Three Marketing Ideas for a Prosperous New Year
Although fall has only begun, it’s never too early to start on some New Year’s resolutions for your company. No matter what time of the year it is, steady cash flow is always a must. However, the final quarter of a year has huge impacts on the first quarter of the new year.
In our age of social media, having a successful final quarter is becoming an easier goal to attain. No matter if you have a brick-and-mortar company or an online store, social media marketing is for you. With so many networks to choose from and utilize, finding and engaging customers will be a cinch.
Social media marketing will change your life by keeping your company on people’s minds all year round. However, this can only be done if you know how to use social media. Here are three ways to use social media for the holidays and coming new year.
1. Twitter
If you don’t have a Twitter account to tweet, you don’t have a snowball’s chance at reaching the greatest amount of people. One industry to take notes on about what Twitter can do for a company is vaping. From 2014 to 2016, the number of vape shops tripled, and the industry gained about $3 billion dollars more in annual revenue.
What started off as a subculture has now exploded into the mainstream. The question that surely arises is: how? The simple answer is Twitter. This platform boasts a very demographically mixed audience, making it easier to spot and market to groups of people that are responding best to a product.
So when male former smokers began tweeting the most about vaping, the industry had its target audience. Also, by researching top ranking vape hashtags, marketers can see the kind of tweets people were posting about the most (such as trying different e-juices, using new devices, and performing vapor cloud tricks), making it clear for vape companies what to start focusing on.
2. Instagram
Speaking of hashtags, if these little guys aren’t in your social media marketing toolbox, they need to be. Hashtags are a way for people to find you and for you to find them, and Instagram is just the platform to do it on. Instagram hashtags not only promote your company and product, but also help you determine the kind of people that react to those hashtags (also important for Twitter).
You can even encourage customer engagement by having people use a brand-specific hashtags when posting images of themselves with your product. If your company is not well known yet, piggyback on popular hashtags that are most relevant to your business to attract many followers (or if you want to reach an even broader audience). However, do not be vague when using hashtags or choose based on popularity alone.
Study current trends and be as relevant as you can be in your posts. Just as important as hashtags are the images you use for your Instagram posts. If you want people to talk about you, you need to talk about them. On Instagram, this correlates to posting images created by your customers.
When people see companies posting pictures of their happy customers with their product, you’re gonna bet they’re gonna want in on the pie too. Not only are your customers generating content for you, but they’re also doing your company’s marketing for free. Sometimes it can feel like you can make money out of thin air thanks to the Internet.
Although you may now be tempted to take shorter work weeks, you’re not off the hook yet. In order for people to want to post images with your product, they first need to know what your product is. What you sell should do a lot of the talking, but don’t forget that a picture is worth a thousand words (or “likes” in this instance).
Make sure your images look nice and tell a story about what your company is about. That way, your company can attract attention by not only its reputation, but also with your eye-catching content, resulting in more people learning about who you are.
3. Facebook
As noted by the experts at the University of Southern California, social media and customer service go hand in hand. Businesses these days survive by not only offering their customers excellent products and services at a fair price, but also by building and nurturing a community of loyal followers that are more than just customers. You can do this by creating a Facebook group.
Unlike Facebook pages, your group will be more about developing a sense of community. You can’t really do that if people think you’re trying to sell them something. Avoid coming off as advertorial by forming a Facebook group that relates to your company and is also of interest to your target audience.
After promoting your group across all of your social media channels, it’s time to spur engagement. You can do this by posting questions and prompts that will make members want to join in on the discussion. Share articles that are relevant to your group and keep self-promotional news to a minimum.
However, do not hesitate to offer your expertise and help members by answering any questions. This will build your credibility among your Facebook group and will put you and your company on the forefront of their minds when it comes to the particular industry you’re in.
Livestreaming is also a great way for businesses to interact with customers on a more familiar level. You can participate in Facebook Live to give members a face to the name and to provide a deeper level of engagement by answering viewer’s questions and interacting with them in real time.
With New Year’s just around the corner, it’s more important than ever to get a social media marketing strategy in place to start off right. By utilizing Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, you and your company will be more than ready to face whatever this upcoming year has to offer.
