Comprehensive social media training - course for beginners as well as experienced professionals
Learn how to integrate social media into your marketing mix. Learn from 100+ successful well-integrated campaigns. Relevant social media learning with case studies from different industries. Learn the basics of creating content for social media - from audience analysis and understanding the engagement metrics to zeroing in on the right format. Get a detailed understanding of running social media ads across different platforms.
The best social media campaigns drive real business results, but they also inspire and engage people
There's no denying the fact that social media has undergone several transformations since the early 2000s. But as consumers are increasingly turning to social media to interact with businesses, discover products and make purchasing decisions - what types of interactions do they seek and trust most? Is it authenticity? Is it humor? Or is it information? What kind of social media content captures users' attention? Before we delve into more details, let's look at some interesting stats to understand the landscape.
Stats on social media content
- Consumers find user generated content 9.8x more impactful than influencer content when making a purchasing decision.
- Content shared by employees fetches 8x the engagement of content shared on brand channels.
- 53% of respondents in a survey conducted on social media and brand transparency said that they are likely to consider businesses that are transparent on social media for their next purchase.
- This research shows how social media (both organic and paid content) informs purchase decisions.
But do all purpose-driven campaigns go viral? Do all user generated campaigns create business value for clients? We have seen countless purpose-driven social media campaigns that have consumed resources, time, and energy ending up in obscurity. We have seen employee advocacy campaigns go unnoticed because they failed to resonate. We have seen influencer content getting backfired because they offended the audience. In most cases the problem didn't lie in the content or the format - the problem was in the goal selection. The top mistake that social marketers make is using social media in isolation. And the second biggest mistake is that they pursue intangible goals such as brand awareness or brand perception without taking into account the business value of the campaign. We'll share some of our observations on social media marketing from our experience of working with 500+ businesses.
1) Social media landscape will keep changing, but marketing fundamentals will remain the same
For instance, when clients come to us for help reach their audience on Facebook - the first thing we ask them is to understand why they think Facebook is the right platform for them. We understand that today a lot of businesses want to do social because it's what others are doing. They want to be everywhere - on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and the list continues! However, the most important component of marketing still remains intact and that's knowing your target audience and where they spend their time. Knowing your audience goes beyond age and gender; it includes what your audience is interested in - do they watch food videos on YouTube? Or are they interested in arts and crafts and follow relevant Instagram pages. Or are they frequent travelers? You need a proper understanding of what your audience likes and thinks. Here's an in-depth analysis of YouTube campaigns that gives us data-backed reason to look beyond demographics when it comes to planning marketing campaigns.
2) Owning a community is an asset for your business
Communities are more than fan clubs - they are a group of people who come together to share their passion and commitment to things they care about. Big brands like Lego ( its famous LEGO Ideas platform) and Sephora are no stranger to community building. For instance, Sephora's online community called Beauty Talk gives its users a platform to talk about everything from product recommendations and beauty tips to styling techniques. The loyalty members-only mobile and online social platform is packed with innovative features including chat feature where users on any given product page can chat with other Sephora customers before making the purchase. Within months of launch, Sephora's online community reported 100,000+ live chats on product pages and most of the questions being answered within minutes! On top of that, the community members shared 20,000+ photos of themselves wearing Sephora makeup products on the platform, thus becoming brand advocates and inspiring others.
We are also seeing SMEs from different sectors embracing the power of communities. For example, GOQii has an active community of fitness enthusiasts who come together to share their commitment to fitness and health.
3) Don't view social media in isolation
Integrate social media into your marketing mix. Remember that your users interact with your business across multiple channels and expect a consistent experience. Break down the barriers around different channels so that each marketing channel complements each other. We ran a well-integrated digital marketing campaign for an upcoming online grocery store in Kolkata. Their website was pretty new and their social fan base wasn't very impressive. The goals alongside online sales were creating brand awareness and organic growth. We ran ad campaigns on Facebook targeting the audience in Kolkata searching for groceries online. Establishing the campaigns took a while but the sales picked up in a few months with the help of the ads and the quality of products delivered. For the search market, we did a thorough research of the website and targeted some important keywords for the client in the initial phase. Alongside adding the site map, meta tags and canonical tags ( wherever required), we created long & short-form content based on search trends and the interest of our Facebook audience. The longer versions of shorter Facebook content were posted on the blogs. We regularly conducted contests and festive campaigns and the content around these activities were posted on the website. When we started the campaign we got 405 orders a month and within a span of 8 months, we stood at 3500 orders per month. Get in touch with our marketing team for more case studies.
4) Don't focus too much on short-term metrics
If you are too much focused on short-term metrics, it can negatively impact the effectiveness of longer-running campaigns. Give the campaigns time to perform - but that doesn't mean you stop monitoring them and tweaking the campaigns when needed.
5) Don't ignore conversational commerce
Businesses of all sizes are embracing new channels such as messaging apps to interact and engage with their customers. One of the often quoted examples of a brand leveraging the power of messaging app is Sephora and its Sephora Assistant - a bot for Messenger which reduced booking steps by more than 60% and increased in-store bookings by 11%. 1.3 billion people use Facebook Messenger each month and interestingly Facebook Messenger marketing leads to a 70% open rate within the first 60 minutes. Learn to build a messenger marketing strategy from scratch and how to implement it the right way.