. Your ads appear as ordinary tweets and posts, so they blend in with users’ feeds. On Twitter, you’re only charged based on engagement, so if someone scrolls right through, you don’t have to worry about money being wasted. Engagement is defined as when a user retweets, likes, or replies to your tweet. 

Costs vary, but tend to hover around $1.30 per engagement. Instagram does things a little differently. It tallies views rather than engagement, and charges roughly $6.70 per a thousand views. Facebook offers paid promotion, too, and for comparison, Facebook charges $7.19 per a thousand impressions. Regardless, if there is room in the budget, money spent on guaranteed engagement is money well-spent.

Hosting contests is generally a risk-free way of promoting engagement, too. It can be anything as simple as a tweet/post along the lines of a “retweet/share for a chance to win this” type deal. Relatively new to Twitter and Instagram are poll features, where you can survey your followers and get their input on anything you desire. Poll questions can be done just for kicks, or to gather legitimate feedback and information from your audience.

Thinking Outside the Social Media Market Box

Targeting your competitors’ following is a powerful play. This is a method that doesn’t seem to occur to everyone. On almost every major social platform, it only takes a click or two to see a list of all the profiles that a particular account is following or followed by. 

This can be incredibly valuable information, and can make it very easy to find your target market. After all, platforms like Twitter make it very easy to find consumers who are unhappy campers with a particular service — you merely have to find the tweets that say so. Apps like Hootsuite make it easy to create and organize multiple feeds, and can be a great tool in building a strong social media presence.

When it comes to Facebook, it’s important to post regularly, but not robotically. Tirelessly recycling the same information or even the same posts (which usually happens with people who have automated/scheduled posts set-up through a third-party app or system) does not drive traffic to your page — if anything, it drives users away. Don’t be afraid to show personality. 

Again, you don’t want to be a robot. Social media is social for a reason. You can stay professional while also having fun with it.

Getting Personal

Taking your followers behind the scenes is a great way to gain and maintain interest. This is not specific to just Facebook. If you show content on your social platforms that is exclusive and not seen anywhere else, of course users are more likely to regularly visit your page.

Interacting with and responding to what your followers have to say should be a priority — it’s the closest thing to customer service that social media has to offer. Odds are, you run a relatively small account, and it shouldn't take more than fifteen or twenty minutes each day to go through your “inbox” and answer tweets, posts and responses directed at you. It can mean a lot to a costumer, but perhaps more importantly, you avoid potentially rubbing someone the wrong way by not acknowledging their effort to reach out.

LinkedIn as a Social Media Market

I want to wrap up by offering a few notes on LinkedIn. If you’re looking for a candidate, you want options. The quickest way to limit the number of candidates you’ll hear from is by scaring applicants away in the “Job Description” section. Sure, make known the type of mold that you’re looking for in a candidate, but there’s no need to create an intimidating feel. 

Create a welcoming environment. You want to promote applications. By avoiding intimidation, more applications will filter through. Odds are that, as a result, a few of those candidates will not be what you’re looking for. That’s okay. LinkedIn is a great platform to get familiar with a potential candidate’s résumé. It’s not a platform designed to get to know a candidate on a personal level.

Like most other social networks, if you pay up on LinkedIn, you’ll reap the rewards. LinkedIn can hook you up with guaranteed connections and even place your postings in more prominent positions on the site if there’s room within your budget to exercise those options. 

LinkedIn is known as the place where professionals meet. Build your network of people within your industry, share information, and learn from their expertise as they will learn from yours. Their network will see your blog, newsletter or update once shared and you will have increased your reach exponentially. 

For help reaching your target audience through social media, web presence, and publicity, contact us and together we will design a path to your success. Visit us at spotlightpublicityonline.com