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Is Social Media Marketing Important? 

Is Social Media Marketing Important? 

by | Dec 1, 2022 | Digital Marketing, Social Media

Be it business profiles or personal accounts which are being used to support your business, social media marketing is important for all businesses. 

It can help you build up your brand and generate leads, but there are some things that you need to keep in mind before diving into this enterprise.  

One drawback of social media marketing is that it can be very time-consuming. It’s not right for every business—only those who know how to implement a successful campaign. 

Did you know that customers spend 20% to 40% more money on brands they’ve interacted with on social media? 

Is Social Media Marketing Really That Important? 

If you’re looking for a way to reach your target audience and help them discover your brand, social media marketing is a great option.  

By building an online presence on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, you can increase brand awareness, boost sales and even build your brand’s reputation. 

Social media marketing also gives companies the opportunity to generate leads by offering something of value in exchange for contact information.  

This could be anything from free eBooks or webinars to access to exclusive deals or discounts on purchases made through the company’s website or app store listing. 

What Is Social Media Marketing? 

Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses social networks and social media platforms to drive awareness, engagement and sales.  

Social media marketing has become an essential part of the overall marketing strategy for most businesses and organisations.  

Social media marketing works because people use it every day as a source of information about topics they like or are interested in learning more about.  

When you post content on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter that appeals to your target audience’s interests (and when it includes links back to your website), those users will (if you’re doing it right) find it interesting enough to comment on or share with others who might be interested too! 

Why Is Social Media Marketing Important? 

We may be biased, but social media marketing is important for a number of reasons. 

Let’s start with the first reason: connecting with customers.  

When you’re looking for someone to hire or buy from you, what do you want? The ability to answer questions quickly and accurately? A great deal on something your company sells? Someone who’s responsive when it comes down to resolving problems?  

Social media gives businesses an opportunity to do all of these things by keeping their customers informed about changes in products or services—or even by offering discounts or other incentives (like free shipping). 

Another reason that social media marketing is important is that it helps build brand awareness.  

It gives potential buyers an easy way to reach out and talk directly with companies they’re interested in buying from—and that means more sales opportunities! 

Did you know that it takes 6-8 marketing touchpoints to make a sale? 

This makes social media marketing more important than ever to ensure that your potential customers have multiple touch points with your business. 

How To Get Started with Social Media Marketing? 

These are just a few of the basics of social media marketing. You can do your own research to find out more about this topic, but if you want to get started right away and make sure your profile is complete and professional, here’s what you should do: 

  • Create a social media profile for yourself or your business. This might be on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or another platform—it doesn’t matter which one so long as it’s relevant to your industry and audience.  
  • Make sure that all the information on your profile (name of the page/profile; contact information) is completely accurate and up to date; this way, people will know whom they’re interacting with when engaging with your profile. 
  • Include your company logo as your profile images to encourage brand awareness. 
  • Remember to include links back towards your website to provide easy access to potential customers. 

What Are the Benefits of Social Media Marketing? 

Social media marketing is a great way to increase traffic to your website and make it easy for people to find you online. It also allows you to connect with potential customers and grow your audience, which can be very beneficial in terms of growing sales. 

It helps companies promote their products or services, build relationships with customers and potential customers, create communities around their brands, drive direct traffic to their websites, get new leads and make more sales. 

One benefit is the ability to increase brand awareness.  

When people see your products or services advertised on social media platforms, they may become interested in what you have to offer. They could decide that they need what you’re offering themselves, or they might want their friends (or family) to know about it as well.  

Either way, this is an effective way for companies like yours to reach new audiences who may not otherwise be aware of what products exist. 

Social media marketing is one of the best ways to reach your target audience and build brand awareness.  

It’s also important to keep in mind that while social media marketing is a great way to get started with digital marketing, it doesn’t have to be your only strategy. You can still use traditional forms of advertising and promotion as well! 

If you would like to broaden your digital marketing horizons, then we would suggest using SEO (search engine optimisation). If you would like to find out more about SEO, then click here. 

Get in touch with CREATIVE in TiME to find out how we can help you with social media marketing. 

Strategies for Social Media Marketing in 2023 

Strategies for Social Media Marketing in 2023 

by | Mar 4, 2022 | Digital Marketing, Social Media

Are you looking to up your social media marketing game in 2023? We think you should and now is the perfect time to get started with a new social media strategy. 

In 2023, social media marketing is more important than ever and giving your business a stellar online presence could give you an edge on your competition. 

A social media strategy for your marketing allows you to focus on what IS working and cut out what is NOT working. If you have a social media strategy already then click here to learn how to up your social media game! 

More goes into creating a social media strategy than just making an Instagram account and posting pictures of your product but what else does it need… 

What Are Your Goals? 

