As the year is starting to draw to a close, Social Media in 2018 has been slicker, more engaging and more interesting than ever before! Do you feel like you’ve harnessed it fully for your business?
In this blog I’m going to briefly discuss each platform and give some quick tips and reasons to potentially explore a different form of social media that you maybe haven’t tried before.
Youtube
The 2nd largest website and search engine in the world, with good content it’s possible to encourage inbound enquiries and sales through this platform. The most important sticking point here, is to basically offer video content that has a purpose. Are you in the B2B service industry? Try a video version of your blog. Sell products? Promoting a new product? Try an explainer video and use Youtube’s ad platform to get it out in front of people.
Best practice example : 360 Accountants
360 combined great quality vlogging with explainer videos to help their clients understand how to use Xero, an online bookkeeping and accountancy software, in a professional, unique and interesting way.
The social ad king. Facebook offers an advertising platform that is currently unrivalled in reaching out to your target market, if you know who that market is! If you’re not already using it, Facebook’s ad platform is a good enough reason for any business to setup an account. You can promote blogs, videos, photos, products and also grow your followers for future posts.
Read more about how to be more successful with your Facebook advertising in my blog here.
Best practice example : ASOS
ASOS are one of the most effective companies at remarketing their products to you, particularly if you’ve almost bought them from their website. If you add anything to the basket whilst online without completing the purchase…
Hop over onto Facebook and hey presto… they’re there!
Genius.
PS. This has worked on me about 20 times. 😅
Snapchat changed the social media game over the last few years, pushing boundaries and creativity to implement some excellent functionality. Whilst Snapchat attempted to develop their platform, they shot themselves in the foot by moving their “stories” in favour of pushing branded/sponsored content and now users are switching off in huge numbers.
Instagram noticed the popularity of the “stories” feature – a photo or a video only available for 24 hours – and made it one of the most prominent features on its app. This is now widely used and a great way for people to get a quick content fix from their friends, family and brands, by simply scrolling through the day’s stories.
It’s a brilliant way of giving your followers bitesize chunks of your business and products, or maybe a little insight into what it’s like to work for your business! Insta stories are currently the most engaging feature on an social media, so don’t miss a trick by ignoring them.
Best practice example : Netflix UK
Netflix UK are excellent at social media delivery, style and engagement. Definitely worth a visit when looking at social media marketing benchmarks in my opinion. They often use Instagram stories to run competitions or use creative concepts to get people to help spread the word about Netflix and their shows. Check out the screen grabs of their marketing campaign for the “Netflix Hair Selector” below, encouraging users to add their own faces to popular Netflix character’s heads – then share on their own story!
Known as the “front page of the internet”, Reddit has grown massively over the last few years. It’s basically a forum where users can go to discuss specific topics, and you can vote posts up or down depending on if you like them or not.
“Why is this useful?” I hear you cry.
With 330 million monthly users on Reddit, you have a huge user base all talking about specific niche areas. Chances are you’re going to find people who have an interest in related products or services. Reddit Ads, similar to Facebook, lets you target these interests using their easy to use ad platform, plus you can spend as little or as much as you want.
Reddit is also a brilliant place to find content for your own social media accounts, also getting inspiration for your marketing campaigns and getting the information you need before anyone else!
Best practice example : LAD Bible
LAD Bible has used Reddit to its absolute advantage, and almost built a business around content often provided by others. Their content researchers will scour Reddit on a day-to-day basis to find the funniest, weirdest and most engaging stuff out there!
Into 2019…
Moving into 2019, it’ll be interesting to see what steps the social media companies will take to develop their platforms to create a more engaging user experience, and how ultimately how they can add further value to advertisers. My initial guess would be platforms like Instagram and Facebook trying to create more personal experiences, cutting out the spam and meaningless content and focusing more on people’s friends, family and hobbies. As ‘influencers’ become more and more frequent, gaming the system, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more actions like Instagram have recently taken to cut out the poor quality content.
Got any predictions? Add them in the comments below. 👇🏻
