How many Social Media Channels are Necessary for My Business to Grow?

Social media platforms play a huge intricate part in a marketing plan. This resource could lead to brand awareness, an increase in online traction, and lead generation.

Companies could benefit from social media channels that are not limited to:

• Relationship Development
• Customer Service
• Resource & Expertise 
• Research & Feedback
• Engagement & Communicatio
• Sharing & Collaboration
• Sales
• Recruitment
• Brand Awareness 

A Social Media Policy Could Avoid Problems in Businesses
Presenting a social media policy to employees could display the companies’ mission, products, services, goals, rules and regulations. By setting clear expectations, the employee will become fully aware of what is expected while participating on social media platforms. This policy can also help to protect the company’s reputation, avoid security risks, empower employees to have a voice, and create consistency across the cross functional departments. The policy could consist of rules and regulations, guidelines, roles and responsibilities, legal and security risks, and accountability.

Introduction of Social Media Platforms
Businesses can use their marketing campaigns to introduce their new association with social media. Marketers can use social media logos, at no cost, on businesses’ marketing collateral and websites to let their viewers/consumers know the business has a social media presence.

Why is social media important to companies? 
Marketers believe that social media;
• builds partnerships
• increase lead generation
• increase exposure and connects to the website’s products and services
• markets the company’s services and products

How many Social Media Channels are Necessary for your Business to Grow?
I believe every social media channel have unique features that give companies access to market their brand to a variety of people and businesses around the world. For example, if marketers are targeting China, FB will not work because it is banned in their country. So marketers must know what social media platforms work in what countries. Having multiple sources for brand awareness and lead generation could lead to various streams of benefits that include but not limited to relationship building, ROI and engagement. Social media demographics help build a better segmentation strategy. For example; a company that sells airplane parts, may not have a high targeted audience on Pintrest. So advertising on this social media channel, may not be cost effective in reaching their targeted audience. Once a targeted audience is established, then companies can start to analyze where their audiences are. Marketers could use surveys to locate their targeted audience. An integrated social media plan could ultimately bring a slew of different prospects from different sources leading them to the company’s universal website. For example, if the targeted audience is women, age range from 30-49, living in the urban region, with some college education then Facebook may be a great channel to market the company. Now let’s, say that same group of people did not see the ad/post on Facebook due to its’ restrictions in policy or for whatever reason, another social media platform could present the same ad/post to capture the same intended audience or people with similar interest. So to reach the ultimate amount of viewers, companies should advertise on multiple social media platforms.

Facebook Users | Top Countries 

Once multiple social media channels are active, then companies can analyze the data to see just what channels are effective in meeting the company’s goals/objectives. They can explore and vet the channels to see which ones are getting the most traction. Once the information is confirmed, then companies will know what social media channels may work for their products and services.

Companies need to know if their industry advertises on such platforms. Businesses must research and become familiar with their competitors’ social media profiles. Competitors’ information can shine some light and point companies in the right direction. Information could be collected by online tools such as SemRush. Google analytics could also provide the referring source to acquire where the audience comes from.

To increase the companies’ reach of audiences, multiple platforms would be ideal. Not only will multiple social media platforms provide maximum exposure, advertising on multiple channels can increase search engine rankings. Businesses want to provide the most quality content on the internet, so their website can rank high. Also companies are able to keep track on what people are saying about them using social media. This gives businesses the opportunity to see just how people feel about the company with the accessibility to respond and fix the situation if necessary. Disgruntle consumers rather go online to complain then call or write the company. Businesses can also use social media platforms to funnel their complaints, concerns, and/or suggestions directly to the companies’ website from their social media page.

There are a number of reasons why a company may feel the need to select multiple social media

platforms to market their business. Choosing the ideal channels to incorporate will take time to research. Here are a few things each company should take into consideration when selecting the channels; if you have a company that is customer service focused and have customers that need or require immediate responses, Twitter may work best for this company. Twitter lets you interact directly and quickly with customers. Or maybe your company only sells B2B, then Linkedin may work for your company due to its’ platform to share relevant knowledge, increase professional and personal growth, connect with other related businesses, and join related groups.

Hootsuite to Manage Multiple Channels

To use time efficiently, marketers can manage several social media channels on an online platform called Hootsuite. This leading social media marketing and management dashboard organizes and maintains multiple networks and profiles while recording campaign results for measurement. The platform supports numerous social network integrations for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, just to name a few. The Hootsuite’s app directory can also provide additional integrations including Mailchimp, Tumlbr, and many more to make the marketer’s efforts seamless and effective. 

Content vs Conversation

The conversation factor is what holds the reader’s attention. The objective is to get personal and have the reader show emotion. With emotion, the marketer has a good chance that the reader will share, like, or store the content presented. A marketer always wants their content to go viral so emotions play a huge part in getting the reader to act. Readers want to be treated as a person and not feel the content is just about the company making a sale. So when the reader starts to feel emotional about what they’ve just read, then it will be easier to ask them to forward the information, write a comment, or respond to a different call to action (CTA). The energy behind the message is what gives it meaning and a life of its own. That happens because we humans like to communication with each other. Thus the conversation begins (Novak, 2010).

