Having cemented its position in the digital mix in recent years, social media offers a fantastic channel through which customers can find and interact with your business online.
Maximising user engagement levels
Effective social media marketing involves more than just sending out a few promotional tweets and hoping for the best, though. Our social consultants know that combining comprehensive competitor research with a proactive, creative approach towards content development and distribution leads to higher engagement levels.
Monitoring the social landscape and reacting quickly to developments within your organisation and in the wider world also ensures your brand is represented as current, contemporary and receptive to change – three traits that are highly valued by those who are looking to do business with you.
The value of social media marketing
Like any form of marketing, however, just having a presence is not enough. It is all about engaging, relevant content, and when it comes to social media, there is an increasing trend towards video advertising. The simple truth is that users are more inclined to watch a video than to read a text post, and your online social media presence can be massively enhanced by visually appealing posts that users will want to watch and share with their friends.
Social media is, perhaps, changing even more rapidly than other online technologies, with new platforms and apps appearing almost daily. We can ensure your content is optimised to keep pace with these changes for the maximum reach and ease of access to potential customers. Our social media management services offer a cost-efficient way to get your brand seen by the people that matter.
The value of social media marketing lies in getting people to talk about and interact with your organisation, so one of the first things you need to do when approaching your social media marketing plan is decide which social media platforms will connect you most effectively with your target audience.
Facebook and Twitter are two of the most popular sites, but there are plenty more networks catering for niche demographics.
Pinterest, for example, is a site driven by visuals that’s a real magnet for creative types; LinkedIn, on the other hand, has been designed to cater for professional users looking to connect with peers and colleagues.
If you want to invest in social marketing further, the concept can be expanded by incorporating paid social advertising into your strategy.
Really pleased with the increase of new enquiries and instructions so far this year. Lets keep it going!
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Just wanted to say a quick thank you for all the new instructions and enquiries so far this year. Keep up the good work guys!
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Frequently Asked Questions
How does social media marketing work?
Social media marketing is simply the act of using social media platforms – such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn, as a channel to reach out to your audience. This can be organically, through posts from your social accounts, or you can choose to sponsor posts or create ads that can be displayed to audiences in their newsfeeds or even through Facebook messenger. You can choose the audience you want to target, considering parameters such as age, location, gender, interests, job titles and behaviours. You can decide what objective you want to set for your campaign, whether you’re looking to direct more traffic to your site, create more engagement for your posts, or simply generate more brand awareness.
Is social media marketing effective?
How effective social media marketing is will depend on a number of elements, from your business itself, and your objectives, to your audience and what they are looking for. You can tailor your social media strategy to the goals you want to meet, either organically or through paid advertising.
45 million people use Facebook in the UK, and 24 million use Instagram. Put simply, it’s where your audience are, and therefore, it’s where you need to be. Just how successful you are is down to targeting the right people with the right message.
Is social media cost-effective?
Social media marketing can be one of the most cost-effective ways of reaching your audience online. Setting up social accounts and posting updates is of course free across all social networks. Even when it comes to paid advertising options such as image, video or carousel ads, Messenger ads, or social retargeting, social media can provide a more cost-effective alternative to pay per click advertising. One factor to bear in mind here however, is user intent. When a potential customer searches for your services online and clicks on a paid search ad, there’s a clear intent – and while you may pay more, you know that they are searching for your services right now, and are interested in making a purchase decision. The people you reach on social media may be at any stage in their journey. This in itself still has value; you’re building a pipeline of people higher up the funnel, and potentially reaching a larger volume of people.
Which social media platform is best?
This completely depends on your audience. LinkedIn is of course a platform built especially for networking professionally. It’s a B2B dream. You can often expect to pay slightly more cost per engagement than other platforms when it comes to advertising, but you do of course have the option to post organically.
On the other hand if you have a very visual offering, or a young audience, Instagram might be your perfect platform. Despite talk of decline, Facebook still remains the highest used platform, and can be a particularly cost-effective option for ads. Remember, even if you’re a B2B-facing business, you’re still dealing with people and those people still use social media in their spare time.
How has social media marketing changed?
Social media marketing is constantly evolving. New social networks pop up – think SnapChat or TikTok, whilst other platforms may start to see a shift in demographics – for example Facebook used to be considered to be a young person’s game, but now anyone and everyone have joined, and the younger generations have moved off in search of newer platforms. It’s important to keep up with the demographics of each platform, to make sure you’re reaching the right people.
It’s also important to keep up with new features and advertising options. Whether you want to take advantage of the option to target people through Facebook Messenger, or experiment with Instagram Stories, it’s worth keeping up-to-date.
One thing that does remain the same however, is your core marketing principles – know who you need to talk to, what you need to say, how to entice someone to do what you want them to do, whether that’s to like your post, click through to your website, or book a call or demo.
What does a social media marketing agency do?
Much more than simply broadcasting the occasional post from your social media accounts, depending on the agreement you have with your social agency, their involvement can include the creation and implementation of a full social media strategy.
As well as putting together a variety of content formats to share, it’s paying attention to the impact of these channels and making decisions accordingly; what traffic they drive to your site or which actions they invoke, as well as interacting with your followers and other relevant accounts to increase engagement.
At FSE Digital, we get to understand your business and what you want to achieve, so that your social media marketing fits in with your wider strategy.
Our Social Services
Research has found that three quarters of 18-26 year olds use social media recommendations before making a purchase. The good news is that once your business’ social media presence is established on platforms like Google+, Twitter or Facebook, such recommendations can build up quickly whenever somebody likes or tags your brand.
Take a look at our suite of social media marketing services below and feel free to contact our consultants for more information:
Social Media
Consultancy
Social Media
Management