Looking to dive into the deep end of the digital-social marketing pool? Take a quick look at these 3 common social media problems for new brands.
Not Every Channel is For You
While the decision to join the vast network of social spaces is an exciting one, before jumping in it’s important to evaluate and strategize a plan. In business, success is calculated with an equation, one that compares needs to cost and time. An investment poured into a new marketing channel with no goal in sight is destined to fail. Although Facebook may have over 850 million users, it doesn’t necessarily mean that every brand should be there.
Today, there are several different social networks from which to choose and each is built with a different purpose. Beginning a social media marketing plan with a discovery will help reveal the unique ways each brand can exercise and leverage an effective influence on their consumers. Discoveries involve an observational exploration of the digital market to see where your target market and your direct competitors lie.
The results may show your competitors are having difficulty connecting to their consumers on Facebook but are seeing moderate success on visual platforms like Pinterest. Determining the platforms that best suit your brand is a process that is often overlooked.
Buying Fans and Followers
Just like in real life, you can’t buy friends. And those you can buy aren’t there for the right reasons. Some marketing agencies will advertise that the best way to quickly grow social communities is with purchased followers, because “Hello!? It’s a numbers game.” They claim the larger the social following, the more product awareness for your brand. The more awareness, the more potential your product will be purchased. Thus, social media quickly increases your bottom line.
This logic sells easily to most new brands. Brands new to the digital space occupy the mindset: “The more, the merrier,“ and to a certain degree this is true. However, there are many reasons that this strategy ultimately will end in failure.
In the end, buying fans will cripple your brand image. While these overnight numbers may look good on social reports, purchased users almost never engage with brand pages. In most cases, the voiceless numbers assigned to certain accounts, will only serve to further misrepresent the demographic profile targeted by this social community.
Be the Voice of Confidence, Not a Voice of Narcissism
New brands often forget that social media only exists because people like being social. It’s easiest to imagine social media as a nightclub; and no one wants to be sold a product while they’re dancing and socializing.
For as long as brands have marketed to consumers, they’ve abused their vertical channels to funnel down commercialized messages to their consumer masses. Not ever really hearing, or caring what response they receive.
But not any more. The velocity of social networking has unlocked a new axis of C2C communication. No longer is brand messaging blindly poured down from brands to consumers only to settle in the dust and fall on deaf ears. Today, the social networks that connect people all over the world are living, breathing entities; capable of enabling those one-way corporate messages with the potential to spread laterally, jumping from consumer to consumer.
Occasionally, when companies take advantage of their power for mass communication, socially empowered consumers spread these messages amongst each other. Sometimes gathering enough momentum and passion to ignite a wildfire of virality amongst the masses.
At Jacob Tyler we work hard to stay ahead of the social marketing curve and also keep our clients informed of the latest digital trends. If interested, we offer social media marketing and all related services. Get in touch with us today to get your brand started on social media or ask about our social opportunity evaluations.