There a lot of ways to market your product or services. One of these is through social media marketing. It is one of the most effective ways to grow a business. There are a lot of things to learn about social media marketing. In this article, we’ll be discussing some of them.
Swedish App Scene was able to have an Interview with Pauline Wallander, the head Project Director for SocialView. She was able to share her expertise and her experiences as a social media marketer.
SocialView is a social media marketing agency that aims to change the way businesses market on social media. They help businesses create customer journeys that result in ROI, sales, and growth.
What are the benefits of building a strong digital presence?
“Be able to implement the whole customer experience in digital.”
Pauline explains that with social media it is possible to manage every stage of the customer experience. With social media, entrepreneurs will be able to control which message or content they would show their audience. They’ll also be able to adjust when, where and how they’ll be able to see it.
Businesses can take a more proactive approach to implement what kind of message they would like the customer to see. As well as be able to time it perfectly with their unique customer journey.
“Businesses develop their business by listening”
Being present on social media can help business understand their customers in a whole new way. This happens when social media is handled as a business development or product development tool. It helps entrepreneurs to listen to what the customers talk about, what they want or what they are expecting to be developed next.
Pauline shares a client implemented a crowdsourcing campaign to find out what flavors of protein drink they would like. The campaign has helped them gain lots of ideas and insights on what flavor they should produce next.
Since the company has listened to their customers, they were able to develop a new product that people liked.
“Measure everything, but be sure about what you are focusing on to draw relevant conclusions on what works and what doesn’t.”
Being able to measure everything in social media and to track the progress of your actions is both great and challenging. To keep it short, set short term and long term objectives and focus on the relevant KPI for each objective.
Pauline shares that it’s a common mistake for businesses to look at traffic, sales and the return of ad spend too soon. When perhaps they really should be looking at building their brand and catch the attention within their audience.
It’s also possible to run tests and understand which parts of our marketing actions are successful and which parts are needing to be tweaked. As a startup, it can be valuable to set aside a “test-budget” where you test different target audiences, messages, content, channels etc. But, be sure about what you are testing and define the differences between your tests
What are the misconceptions about digital marketing?
“It’s easy”
Social media is not as easy as it may seem. Pauline believes that this misconception exists because entrepreneurs see social media from a user perspective and not from a technical marketing perspective. As a user, social media can be seen as something fun, trendy and easy since it is so close to people’s lives. Business who have this mindset treats social media as just an add-on to their main marketing plan.
Resulting in strategies that are not well thought of, an understaffed social media team or an insufficient budget. She says that social media should be given the same priority as traditional marketing channels such as TV or out of home advertising.
Pauline encourages business owners, sales teams and marketing teams to understand it’s complexity and see it as an advanced marketing tool.
“It’s cheap”
Social media used to be completely free. As time passed social media has applied major changes applied to their platforms. The competition on social media feeds is greater than ever. As the number of businesses increases their presence and budgets in different digital spaces, it has also increased the cost of social media marketing.
Pauline tells us that it is important to prepare a budget for any social media campaign. But, she also tells us it’s not all about money. She explains that the simplicity of e.g TV, where the right amount of money would get businesses airtime regardless of the content they put out, is not the case in social media. A successful campaign in social media requires the right strategy, smart and creative content that is relevant for your target audience, the exact timing and relevant amount of budget. Pauline repeats the importance of understanding the complexity of social media marketing.
“I just need to post to reach people”
This misconception relates closely to what was mentioned earlier about businesses seeing social media from a user perspective and the thinking that one post actually reached out to a large number of people in the early days of social media. Pauline says that it’s no longer enough for a business to post any content on their company pages and expect themselves to grow by that single post.
She explains that reach, impact, and growth comes from well thorough actions that combine larger campaigns and always on channels. If a business would want to reach people, they would have to understand that social media channels filter what they show to their users. Users will see thousands of contents if all post would be featured to them. Unfortunately, not every post businesses put out are interesting to them.
It’s also important for businesses to have a clear intention, strategy, and purpose as they create content and post these materials on social media. She finishes with a request for our readers: So before you post anything on your channels, please ask yourself: Why is this interesting to our followers and what is the true purpose of them following our social media channels? Maybe that can help you get on the right path.
You enjoyed this article make sure to come back on Friday to see part 2 of our interview.
