Article contributed by Chester Avey
Social media channels are often underutilised as marketing tools. Many businesses don’t understand how to deploy them effectively, and even more simply don’t consider them a priority. But, as the world modernises it is necessary for companies to consider a broader range of marketing options than ever before.
Doing so means taking a bolder approach to social media and ensuring that you are getting as much out of it as possible. If your current strategy is nothing more than a member of staff occasionally posting on Facebook about what is going on in the office, you’re certainly not using it to its full effect.
In this article, we will take a look not only about how to invest in high-quality social media marketing, but also how to stay safe as your business becomes more dependent on this technology.
Stay Creative
There can be no doubt that if you want to have a successful social media profile and make the most of social media marketing, you need to be creative. Social media can do everything from promoting brand recognition and loyalty through to growing sales leads and communicating directly with customers.
“Social media has a dual purpose with its delivery but it is also creative,” says Jamil Zakaria, global social media leader at EY speaking to The Drum. “Social is a content generation destination that we should be discovering and consuming content on, not only to inform distribution but to inform creativity and formats as well as to connect, network and discover stories and ideas.”
Focus on Shareability
The key aspect of good creative content is that it should be shareable. When content is organically shared by users it is a free way to increase its reach. In turn, this can be a spiralling effect where the more people share it, the more people see it and can themselves share it to their social media channels. If we can understand what motivates people to share content, it gives us an insight into how to better create shareable content.
Research has shown that there are a number of psychological triggers that inspire users to engage with online activities such as social media. These include social approval, as people like to get feedback from friends and peers, communication, as there is an initiate desire to develop relationships via communication, and supporting ideas, where users can connect by sharing things that other people agree with.
Inspire with Real Images
Too many businesses still rely on stock photos for their social media imagery. What’s wrong with that? Well, it is obvious and it comes across as forced and corporate. You can make fine social media marketing with stock photos, but if you want to actually inspire your audience and have them coming back for more.
It is not necessarily hard or expensive to create your own images and photos. High quality cameras are more accessible than ever before especially with options such as trading in older models to get money off new equipment.
You don’t have to be a professional photographer to be able to take interesting photos that are good enough for your social media accounts - although if there is someone in the team with photographic flair, this might be a big benefit too.
Keep Accounts Safe
Part of the problem for social media marketing is that as you start to put in the effort and energy to accounts you come up against a issue; how to keep these accounts secure. Cybercriminals use any opportunity that they can get to gain easy access to your system, and this could be achieved via social media.
There are plenty of things that you can do to minimise the risk.
Think About Access
It is important to consider how your social media accounts are accessed. Many businesses have a single account for posting content which means that there is only one set of login credentials. It is important to consider who you give access to your main social media account - in fact, in some cases it may be better to change social media via a piece of software like Hootsuite or Buffer.
This way only a limited number of people actually have access to your social account and you can more easily manage how they are used.
Use Multi-Factor Authentication
It is also important to opt for multi-factor authentication (MFA) for logging into social media accounts, whenever possible. MFA asks for additional credentials beyond a password whenever anyone wants to get access to the account.
Social media channels have made it very easy to set up MFA, so you should take advantage of this.
Keep Track of Channels (Even Ones You’re Not Using)
It should finally be noted that you need to keep track of all of the profiles across the various social media channels - and that includes the ones that you aren’t actively using. In fact, these are perhaps the most vulnerable. If you don’t use a channel like Instagram but have a profile, a cybercriminal could gain access without you knowing about it for a significant period of time.
You should make sure that you login to these accounts regularly, or simply close them down if you aren’t using them.