Sources:

Jack Sheridan. June 21, 2017. Finding the Best Social Media Channels for Your Business. Retrieved from https://thrivehive.com/finding-the-best-social-media-channels-for-your-business/

Hovde, Kristen. February 22, 2017. Why Every Business Should be Using Multiple Social Media Accounts. Retrieved from https://www.business.com/articles/why-every-business-should-be-using-multiple-social-media-accounts/

Heather Hamilton. July 21, 2017. Choose the right social media platforms for your business. Retrieved from https://www.lightspeedhq.com/blog/2017/07/social-media-platforms-for-retail-business/

Wikipedia. 2018. Hootsuite. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hootsuite

Novak, Catherine. July 27, 2010. Why Conversation, not Content, is King. Retrieved from https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/why-conversation-not-content-king

Website Metrics | Examining the Categories Necessary for Success

User engagement is just as important as visitor characterization. All of the metric categories serve a purpose and work together to provide businesses with vital data to analyze, measure, share and compare. The topic of this post is user engagement and how it integrates with marketing strategies. Sometimes consumers need a little nudging (digital reminders) a couple of times to actually make a purchase. Outdated business websites could display heavy content or not be user-friendly. People may be interested to research your business products and services online. So the additional marketing channels may get the viewers’ attention but once they arrive on the website, it turns out to be a total disaster to comprehend. Viewers get frustrated and abort these websites. The average page visit lasts a little less than a minute so companies do not have a lot of time to convince the viewer/customer to keep reading and act on the call. What should businesses do to solve this dilemma? Look at their web analytics (metrics) to figure out why viewers are aborting their website.

Using Google analytics can give insight on these things leading to successes and failures. Goals and objectives are the necessary fundamentals to achieve and avoid errors. There could be a lot of reasons why consumers abort websites. Many reasons may include the timing of an ad display, promotion attached, etc. Marketers look at company’s website bounce rate hoping this could shed some light on this common problem in the online digital world. For example; let’s examine www.Mrbottles.com. A company, Branded3, reported the ten worst websites that included Mrbottles.com, an online hub for everything you need to know about your bottle collection (Kenwright, 2014).

After researching and examining Mr. Bottles’ website, I noticed the company displayed poor quality photos. So I wanted to find out really what was going on with this business website and dig deeper into their online metrics. I chose to use SeoSiteCheckup.com to examine their business website. The report actually gave me insight on current metrics generated one year ago. The SeoSiteCheckup report ranked website; Mr.Bottles.com an 83 average out of 100 and presented errors that needed attention that could lead to an uptick in website visibility and user engagement.

Below is what Mr. Bottle’s website look like a couple of years ago. It wasn’t appealing, very congested with clutter and not an easy read. One could only imagine the bounce rate recorded for this business.

Courtesy of Mr. Bottles' website

There are a number of reasons why people abort websites; unwanted page to web design, usability issues and too many distractions. Some websites display pop-up ads that usually have a high bounce rate which is a signal something is wrong with your website because visitors don’t engage by exploring it further (Virgillito, 2016).

So I guess Mr.Bottles.com did some research and realized the business website was outdated. The new one definitely is a step in the right direction. However, the one thing that I immediately notice on their current website there was no social media integration. This is definitely a sure way to keep viewers engaged. How could a business survive without social media integration? SeoSiteCheck did report this error and suggested the company could see higher engagement results if implemented. The SEO check also discovered and recommended ways for Mr.Bottles.com to speed up page loading time and fix their expired photo tags. This could also be a reason for website aborts. SeoSiteCheck did report the proper use of keyword usage on the website. But keep in mind, viewers also need to discover their answers in a short period of time so heavy content could be categorized as a distraction. Mr.Bottles.com did offer a sitemap but I couldn’t locate it with all the heavy content on their website. So there are a number of recommendations to consider on how to engage Mr. Bottles’ online viewership and keep their viewers’ attention.

The website can’t build long-term relationships, commit between parties or display user fulfillment and dedication without social media engagement nowadays. The value, trust, and expectations are necessary to measure for customers’ engagement. The consumer wants to feel secure with the brand and website. Many loyal consumers represent customer loyalty and trust to businesses that service them. Without customer care being displayed and implemented, then the quality of service and products could fail.

Courtesy of Sprout Social; In Q1 2017 the top people’s choice for customer care is:

This means it is imperative to provide quality care through all marketing channels to ensure every potential viewer or current customers’ conversation ends with satisfaction (York, 2017). Here are a couple of tips to understand social media and creating quality customer care. Social analytics let businesses identify their customer and deliver data. Building a great customer usually defines the consumer’ experience and determine their loyalty to the brand. 

• Measure your success; engaging content could easily be re-shared 

• Proven ROI results; the numbers always tell a story

• Understand what your audience likes

• Compare performance across all social media channels in one designated place – a dashboard

Web analytics plays a huge role in the success or demise of your online digital presence. To learn more about the web metrics to grow your business, check back periodically. This blog post is exactly what is needed to move forward to increase brand awareness, user engagement, help with lead generation, and improve ROI. If you have specific questions, let me know and I will do my best to answer or find out the best answer. If I don’t know the correct answer, then together we will find out from one of my affiliate partners who are committed to helping businesses grow.

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A Web of Analytics Can Be Found Posting;

On Facebook

Via Twitter

On LinkedIn

On Pintrest