Social media plays a key role in the digital marketing of your business. It allows you to form closer relationships with your customers, communicate with them on a daily basis, spread social messages, as well as curate your branding across a wide range of important social media platforms.
Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok have powerful reach with millions of users around the world. Posing incredible growth opportunities for businesses when used right.
Unfortunately, many businesses attempt to incorporate social media marketing into their digital marketing with limited success. Much of this comes down to a lack of knowledge or understanding of how social media works and how it can be used in cohesion with other aspects of your business’ digital marketing approach.
The Challenges of Social Media Marketing
Keeping up with trends
Social media has a fast pace that feels like a different universe to SEO marketing or email marketing. With the speed at which social media changes, develops and grows, it can be incredibly difficult to keep up with it. The most successful businesses on social platforms are adaptable. They watch, learn and do. Quickly moulding to the latest trends and their audiences’ wants and needs.
Content woes
On platforms with millions of users it can certainly be hard to stand out. And with limitations on the type of content that can be created and published within these platforms, one of the other challenges for marketers is to create engaging social media content.
Reputation management
Another thing that many marketers struggle with is direct communication with customers. Social media platforms, particularly Facebook and Instagram, allow people to comment freely on public profiles. And while a business can benefit from this it can also hinder brand reputation if comments become negative. It’s something that a business must consider when posting regularly across social media platforms. Your content is open to scrutiny and it may not always be nice.
Finding the time
Social media is literally a full-time job and with creators having their entire schedules dedicated to content creation and social media engagement it can be hard to match the quality of content already online. For businesses, especially small businesses, with limited time, it can be difficult to find the time to commit to regular posting.
Understanding the algorithm
As social media platforms regularly update their processes and regulations, it’s not always easy to understand how the algorithm works. What do people want to see? How often are audiences seeing your posts? Should you post everyday? Are your posts restricted? The algorithm will have a direct impact on who sees your content and how often they see it. Understanding what works directly supports the visibility of your brand on the platforms.
Tips for Social Media Success
To overcome these challenges businesses must establish a clear and concise social media marketing strategy that is easy to follow. With the support of a digital marketing agency, many small businesses are able to do this whilst continuing to develop and grow their business offline.
A good social media approach will:
- Understand the needs of the audience
- Target the right audience with the right type of content
- Create regular content that is modern and in-line with current trends and topics
- Continue to emphasise the brand, its products and services
- Not lose sight of the company’s brand identity
- Align with the wider digital marketing strategy
Good marketers understand that social media marketing is something that requires nurturing time and effort. Whether a business chooses to utilise the resources of a social agency or to hire a social media team in-house, it’s important to utilise the skills of quality talent to support the growth of your digital brand.
