Social media is, first and foremost, a place for people to connect. If you misuse social media as simply a space for pushing products, you are unlikely to succeed. Social media is dynamic and revolves around the connections and conversations between people.
Advertising on social media is all about building brand awareness and truly engaging with your customers and leads. What you get out of social media depends on what you put into it. If you consistently post entertaining and informative content, you will attract attention and build loyalty. Here's how to influence consumers through social media.
Build trust with referrals and customer comments
Consumers trust other consumers more than they trust the company selling the products. Ask for reviews and referrals from your customers and let them know that you will be using their testimonials publicly. Share these referrals on social media to build your company's credibility.
Video testimonials are highly persuasive. Ask some of your long-time customers if they would be interested in providing their testimonials on video. You can even offer these customers an incentive such as a reduced fee, a coupon or a special promotion if they agree to be recorded. An incentive makes it more likely that customers will be willing to go on video.
Build a strong online presence
Social media is one of the best places to create awareness for your brand, products and promotions. Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook enable you to show customers who you are. You create a memorable voice and image which keeps customers engaged.
People don't just visit your social media to seek out coupons, contests and deals. That is part of the reason, but they also want to learn more about who you are. What does your company do? Do you have good ratings and customer testimonials? Do you have videos and educational content which shows your commitment to great customer service?
To influence consumers in a positive way and make them more likely to purchase from you, you need to earn a good reputation. Post content which shows that your company is trustworthy, quick to respond, adaptable, honest, fun, current, active and informative.
Show what is popular and being purchased at the moment
People always want to know what is popular. Often, popularity is not a reliable gauge for whether or not you should purchase a product (Furbies, anyone?). Yet, in many cases, products get popular for a very good reason. If a large amount of people have purchased a product and rave about its benefits, it might be something you should check out for yourslf.
Social media is a great way to see what is popular and trending at the moment. In some cases, trends are short-lived and revolve around gimmicks and hashtags. Some businesses make money on these trends. Other businesses focus on providing quality, long-lasting products that are always popular. Whatever your method is, if your product is popular on social media you will attract new customers and sell more.
Automate your social media to save time
If you decide to include social media as part of your marketing strategy, you may begin to get discouraged because of the time it takes to manage your posts. If you are posting every day (which you should be) and you are posting quality content, it can take an employee hours per day to manage your social media pages.
Automating the social media management process will save you time each day. Simply create messages and schedule them to go out over time. You still need to keep an eye on your social media interaction and manually add in personal messages every so often. But as long as you are creating quality content and scheduling it to post regularly, you will see good results without having to spend a lot of time on social media.
Sign up for a free 14-day trial of SimplyCast's marketing automation strategy. Our platform of tools includes Twitter and Facebook so you can easily manage your social media. It also includes common marketing automation tools like email, SMS, survey and many more. Influence your customers' purchasing decisions and nurture your leads through automated social media management.
