Social media marketing is an integral part of nearly every company’s digital marketing campaign.
There can be no doubt that businesses exert influence over their online audience; when targeted correctly, brands can influence buying behavior, online giving, as well as offline behavior.
But how is this done? What can you, as the social media manager do for a brand that will influence your audience's behavior?
In this article, we will look at 5 ways brands can influence their social media audience to take action.
Five Ways Brands Influence Their Social Media Audience
Brands influence their social media audience by posting quality content that resonates with that specific audience.
All brands should have a clear understanding of who their client avatar is and how to reach them. Once the brand has a clear avatar, it's up to the marketing team to develop a social media strategy plan to reach this audience on its preferred platform. After creating a strategy, a content calendar should be developed to reflect ways to influence their avatar's online behavior.
What types of social posts do well with your social media audience?
Try these 5 post ideas.
#1 Activities
If you follow at least one business account on Instagram or any other social media platform, you will notice that perhaps the most popular type of content often includes posts about activities. This can be virtually anything from self-hosted events, to new product launches, to charity galas.
It is not always possible to determine what kind of immediate impact these posts have on the bottom line. That being said, some data to take notice of include:
- Increased Engagement: By posting content that talks about what you are doing (e.g. baking a cake if you own a bakery), you could ask your audience a relevant question that they will need to answer in the comments (e.g. “What kind of cakes do you usually bake or buy?”) This will, in turn, increase your audience engagement.
- Bring Awareness to An Issue: If you are involved in charity in some way (e.g. donating to help the firefighters with the wildfires in Australia), you could be posting content about the charity and how others can help. Such content is also often shared a lot.
#2 New Products or Services
Some customers prefer to see content about the products the company offers. In this case, you will want to have content that is either purely visual or supported by visuals (e.g. a collection of images, a product video, a product description post with a few images).
The previously mentioned new product launches can also be categorized in this type of content because they are directly related to what your company offers. When creating posts about new products or services (or the ones you are already offering), consider several things:
- Main Characteristics: What is the name of the product? What problem does it solve? How would you describe it? What can it be used for? Is it compatible with other products?
- Technical or Additional Specs: What are its technical parameters? Is there anything else your audience needs to know about the product in addition to the main characteristics?
- Pricing & Delivery: How much does it cost? Is there a sale or discount code available for this product? How fast can the product be delivered? Where does it ship to? How much does the delivery cost?
- Supporting Visuals: What are the images, GIFs, infographics, or videos of the product that you can provide?
#3 Promotions, Discounts, and Sales
Posting about new products or services is exciting! In fact, many social media users are specifically looking for good deals and discounts, so you could focus your content solely on discounts, promotions, and sales if that strategy fits your style.
Keep in mind that you will probably have a global audience. This is one reason to consider translating your content with the help of an online translation service like The Word Point to get more exposure and attract more potential customers interested in promotions and sales.
There are many different ways you promote.
Here are some ideas for the kinds of content you could post that would fall in this category:
- Sales: Sales can be done when you are trying to sell all the remaining items of certain products that you will stop offering afterward. You can also do holiday sales or regular monthly sales on a certain date.
- Discounts: Discounts can be available for a limited amount of time or a limited number of items. You can also apply discounts randomly or on special occasions (e.g. holidays, birthdays).
- Promotions: Promotions are perfect for new products or services that you want to let people try a bit for free to make the purchase “the whole thing”.
- Gifts: Gifts can either be your products packaged in special packaging for those who want to buy them and give them to someone else afterward. Alternatively, a gift could be a product you give your customer who has a birthday on that specific day.
- Giveaways: Giveaways are great for raising brand awareness and increasing your social media following.
- Limited Offers: Limited offers could be several of your products that you combine in a kit or – as mentioned earlier – limited discounts.
#4 Give Valuable Feedback and Advice Freely
Customers do not only look for posts about what your company is up to, what new products you have, or what discounts you are offering at the moment. Many customers want to know how to use these products or how to solve problems related to the products.
This is precisely why you need to post valuable feedback and advice.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to create separate posts with tutorials and guides, you can seek out customers on social media who have made a purchase from you and have some kind of issue. For example, you might come across your customer asking how a certain model on your mixer works. Then, you would have to interact with the customer and help them.
#5 User-Generated Content
Last but not least, brands don’t always create their own content for social media. Most brands love to repost content created by their audience which is called user-generated content or UGC. By posting UGC, you will be able to increase trust levels, interact with your audience more, and simply improve your reputation.
The process is similar to the one described in the previous section. You need to find content created by your customers and then ask for permission to repost their content.
Final Thoughts on Brands Influence
I highly recommend businesses become active on social media. Brands should create at least one social media account and start growing its audience, by using branded content, or any of the five types of content mentioned in this article.
By creating ad posting original content, brands not only create an online presence but also build a dedicated community of superfans!
Caitlin is a young and creative blogger who is keen on becoming a professional journalist. Articles written by her are interesting, captivating and inspiring. Currently, she works as a writer at The Word Point translation service on a freelance basis.
The main topics she analyses are blogging, digital marketing and blogging and business issues.
