MARKETING JOURNAL.
Social Media Marketing: Q & A Highlights From Meet The Press, Sydney
Three of my favourite social media questions from the legendary "Meet The Press: Masterclass" hosted in Sydney, Australia.
Today I had the honour of being a giant talking head in Sydney, Australia. Seriously. Ok, to be more specific, I Skyped in from Whistler, British Columbia as a guest speaker for the legendary public relations summit: Meet The Press Masterclass. The room was full of inquisitive leaders that kept me on my toes with some great questions about the current landscape of social media marketing.
Here are a few great questions:
How do you subtly and professionally use social media to build your data base/your business/your income without putting people off?
If your audience is like you (and most often they are), count them as sophisticated. As digital marketing evolves the softer sell is always the best way to manage your online presence. Share news people are interested in and manage your online presence as if you were networking with a future client. A rule of thumb is to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field first, then convert people on your website or offline.
What is the best way to build up your Facebook & Instagram audience?
Organically, using crisp, quality content that provokes engagement. Make sure your posts are on the shorter side and your images are high quality. Then pair your content with a great ad campaign. It’s the proven recipe for growth and conversions.
How do you measure the ROI of social media?
This is a tough one. The simple answer is to get a great reporting platform like Google Analytics, install tracking pixels from all of the relevant social channels on your website and at the end of the day Google Analytics will attribute a dollar value to the people who left a social media channel and purchased something through your website. It's fabulous. It sounds simple, but there’s a large nebulous number that isn’t accounted for. That’s the people that engage on social media then visit your brick and mortar location or call or email. It could also be the people that visit your social media profiles and then purchase separately through a different computer or IP. There are quite a few scenarios. Your best bet is to monitor:
- month over month and year over year growth
- month over month and year over year engagement
- conversion rate from your ads and/or google analytics.
Get a holistic perspective and ensure the numbers are always trending upward.
Suggested reading:
Spark any questions? Leave them in the comments below.
Three Reasons To Get Strategic With Your Outdoor Brand's Social Media - Build A Campaign, This Season
We've all done it. A larger marketing project or business plan gets in the way of sharing on our business's social media channels. We pull some random content to share across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Then after the content is live, we wonder if what was shared really worked. Did the content entertain more than build the brand (i.e. classic Seinfeld meme), or did it serve up the hard sell with little to no engagement? Stop shooting from the hip and opt for applying a cohesive strategy, in this case a Social Media Campaign. Here are three reasons why it's time:
- New ways to frame content for your audience.
Community Managers are hungry for content to share. We're looking for compelling images, blog posts, videos and articles that will stir up engagement with followers. For all those one-woman (or man) marketing teams this is often harder to come by. With a strategic focus and theme, creating and executing a social media campaign inspires unique ways of looking at your resort-based business. There is also an opportunity to re-purpose older content by putting a different spin on it, an easy-win when done right.
2. Appeal to your guests or customers on an emotional level.
It's easy to fall into a cycle of constantly hitting our customers over the head with sales messages, especially on social media. But with the average organic reach of Facebook Fan page posts dipping below 1%, this strategy doesn't work. We have to be creative and romance our customers and guests a bit more. Creating a campaign that resonates with people will establish trust, which ultimately leads to a sales conversion anyway. If you still need a nudge in the right direction about connecting with customers check out Search Engine Watch's article: Nine ways brands can Improve Emotional Connections with Customers
3. Measurable results.
Every marketer, business owner and community manager strives to prove the success of their efforts on social media. Applying the strategy of a formal social media campaign brings us closer to understanding purchase behavior and conversions. For example, hashtag campaigns, contesting, and paid-advertising all help us attribute a dollar value per customer or guest. We can get a much deeper understanding of how our marketing is working and if the time spent executing on social is equal to the payout.
Ready to build a social media campaign? Join me for an in-depth workshop at the Whistler Chamber October 3rd, 2016: More Social Media Workshop Details Here