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This past holiday season, you likely received a Shutterfly card or two featuring families dressed in their holiday best flashing joyous smiles and spreading seasonal cheer. But Shutterfly may have also been behind much more. Recently, Shutterfly has been ramping up, reaching more demographics, and cranking out personalized items (mainly greeting cards). This past holiday season, 40% of younger people aged 18–34 planned on sending out a personalized photo or holiday card with their family, significant other, or pets. Not only are sales up, but the company also launched a new campaign, too! Shutterfly Moves Beyond Personalization Holiday Photo Card Company Makes Big Moves
write down how many likes and shares you want on average. Similarly, don’t just decide to “grow your audience” — set a goal for a number of followers you want. As you do this, remember social media is best for raising brand awareness and building engagement, not necessarily boosting sales. Don’t set yourself up to fail! 3. Analyze the competition. To create a competitive social media strategy, study what your competitors are doing. Which platforms are they on? When are they posting? Which posts are getting the most engagement? Who are their followers? How many do they have? Examine their accounts to get answers to these questions, then compare their metrics with yours to find your weaknesses, strengths, and opportunities. You can use a digital tool like Benchmark to do this or find step-by-step instructions for conducting a competitive analysis yourself on Falcon’s website, Falcon.io. 4. Create missing accounts, and delete useless ones. Where is your audience? Take a deep dive into the ideal demographic for your brand and create a customer avatar. Then ask yourself, “Where are they online that my company isn’t?” If you’re targeting young people but aren’t on TikTok, for example, that’s a big branding mistake. Similarly, if you’re aiming for older professionals but use Instagram, not Facebook or LinkedIn, you’re missing big opportunities to expand your customer base. Check out the Pew Research Center’s 2021 Social Media Fact Sheet (PewResearch.org/ Internet/fact-sheet/social-media) to see where different demographics congregate. 5. Choose a brand voice. Everyone knows that if you follow Wendy’s on Twitter, it is synonymous with sass, and Amazon Prime is famous for its witty engagement with TV show superfans on Instagram. What will your brand’s voice be? Are you a highly educated, serious attorney, or a down-to- earth lawyer next door? Before you post, pick a brand voice and stick to it. That persona will determine your content, what you share from other creators, and the way you write your captions. 6. Brainstorm (and schedule) themed content. Once you have your brand voice nailed down, it’s time to pick themes or silos for your content. Will you post memes? Testimonials? Team photos? A mix of all three? (This is the right option.) Pick your key themes and keep your brand’s fonts and colors in mind while planning them. Then, post, post, post! Don’t forget to use your stories on Instagram and Facebook, too. Most social media platforms have built- in features that allow you to create posts in advance and schedule them to go live at strategic times, but you can also invest in a social media management tool that will do this work for you. Sprout Social, Sendible, Loomly, and HubSpot are just a few options packed with useful features. As you implement your new plan, remember that social media is just one part of the marketing puzzle. From here, you can also utilize other relationship marketing strategies like email marketing campaigns and print newsletters to convert your followers into customers.
On Page 4, we filled you in on three of the hottest marketing trends for 2022 and explained why they work. One of them was creating and sharing video content on social media. Since we already covered the “why,” now it’s time to go over a “how”: Vimeo. Vimeo is a comprehensive video creation and sharing platform for small businesses. It’s far from the only way to create video — you can use the video feature on Instagram to film a reel, for example, or record a YouTube video on your smartphone — but it’s one of the best. With Vimeo, you can easily create videos for your social channels, run a high-quality livestream, or film a tutorial or product walk-through complete with screen-sharing. It’s a marketing tool, a client/patient education tool, and an internal communications tool all in one.
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