Before you create a social media strategy, you need to decide what your goals are going to be. You cannot form an effective social media strategy without targets to achieve. Below is a list of example goals to get you thinking, you may choose one of these or decide on your own. 

Example Goals: 

  • Increase brand awareness – Do you want your name out there? Do you want people to know your brand?  
  • Grow your audience – Do you want more followers? Bringing in new followers means that you are introducing your brand to people who haven’t heard of your brand before. 
  • Generate sales and leads – People don’t purchase your products by accident, they need encouragement and a reason to. Are you showing off your product catalogue? Showing customers new products and promotions? Running new deals?  
  • Boost engagement – Do you want followers to interact more on your social media? 
  • Increase traffic to your site – Do you want more people visiting your site from social media? 

Whatever goal you pick, make sure it is realistic for your brand and size. If you have a small business, then it is unlikely to expect to gain thousands of likes if you are currently only getting 10. Set manageable targets that you can reach, once you have reached them, set new targets and so on. 

Who is Your Social Media For? 

Once you know what your goals are, you need to find out WHO your target audience is and WHO your social media strategy should be for. 

Your target audience can determine which social media platforms you should use, what content you should put out and even what time you should post! 

Looking at your current social media can be a good start, who is currently following you? Who is engaging with your content?  

Many forms of social media have their own insights/analytics section for businesses which can show you your current demographics. 

Let me ask you this, do you monitor your metrics? Do you know if/when/how you are being interacted with? Check out our breakdown of important metrics to watch: 

  • Clicks: This is exactly how it sounds; it is the number of clicks you get on your content or account. 
  • Engagement: This is the number of social interactions divided by the number of impressions. This is how willing people are to interact with your content. 
  • Reach: Your reach is the number of unique users who see your post and how much of your content is actually reaching your users’ feeds. 

What Platform Should I Be Using? 

With the number of social media platforms, it is vital to understand that each social media platform attracts different audiences. Once you know who your target audience is, you need to find out where you should focus your efforts. 

Social media is not one size fits all!  

We have curated demographics for the most used social media platforms so that you don’t have to! It is always imperative to do your own research, but this should guide you in the right direction. 

Demographics  
  • Facebook: 52% of Facebook users are female whilst 48% are male. The largest demographic is between 25 and 34 years old with 11.2 million users in the UK.  
  • Instagram: The largest demographic on Instagram is 25-24 with 30.8% of users and then 18-24 with 23.1%. In 2021, 57.42% of women and 42.68% of men reported using Instagram. 
  • Pinterest: As of January 2021, 75.2% of Pinterest audiences in the UK were female and 19% were male. The main age group using Pinterest is 18-24 with 55%! Pinterest currently has 16.7 million active users in the UK. 
  • LinkedIn: As of 2021, LinkedIn had 33 million users in the UK. 57.2% were between 25-34 years old. 57% of users are male and 43% are female. 
  • YouTube: More than 35.6 million people in the UK use YouTube! 46% of users are female and 54% are male. The main demographic is 25-44 years old. 
  • TikTok: TikTok had over 3.7 million users in the UK in 2021 and the number is climbing. The main demographic of users are between 18-24 which is 26% of all users. In 2020, 65% of users were female and 35% were male. 
  • Twitter: In 2020, 58.5% of users were male and 41.5% were female. The largest demographic group of users is 18-29 which is 37%. The next largest group is 30-49 at 25%.  

Create your Content 

Now, to top it all off, you need to create your social media content! 

Once you have discovered your target audience, the social media platforms you’ll use and which goals you are trying to achieve, it is time to create your own unique content. 

When creating your own unique content, you should try to stick to a theme. This is something that all well-loved brands do. It means that when you see a post from that brand, it feels like theirs. 

This could mean sticking to a colour palette, tone of voice, writing style or even using the same fonts in all your images. If you have a website, keep your branding cohesive across all your content. This increases brand consistency and avoids any confusion. 

When building your brand presence on social media, one of our top tips is to respond to followers on social media ASAP. This is especially important for negative comments or questions. Doing this shows that you care about your customers and their experiences.  

Show off your human side! People like people, simple. Show the people behind the business and do not make every single social media post focused on sales. Post behind the scenes images, employee birthdays, the office dog, work get togethers!  

If you need more information about the do’s and don’ts of building an online presence, then click here to read our Social Media Do’s and Don’ts. 

One of the main forms of content which you may consider creating is video content, if you are wondering whether it is worthwhile…well we have a whole section below on it so what does that tell you? 

Video Content  

Don’t underestimate the impact of video! Did you know that 54% of marketers say that video is the most valuable form of content for reaching your social goals? 

Whether this is on YouTube as full videos, stories on Instagram or clips on TikTok, video is the future of social media marketing, and you should definitely include it in your social media strategy if possible. 

