Inbound Marketing Blog

Okay, let's be honest, there are so many social media platforms out there that it can be incredibly difficult as a business to know where you should be spending your time and efforts. Heck, it's hard to know which ones to choose as a consumer. Ultimately, as a consumer, the decision usually comes down to which platform provides the most value or is the greatest source of entertainment. Knowing this, as a business, is so important. If you know consumers are looking for value and entertainment, provide those things (within what's appropriate for your industry) on the platforms they're frequenting. Unsure about what social media platforms they're frequenting these days? Well, that's why we've written this blog.

With a social media platform for every niche, just about everyone is on social media in some form or another these days. So, it makes sense that you would want your business to take advantage of these worldwide mass audiences, right? Sure, you could create a page on Facebook and cross your fingers. But that isn’t going to do you any favors if your target audience isn’t there. It’s all about knowing your buyer personas and honing in on your best prospects. (If you're not sure who your buyer personas are, you can use our Buyer Persona Worksheets to figure that out first!)

Let’s be honest, there are a myriad of tools floating around that can help you create some pretty amazing videos and graphics for your social media accounts. The caveat is that most are not free, and for a company or individual who is looking to create compelling videos and graphics without having to spend a lot of money doing so, this journey can be frustrating.

I've noticed an interesting trend in Facebook... more so in the last few months, but I think it's been growing for a number of years. Facebook (and most other social media platforms) has always been intended to bring like-minded people together; to bring friends together. It's been intended to allow people to continue to build relationships when they aren't in the same physical location.

Sometimes it feels as though the purpose of social media has become a place to tell everyone else they are wrong. It seems it's become a place that does a very good job of sowing the seeds of discontent. Because of this trend, I think it completely changes how we market.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the more times you connect with your customers, the more likely they are to remember you and choose your company's product and/or services over a competitor.

In marketing, the official term is called ‘touches’ – an instance where your customers see or interact with your company. 

When it comes to customer delight [see the Four Actions of Inbound], 'touches' can go a long way. According to Stacy Willis on iMPACT, "When expectations are met, you have customer satisfaction. When expectations are exceeded, you achieve customer delight. How do you get there? By being human. Listen to your customer and their needs." 

Studies have shown that it takes at least 7 or more touches to generate a person’s interest. 

So, how do you make sure you interact with customers in an engaging way and often enough so that your company becomes memorable without you spending a fortune trying to do so? 

Remember the days of needing a college email address in order to be verified to sign up for Facebook?

As the kids say, "lol!"

Now, according to Hubspot, there are reportedly over 1.5 billion daily users on the social media platform. Because so many people are on it, so are most businesses so they can get their products in front of more users. 

Google+ (also known as Google Plus), has always been the red-headed stepchild of social media. Google’s attempt to compete with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is finally calling it quits effective April 2019.

There has been a dramatic uptick in turmoil at Facebook in 2018 and the couple years previous, thanks to coordinated misinformation campaigns by foreign and domestic players alike, misuse of improperly collected information through Facebook’s third-party apps, and now the mass data breach that has affected over 50 million users.

You would think that Facebook accounts would be closing left and right, but that’s not the case.

There have been many companies that have expanded their online presence to include social media sites (in fact, the vast majority have). Of these social media sites, Facebook is by far the most well known and the most prominently featured on company collateral and websites. However, there are many companies that create a Facebook page and don’t necessarily know how to properly implement their social media strategy.