On average, people spent 147 minutes daily on social media in 2022. That was considerably y more compared to 2012 when people stayed online for 90 minutes.
With 79% of the population in developed countries being active social media users, it becomes clear that social media is where people relax, socialize and get news. No wonder their shopping decisions are significantly influenced by what they see there too.
In this article, we shall speak about how to make your brand stand out on social media and how to use the power of SMM to boost almost all the indicators of business success.
1. Keep consistent in whatever you do
The first thing that makes your brand recognizable is consistency in design, message, tone, corporate culture, and posting schedule.
Being consistent visually is not a challenging task. Using brand marks like logos, colors, and fonts in your daily posts takes a little patience.
It is a bit harder to stay consistent in the tone and style of your language, as they say, your audience, and your company philosophy. Are you all about openness and friendly relations? Then you should maintain an easy-going unofficial tone from post to post.
If you want to stress your company’s respectability, follow the official style. Since the tone of the language mirrors the specificity of the business domain and should be consistent throughout the website, social media, advertising, and e-mails.
Yet, what is most important is standing up to customers’ expectations. If your audience gets used to a specific type of content posted regularly, delaying or canceling your program will lead to disappointment. Therefore, a consistent posting schedule says much about your brand and can be a powerful differentiator in the long run.
2. Create a community-powered brand
A notable brand always keeps a finger on the pulse of its audience. Companies get remembered for their ability to listen to what customers want. Therefore, a good brand should be reactive to what’s going on the other side of the screen.
According to Forbes, 62% of consumers don’t feel that they receive excellent customer service on social media, and here you get a chance to stand out from the rest by becoming one of the few who care about customers.
Social media listening tools may help you greatly in this way. You may use the tools like TweetReach, Awario, Mention, and Tailwind. They collect what people say about your brand in comments, posts, etc., to let you detect early the disturbing moments about your product and services and prevent issues before they appear.
Yet it’s not just about tools. A human insight, an engagement in a friendly conversation, will add that rare feel of attention that can buy anyone.
When being reactive can win your customer’s loyalty, being proactive will cement it. Here we are talking about the subtle art of giving your audience what they want before they ask it or when they don’t yet expect anything. Loyalty programs, bonuses, audiences, and promo codes are great ways to buy customers’ hearts.
But what is more important is to give your audience the feeling that they are part of a bigger story and that by selecting your product, they become a part of a friendly community or, say, a privileged club.
This was the way Nike selected. Social media app development company that allows customers to share their thoughts on sporting events, take on challenges, join running events, or listen to motivational speakers. Food manufacturers use branded apps to engage the community in recipe sharing, diet marathons, etc.
A branded app gives your sales an extra layer of meaning: every purchase will be considered an invitation to join a group of people who share your tastes. Many of your customers will love it.
3. Turn customers into friends
The shoe retailer Zappos is famous for its outstanding customer service. Their secret success ingredient is the attention and care they show to clients.
Here’s a story from one of Zappos managers:
“Last year, when I was working the phones, a woman called, trying to return some boots. The sad story was that she had bought them for her father, who had since died. I told her not to bother returning them; we would refund her money, but she was free to give the boots away instead of returning them. And after the call, I felt moved to send her some flowers–just one of the 380 gifts of flowers you can see on the board that we sent out last year. Sometime after that, she sent me a letter and a photo of her father.”
What matters in this story is not the flowers but a good portion of the attention a client received from the brand unexpectedly. Social media give a lot of space to build relationships with customers.
For example, you may ask them to share videos or pictures of the products they received or record their success stories to share them on the social media profile of your company.
The main thing here is the personal trust you build with your audience.
4. Ensure non-stop progress and data-backed insights
Backed in the past, it took a significant portion of intuitive insights, personal experience, and a deep understanding of customer psychology seasoned with a good share of luck to succeed in SMM. Now, many analytic tools allow us to drive data-backed insights to predict customer behavior, detect trends and measure the success of any campaign.
This opens a way to endless evolution: you can adjust the strategy by knowing what your customers will love tomorrow.
Summing everything up
Consistency, customer care, and data-backed decisions are critical to successful social media marketing campaigns. Most successful companies master the power of social media marketing spectacularly.
Yet some take a step further: build personal branded social media apps to entangle the audience in the universe of their brands. If you want to learn more about how to build a social media project and the cost of developing an app for your brand, continue reading: https://mlsdev.com/blog/app-development-cost.
Author’s bio: Anastasiia Lastovetska is a technology writer at MLSDev, a software development company that builds web & mobile app solutions from scratch. She researches the area of technology to create great content about app development, UX/UI design, tech & business consulting.
