Popular social media influencer and an entrepreneur, Samuel Oladimeji Edun, popularly known as Olóyè has revealed that the internet creates the opportunity for social media to thrive.
According to the digital marketing professional, participating in social media forums, known collectively as “Web 2.0,” allows communication and information-sharing with large groups of people instantaneously.
Olóyè went further to analyse six different categories where opportunities abound online. In his words;
“Social networks: sites that allow users to connect and share with people who have similar interests and backgrounds. Example: Facebook.
“Bookmarking sites: sites that allow users to save and organize links to any number of online resources and websites. Example: Stumble Upon.
“Social news: sites that allow users to post news links and other items to outside articles. Example: Reddit.
“Media sharing: sites that allow users to share different types of media, such as pictures and video. Example: YouTube.
“Microblogging: sites that allow users to submit short written entries, which can include links to products and service sites as well as links to other social media sites. Example: Twitter.
“Blog comments and forums: sites that let users engage in conversations by posting and responding to community messages.
“Most of us have one or two social media accounts across a few social media sites. It may be LinkedIn for the businesspeople out there (or jobseekers!), or maybe it’s Twitter for those who prefer constant connection and fast-paced information.
“Perhaps it’s Pinterest for everyone who harbours secret Martha Stewart-like intentions of one day making/wearing/doing some of the many things they pin. For most of us, it’s Facebook, whose user volume numbered a staggering 2.26 billion this year,” he stated.
Oloye wants social media enthuastists to know that the Social Media is a huge, dynamic part of modern life, and an opportunity for their business to enter the daily lives of billions of people and boasts a host of ways they can use it to bolster their company’s reputation and results.
The Computer Science and Engineering graduate of LAUTECH went further to share How Social Media Help Business/Organisation.
Market Research
An often-lost marketing strategy opportunity is social media as a tool to eavesdrop on your target audiences. By listening in on the conversations they are having, you can build on your buyer persona profile, gaining valuable first-hand insight into their challenges, pain points, aspirations and preferences.
This should be your initial objective using social media: Get to know your audience and influencers before targeting them. Listen and learn before you participate and you will then know precisely what they are looking for from social media engagement and be able to deliver that experience.
Build Brand Awareness
Social networks offer an incredible opportunity to promote your brand and improve your online presence. While the principles of inbound marketing encourage using social media platforms as a channel to distribute your educational content to build brand awareness, this needs to be achieved subtly.
Be aware of the ‘cocktail party’ rule to posting on social media, though. You don’t want to be the spotlight hogger. Share your branded content amidst curated and other posts to keep streams balanced and not a blatant promotional opportunity.
We also know that social proof is playing a larger role in search engine rankings than before and if your content is being shared out more regularly on social platforms, chances are that you will build better organic search engine rankings too.
Generate Leads
Marketers invest significant time and resources in creating content for lead generation purposes, whether it’s in the form of eBook, blog posts, white papers or case studies. The value of that content is lost, however, if no one ever gets to see it.
By sharing these pieces out on social media, you amplify reach, strengthen brand awareness and drive lead generation efforts. Prospects discover your content on social media channels and go on to convert on your site. Without a social media marketing plan in place, you’re simply publishing your content with the hope that somehow, someway, people will find it.
Nurture Leads
We know that the majority of leads generated are not ready to speak to sales at initial conversion. They need to be fed with additional content pertinent to their stage in the buying cycle to guide them through the marketing funnel.
Effective social media monitoring can help you nurture known leads through their buying cycle by keeping an eye on the kind of questions they are asking and information they are looking for. HubSpot is particularly effective can create and monitor a ‘leads stream’ based on your CRM information. You are notified when leads are tweeting about your industry-specific keywords, brand name or even competitors, allowing you to provide helpful information as they need it.
Customer Support
When discussing social media as an engagement tool, we often hear the objection, “But what if they say something bad?”. The reality is that they are already talking about your business, whether you are there or not, and non-responsive businesses earn worse reputations than those that do.
