Why Social Media is Essential in Supporting Your Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is all about building awareness and promoting your brand through digital platforms, and what better online channel is there than social media to get your message out there?

When online, 25% of people’s time is spent on social media, so as long as you use it wisely you will be able to build on the relationship you have with your followers and fans, converting them into loyal customers.

Check out how you can use Smart Goals to identify how best to use each platform for supporting your digital and traditional marketing efforts.

Advertising

Social media can be an excellent tool to help spread your message faster and further than traditional marketing alone. Just remember, if you are using both, do make sure that your messaging is aligned and that there is a clear tone of voice across all branded messages. Although social media can be a little more informal, it is still important to convey the same brand identity that you would show in all your other forms of advertising.

Including a hashtag in your advertising can also help to spread your brand’s message to people you might not have reached otherwise. By using a branded hashtag you will be able to monitor the people talking about your brand easily, as well as create brand advocates whose influence can also be used to appeal to potential new customers.

Website

By sharing your website’s content, you can help to boost your website’s traffic. There is also a link between social signals and SEO, even if there’s no evidence of a direct positive impact on your search rankings from social media marketing. After all, Google’s Matt Cutts said back in 2014 that social signals were not a ranking signal.

However, by following some social media strategy best practices, you could start to see some improvement to your website’s search rankings. Including keywords in your posts, tweets and blogs will also help your target market find you when they are searching for products and services related to what you do.

You can also use the information collected on your website’s visitors to retarget them at a later date through social media advertising. Most social media advertising platforms will allow you to add a tracking pixel that can be placed on your website to help track any conversions made through a particular campaign. That way, you will be able to promote your website on social media platforms to people who have already visited your site in the past to keep you in the forefront of their mind until they are ready to purchase or make an enquiry.

Customer Service

As more and more people use social media to vent their frustrations, it is always worth using your social media accounts to answer any questions and deal with any issues that may come up involving your service or product.

By responding to your customers in a friendly and timely manner, not only will you please the person who you helped, but you will also demonstrate to anyone else who sees it how well you can handle customer feedback and queries.

Market Research

Social media platforms can also be a fountain of knowledge for market researchers. Not sure how your current market sees you? You can use social listening to see exactly what they are saying about you. You can also gain valuable insights into what is important to your followers, or who you would like to follow you, by researching what topics they are interested in, what other accounts they follow and demographic information to help you create content that is relevant and interesting to your ideal buyers.

As you can see, social media can be a very powerful tool when it comes to supporting your brand’s digital marketing efforts, but before you begin, consider which platforms your target audience spend their time on so you can focus on the ones that will provide the best return on investment.

Once you know where you want to be, make sure you have a good understanding of what works on your chosen channels and use the right tone of voice to suit the social media environment. Remember, you are speaking to people on a platform they use for socialising with friends and family so steer clear of anything that would come across too salesy by keeping your content informative and useful to your audience.