I’m here today to tell you that the social media revolution is over. Major news outlets and businesses are already on Snapchat, Clubhouse, Instagram, Twitter, you name it… and the hashtag is as common as a newspaper.
If you’re one of many Tanzanian businesses already using social media for marketing and communication, you know how invaluable it can be. I want to help you make that asset even more valuable, but it all starts with knowing this one crucial principle;
Social media replaces nothing while complementing everything, but the old rules of business etiquette remain and, in my opinion, are more important than ever.
In the end, people still buy from people they know, like, and trust. Businesses on social media are similar to DJs blasting tweets and posting photographs while users browse stations for anything to listen to.
So what should your company or business do? Give audience or customers what they want- content. Content gives brands the ability to engage in social media. It helps you become found. It helps you become a trusted entity and ultimately, it helps businesses become liked and build community inside social media.
Another thing you should explore is the use of visual content. And by visuals, it means good graphics, photos and videos. Good, and creative ones! 90% of information that is transmitted to our brains and 90% of information that is transmitted to our brains is visual and not only that, visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. Did you know? 40 per cent of nerve fibres are linked to the retina.
Use visuals to capture someone’s attention on social media. And I’m not only referring to the exclusively visual social networks such as Snapchat, Instagram, and Tiktok. Visuals dominate the timelines on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. What photos are most suited to your organization or business? Create a visual voice, but don’t stop there.
You may broadcast, self-promote, and post as much as you want on social media, but until other people share your content with their communities, friends, and networks, your social media presence isn’t really utilizing word-of-mouth marketing, is it? Celebrating your followers, workers, customers, and partners on social media should be a priority. And the benefits to your business will extend well beyond social media.
There is one more effective approach to cut through the clutter. Paid social is what it’s called. You may whine all you want about having to pay to play on social media, but savvy companies and marketers recognize that, for the first time in advertising history, you have the ability to micro-target and guarantee that your message is seen by the exact demographic that you want to view it.
The problem you will find, though, with social media is that there are more tweets and posts than human beings. So much content to curate and create and publish, that very, very soon, you realize that social media indeed is a truly time-consuming effort.
For those who are still skeptical, you may wonder, “What precisely is the ROI of social media?” I’d want to ask you, what is the ROI of everything you do in your company? What is the return on investment for all of your newspaper or magazine ad investments?
At the end of the day, you’ll realize that marketing and advertising are all about where your consumer is. Social media, on the other hand, is a totally distinct communication medium for one major reason: it is always evolving. Consider this: the social networks we use, the functionality that each of these social networks provides, and the manner in which we utilize them are all constantly changing.
In fact, I’d prefer to think of social media as one giant experiment. That’s why, when I was first starting as a social media strategy consultant, I was seeking frameworks for managing experiments that I could apply to social media marketing.
It was then that I recalled studying something called the Deming circle in my early days of employment. The Deming circle, sometimes known as the PDCA circle, is another name for the Deming circle. P is for the plan; D stands for doing; C stands for the check; and A stands for action, act upon, or optimize. And it’s a never-ending circle; you must always be optimizing.
When we apply this to social media, it’s extremely fascinating because the firms who are asking about the ROI of social media are the ones that never had a plan, to begin with, but they’re really excellent at the D or the doing because that’s all they’re doing and they’re never checking.
As a result, they have no idea how to optimize. I want to make certain that you do not become one of these businesses. Social media is becoming a key mode of communication.
Being effective on social media does need a shift in perspective, but this is something that everyone who is reading this newsletter can learn. But keep in mind: new tools, old rules.
With your new social media attitude, I encourage you to think about where in your organization or business, or not-for-profit organization, practically every department in your organization, you can use social media to improve your business and communication overall. In other words, include social into everything!
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