Picture Credits : designlobby.co.uk

Social media is no longer an option, it is a necessity in today’s society. Statistics from Forbes suggest that 92% of marketers in 2014 claimed that social media marketing was important for their business.Try looking around and see if you can name any company not on the social media platform. I can confidently say that companies today can’t do without social media.  Unlike in the past, the world today is so interconnected. You got to be present in that online space if you want to reach out to your target audience, if you want to get your brand noticed! So, are you ready to hop on the social media marketing platform? Thunderquote have 4 tips for you below.

Step 1 : Identify Your Target Audience

Posting content on social media platform is easy. All you need is an account and you’re ready to post your content. You can post pictures, quotes, videos or anything that resonates with your brand and engages your target audience. There are a few social media platforms, the notable ones being Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Do note that it is a waste of time and effort to post your content on all platforms, especially if the content doesn’t reach your target audience.

Before you dive into any action, I recommend you to sit down and think about your target audience. Identify your target audience demographics, identify the channels channels they frequent. Select the channels that are relevant to your target audience to have a greater outreach while ultimately, help drive sales.

Facebook : Facebook is the best platform to increase your brand awareness. It is great because it covers all the types of people you would want to reach. From multiple age groups, men or women and so much more.

Twitter : Twitter is good to share shorter snippets of your brand. Something witty and smart would be great here. Put your best social media marketers in charge of Twitter. However, note that most people who are relatively active on Twitter are the much younger generation. So you should streamline the content here as well.

Instagram : This is great if you are a more visually inclined company. Create great pictures and graphics to be shared here. People on Instagram appreciate great, high quality pictures. The aesthetic value on Instagram is incredibly high so make sure you reach those standard or you’ll get drowned with the other 52 million pictures that gets uploaded on Instagram everyday.

LinkedIn : This is great if you run a big company. It’s essential to keep in contact with other huge companies and the best place to do that is on LinkedIn. By posting content there, you increase your chances of attracting big time investors and increase your brand awareness.

Step 2 : Create Great Content

What do I mean by great content? Great content is basically content that helps your rank high on the Google Search Engine and we also term this as content marketing. Blog content is one good example. Your blog content should be relevant and engaging to your target audience. This ensures that people will stay on your website and not close it the moment they enter. Other examples of content marketing includes info- graphics, e- books, pictures, white papers, videos and so on. You want to become a thought leader in your line of work and be the ones people come to when they need advice. The more searches you obtain, the more the traffic flow to your sites. This ensures that you have a strong brand awareness in the market which increases your outreach to potential customers.

All the content you decide to put online and share must be of good quality. Do not put on content that you think will not generate the type of response you are looking for. Consumers go onto the internet for information and the information you put online needs to be trusted and tested. Refrain from exaggerating your content and make it relevant and engaging to your target audience.

If you use WordPress for your blogs, make sure you always check your blog traffic flow. Create a spreadsheet of how many clicks you’ve gotten, how many shares and also how many people have actually read your post as well. From there you can gauge what type of content that your potential customers are interested in. After that, you can try to tailor-make the content you’re producing to best suit your target audience. This increases personalism and your potential customers will feel extra special because they will start to feel that their voices are being heard as well.

Never be afraid to experiment with visuals. As mentioned above, people like scrolling through pictures. Therefore when you do create posts, do try to include images that will help break apart blocks of text. Not everyone is fond of reading too much text. Pictures and illustrations will help get the point across much faster, thus increase the traffic flow to your webpage.This has been proven to be a much better way of educating your target audience as well.

Picture Credits : venturebeat.com

 

#3 Be Conversational

Great content is just one piece of the puzzle to creating the bigger picture of increasing your brand awareness. Social media thrives on two- way communication/ conversations that take place between users. If you keep producing content but you don’t share them properly or you fail at igniting the posts, your voice will be drowned out sooner or later. There are so many other key players so if you do not make it a point to reach out to your target audience through relevant content, it will never be picked up by the masses.

One way to fix this is to ensure that you maintain conversations with your target audience. Have someone who is a good customer service representative to man your Twitter accounts. Emails take too long to reply and sift through the junk mail so Twitter has become the best place for consumers to come and look for help. If you have a strong Twitter account, trust us, your brand awareness will definitely spike.

Strike up conversations with your followers. Lurk on their profiles and see what you can say to engage them in conversations. Another thing you can do is visit hashtags that are related to your business and send them a message about your business. A short and sweet message. Do not be too overbearing because you don’t want to piss them off. But that is what social media is made off. You need to engage with them through constant conversations via social media. The friendlier you are, the stronger your brand awareness.

#4 Create Social Media Campaigns

Due to the increase of social media accounts that are flooding the stratosphere, it is best to have a plan to make sure you stand out. A great strategy to prevent that from happening is to create a campaign or a contest that is interesting enough for your followers to get involved in. This is one of the best ways to gain visibility and simultaneously increase your brand awareness.

Providing incentive like discounts or free products will drive hordes of customers in. Who doesn’t love free stuff? This is the best way to get people interested, fast. Watch your follower count increase rapidly and once you’ve garnered this audience, you can then change up your content marketing and sell them your product instead. It’s the initial spark that you need to ignite to bring customers in to increase your brand awareness.

These social media marketing tips are things that you can include in your checklist to increase your brand awareness. Many have tried and have achieved success. It will take a lot of work but the end result is amazing.

ThunderQuote is the most comprehensive business services portal in Singapore, Australia and ASEAN , where hundreds of thousands of dollars of procurement contracts are sourced every month by major companies like Singapore Press Holdings, National Trade Union Congress and more.