Using Social Media Marketing For Your Business

Despite its years of existence, many emerging businesses struggle to embrace social media for their digital marketing goals.

Amid the global pandemic, businesses in Africa, in particular, urgently require support to ensure sustained growth and profitability.

Recently, we interacted with emerging business owners in Johannesburg, aiming to comprehend their challenges and identify simple ways to assist with their social media campaigns. Our study revealed the following outlined in no particular order:

• most of them had a poor understanding and relevance social media as a tool that can drive business growth,
• for those that already have these platforms, we noticed that they did not have any clear set goal(s) and objective(s),
• most of them did not have an effective social media strategy and implementation strategy,
• lack of timelines, and finally
• lack of monitoring and evaluation systems to help them measure success.

This brings us to the question; how can businesses effectively use social media to drive their digital marketing goals and objectives? To answer this question, we need to delve into each of these challenges individually.

Relevance

Before we begin, recognize that social media, like other digital tools, serves specific social objectives in the digital space. In other words, it is an enabler and each of the platforms is tailored to a specific audience. Therefore, before diving into any platform, take the time to study and ensure it aligns with your business objectives.

Setting of Goals and Objectives

Once you are happy with the usability and relevance of the platform(s) that you have identified, the next step would be to establish your goals and objectives. Here, you have to decide if it is a long-term or short term. Consider your needs: marketing a virtual event may demand a short timeline, while profiling your brand within the community requires long-term planning. Ensure realistic goals align with your objectives. Avoid setting unrealistic expectations. Choose platforms aligned with your business, like LinkedIn for professionals or Instagram for creatives, tailoring objectives accordingly.

Strategy

An easy way to look at a social media strategy is to ask yourself a simple question; what am I trying to achieve? Can I use social media to achieve my digital goals and objectives – in other words, are they suitable? How many social media platforms do I need and how can they help in achieving my digital goals and objectives? When do I need to achieve these goals and how do I measure success? What are the potential challenges and how do I mitigate them? Once you are able to answer these questions, then congratulations because you are on your way to establishing your social media strategy.

Setting Timelines/Calendar

Timelines are an integral part of project management. You need to establish a clear and achievable timelines. For instance, are you looking to get 30 of your followers on Facebook to attend a virtual event that you are hosting? If so, then here are some key questions to consider; when is the event? Do I have enough time to market the event to my followers, who are my followers? Will they be interested in attending my event or do I need paid advertising that will enable me target specific clients?

Implementation

Without a deliberate, disciplined, organized and consistent approach to implementing your social media marketing goals, you are likely to fail. As such, you need to look at your workforce and nominate someone to manage the process if you cannot do it yourself.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring and evaluation is designed to help determine the success or failure of your project. To apply it to your social media marketing efforts, you need to identify your key indicators. Simply put, indicators are relevant data that enables you to measure the success or failure of your campaign. Examples of indicators are – number of followers, number of likes, number of post reach, number of converted sales and many more. A good indicator must be measurable specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. This process is an on-going process and data collected must be interpreted to enable you determine what is not working, while providing remedial solutions.

In conclusion, our hope is that other businesses facing similar challenges would be able to apply some of our recommendations to enable them grow their business while remaining relevant in the market place. If you are having challenges with your social media marketing, click here for assistance.

For more on social media marketing, feel free to email us at sales@artcopdigitalmarketing.co.za