One great use of video content is to put faces to the business and show that your values and ethics are worth engaging with. Similarly, to other content, showing your personality and employees can help customers feel welcome and comfortable interacting. It is easier to interact with a person than a faceless brand. 

Is your Social Media Marketing Strategy sorted out for 2023? 

As this guide shows, starting up your social media presence well is more than just posting out content for the sake of it on all social media platforms. Quality over quantity is key here. 

That said, this doesn’t mean that your social media must be a chore. Your social media should serve you however, it can be a long process, if you are strapped for time and want someone else to handle your social media for you then get in touch now! 

See how CREATIVE in TiME can build you an effective and goal-driven social media strategy now through a free SEO and social media audit.

Social Media Do’s and Don’ts

Social Media Do’s and Don’ts

by | Sep 10, 2021 | Social Media

Social media has come to the forefront of most business’ marketing strategies, but does that mean that everyone knows how to use it? Spoiler alert…it doesn’t!! 

As a business owner you obviously want to cash in on this gold mine, but if you don’t know how to do it properly you can do more harm than good! 

Did you know that 54% of internet users use social media to research products? 

Well, you want to make the most of that, right? To make the most of social media you need to draw in new customers and ensure that your current customers stay interested.  

Providing the right content to engage both old and new customers is vital to growing your social media presence. 

Here are a few simple dos and don’ts for you to follow to get you started with your social media marketing.  

The DOs of social media  

DO Use the Right Platforms for Your Business, Not All of Them 

Don’t get on every social media site ‘just cuz’, you don’t need to be active on every single platform.  

Look at your business, your products, and your intended customers to find out which platforms are right for you, and more importantly which are right for them. 

You don’t want to be wasting your valuable time on the wrong social media, do you? 

DO Post Regularly AND Create a Posting Schedule 

WARNING! This may BLOW your mind! Did you know that you can schedule your social media posts?! 

Long gone are the days of painstakingly posting every day manually, using a scheduling tool enables you to schedule posts weeks in advance! This may be a revelation to business owners trying to do it all. 

Managing and creating a schedule for posting will benefit both you as the business owner running a social media page AND for your followers who want consistency, but not an overload of content. 

DO engage with others AND encourage engagement 

Engagement is a two-way street, businesses should be making efforts to engage with followers and other companies whenever the opportunity arises.  

Engaging on your socials demonstrates involvement and personability in the social media community. But remember…MAKE IT EASY FOR PEOPLE TO ENGAGE WITH YOUR CONTENT!  

Put up some polls or fun quizzes on your Instagram stories or Twitter. This is also beneficial for gaining feedback from your followers. Or throw a social media giveaway contest for those who post the best photo using your product!  

As a bonus, this can help your customers to feel valued and recognised…everyone likes to feel important, don’t they? 

DO Use Video Whenever Possible 

In a recent ‘Instagram LIVE‘, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri shared that video is “driving an immense amount of growth online for all major platforms” and stated that video will be a key focus area for Instagram over the coming months. 

The key takeaway from this is that if you want to grow online, YOU NEED TO START POSTING VIDEO CONTENT.  

The same goes for other social media platforms. What do you see as soon as you log in to any social media platform? We’ll guess that it’s a video. This is because video content typically performs BEST with most algorithms, based on the fact it captures a viewer’s attention for longer.  

Videos are growing in popularity across all channels, and it’s a fact that they get more exposure and engagement than other forms of content. We suggest that you use video wherever possible. 

DO keep your branding consistent 

Make sure you maintain brand consistency across all your social media channels, including logos, names and colours, to ensure your customers always know it’s you no matter where they are.  

DO analyse and track activity 

Social media analytics will help identify the posts that generate the most interactions. By studying posts, you can optimise your content, try to emulate the results, or even adjust them to improve the results. Cool right?! 

There are multiple tools that can be used by your business to monitor your activity, but you can also use the built-in analytics tools on the individual platforms.  

So now, here are some of the main areas to avoid… 

The DONT’s of Social Media 

DON’T fall for trolls 

It’s easy to fall victim to rude or patronizing comments, but it is not worth jeopardising your business’s reputation. Keep your personal and business thoughts and ideas separate.  

Treat a social media user as you would an upset customer in your business, give them excellent customer service and offer ways to resolve their issues. 

Click here to learn about how our own Andrea Warner deals with trolls and negative comments. 

DON’T forget to do a spelling and grammar check 

When promoting your business online, brand perception is everything. You don’t want a customer’s first impression of your business to be tainted because of improper grammar and spelling.  

To avoid this, re-read and edit your posts before you send them out. Even better, get a trusted colleague to proof-read posts, two sets of eyes are better than one!  

If you are still on the fence about something, there are many different free online grammar and spelling checks like Grammarly for you to use to fine-tune those posts. 

DON’T overdo it 

Posting too often on your business social profiles can be just as harmful as not posting often enough.  

