As
someone who has grown up with social media for practically my entire
life, I have found myself time and time again taking it for granted.
I think back to making my Facebook account and how excited I was to become digital friends with my real-life friends.
It seems silly now, but it felt like a big moment.
Over time, I ventured over to Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, among others, because I needed to have an account on all of these platforms.
As I have grown older and started my career in digital marketing, I
now understand just how impactful social media has become in everything
we do as a society and how different life is because of it.
Never before has an individual been able to stay connected with
hundreds of thousands of millions of people all across the world in
real-time.
For me, I can remember back to a time when I was maybe 13 or 14 years
old. I had a friend group that I met on a Facebook gaming page. While I
was living in Connecticut, one was living in California, two were
living in Ohio, and two were living in Poland.
It can be hard to fathom that social media brought us all together
and allowed us to become long-time friends who have stayed connected for
over 8 years.
But these types of connections don't stop with just individuals.
Brands are building these same personal connections with their consumers
through social media.
As a brand, you have immense opportunities to share exciting news and insights about your company, develop an online community of people passionate about your brand, and interact with consumers on a more human and personal level than ever before.
Although, for brands, building that following and connection with
your audience can be difficult if you don't know how to get started.
This article will teach you the basics of building a social media
following and will provide you with the tools and tactics that brands
are using to win on social media today.
1. Choose the right social platform
First things first, understand that just because there is a social platform, doesn't mean you need to be on it.
You need to understand what the platform really does, who uses it,
how people use it, and determine whether it makes sense for your
business to have a presence.
Can you confidently say that your target consumer is using every social media platform available? The answer is likely no.
With that being said, your brand should be on the platform(s) your
consumers are on. Having great content on Facebook and a highly-active
presence means nothing if your buyer persona isn't there as well.
To help you decide, let's take a deeper look at five of the largest social platforms as of September 2019.
Facebook
It is impossible to ignore that Facebook continues to be the leader in the social media space. Rapidly approaching the 2.5 Billion active user mark, it should be no surprise that its top priority is keeping users on the platform longer.
Over the past couple of years, Facebook has launched a number of new
services that allow users to do more without leaving for another site,
including reigniting Facebook Groups, live video streaming services, building out a robust advertising platform (more on that later), and adding news publishers.
I know what you're thinking¦ But my company is different and these
new services don't help me. We wouldn't be able to use Facebook to
market ourselves because our audience won't find our content there.
Although your audience may not use Facebook in a work capacity, they
are likely still using the platform personally possibly as a mental
escape during their workday.
You can still get found and make an impression in this respect.
For example, SurveyMonkey created a great Facebook post about using
surveys to create winning ads, logos, and packaging using puppies
(always a win in my eyes). It is to-the-point, eye-catching, and has an
appealing brand offering for consumers.
Source by _: https://www.newswire.com/blog/spring-clean-your-social-media