According to research by Sprout Social, 46% of social media users will unfollow a brand for posting too many promotional messages on their profiles, which means you need to restrict your output or risk losing customers (by promotional we mean selling yourself rather than just creating engaging content for your target customer). 

Some of the best posts from companies are informative and fun rather than promoting a product, everyone has oodles of personality…use it for good! 

DON’T get hung up on numbers   

And finally, you should never get too fixated on numbers when it comes to your business social media profiles.  

Business owners tend to lose sleep over not having as many Facebook fans or Twitter followers as they’d like but, while these metrics are certainly important, they’re not the be-all and end-all.  

This is where quality over quantity really comes into play. You could have 10,000 followers, but if half are spam accounts, then your messages will be falling on deaf ears.  

Often the real value is found in the amount of engagement you’re receiving, and the type of people you’re receiving it from. These are the things that can make you the real money, so pay more attention to these instead. 

Want to up your social media game but aren’t sure where to start?  

We can help with that. Book a discovery call now with CREATIVE in TiME, let our marketing agency help your business. 

Want to up Your Social Media Game?

Want to up Your Social Media Game?

by | Jul 15, 2021 | Digital Marketing

In this digital age, social media is now an integral part of most people’s lives. Much of the population now use it for entertainment, communication, and business.  

Social media is a great place to grow and promote your business. Studies show that 71% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand to others if they have had a positive experience with them on social media. 

Developing an effective social media strategy is essential to creating a successful brand. Let’s look at some social media marketing tips and tricks that will help you build your brand and up your game ahead of the competition, on social media.  

ADD VALUE 

People don’t want to follow a page that just constantly sells. Your page needs to ADD VALUE. Content is key to social media marketing. Depending on your choice of social platform, you may have to produce different content, but it should all be educational, motivational, and engaging to your audience. 

Tell your brand story, demonstrate your products in action, show behind the scenes moments and keep your audience ENGAGED. Everything you post should be relevant to your business and stick by the 80/20 principle. If you’re struggling for content ideas, hop on over to our Instagram, and check out our post on content ideas for your business.  

You can also use the content pillars to help you. The content pillars are 3-5 topics your business will regularly discuss, amplify, and create content around on social media. This can help to plan/create content, keep your social media consistent, and ensure it is relevant.  

Find out more about content pillars here. 

BE ACTIVE 

Be ACTIVE on your socials! After all, social media is all about being social, right? Interacting with your followers will help you create positive relationships. Communicating with your followers will help you grow a more loyal follower base, and loyal followers can be some of your best advocates. 

ENGAGE with your previous and your potential customers! Like, comment, share posts by your customers and other people in your industry.  

Engaging with other users’ content can encourage people to reciprocate this. Answering comments and questions will improve brand loyalty and show that your business cares about their opinions.  

Engaging with your audience and being active builds a positive public image. You want your business to seem (and be) trustworthy and inviting to new customers so that they are enticed into seeing more. 

BE CONSISTENT 

A consistent social media presence does not have to mean posting every. single. day. Your social media profile shouldn’t feel like a chore.  

Remember, QUALITY over QUANTITY.  

Posting less content that your audience will love is much better than lots of content with low engagement. Try using current news in your posts and tie it back into your business to boost your engagement. 

If you’re just starting out, we suggest posting 2-3 times a week on specific days e.g. Monday, Wednesday and Friday so your followers start to learn when to expect you. Add to your ‘stories’ in between these days to remain consistent.  

Scheduling tools can be a life-saver. Creating a social media schedule will help you produce and post on your social platforms as frequently as you can. Batch produce your content and schedule it to post.  

LIMIT YOUR PLATFORMS 

New social media platforms are constantly appearing and trying to keep on top of all of them is impossible.  

Using too many forms of social media can harm your business in the long run. You will likely receive mediocre results on all of them as you will not have the time to curate quality content. 

LESS IS MORE when it comes to social media platforms. You should understand who your target audience is and how they may respond to each platform. Define your audience’s key demographics e.g. age, gender, hobbies, occupation, etc. 

Focus on a select number of well-known platforms, learn about how they work and which posts create the most engagement. You won’t get it right all the time, but it’s about enjoying the journey and learning about your audience.  

MEASURE YOUR RESULTS 

Check out your insights! Your insights can show you which posts are being received successfully and which aren’t. If a certain type of content is performing poorly then consider trying something new or adapt it to fit your customer’s interests. 

Which content has the best engagement? Re-purpose your old content and create new posts like it. Ten birds, one stone! 

What time are most of your audience online? Post at this time to increase engagement.  

Don’t be afraid to change your social media strategy if it is not working for you, be fluid and flexible. 

Social media can be vital for businesses to build engagement, if the above seems like a lot of time and effort that you just haven’t got to spare, book a discovery call with CREATIVE in TiME.