7 Lessons Everyone Should Know About Social Media

Social Media has experienced an incredible growth over the last years. If Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd largest one behind China and India. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and it processes more than 3B searches per month. Twitter has more than 284MM monthly active users who sent on average 500MM tweets everyday. Instagram has experienced a dramatic growth over the past two years (+73%) and about 60MM photos are uploaded everyday.

“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the choice is how well we do it”

Erik Qualman author of Socialnomics

It is estimated that 93% of shoppers’ buying decisions are influenced by social media, but with our attention span being equal to a gold fish, brands and businesses have a narrow opportunity to stand out in an overwhelmingly crowded digital world.

7 Lessons Everyone Should Know About Social Media

1) Understand where your consumer is

According to comScore, Millenials dominate penetration rates for leading social media networks; while Instagram reaches nearly half of 18–34 y/o audiences. But older target audiences are not staying behind, 55+ female are the fastest growing demographic in Facebook. It is important that you understand what social media platforms are being used by your target audience. Moreover, you need to understand the psychological needs that they have in every platform (e.g. creating content, passive sense of community, etc.). Most people expect to be entertained in social media, hence quality content is a priority to drive engagement.

2) Listen, interact, react before trying to sell

Monitor the conversations happening around your brand or the themes that are relevant to your target. Listen, interact and react before you try to sell. Brands need to listen to what people are saying about their product or services online and join the conversation. But listening and joining the conversation is not enough, the brand should be able to react too. If someone is complaining about your product on Twitter, this is an opportunity to exercise good customer service and address the issue on the spot. Once a brand has been able to perform properly these actions in social media, then selling will come naturally because drivers and expectations would be well connected in customers’ minds. Here are some of the very useful tools that can be used for social media listening: topsy, radian6, vocus and hootsuite.

3) One size does not fit all – define a clear strategy since each channel is different

The brand must have clear objectives in the social media world. What are you trying to achieve with your brand? Increase awareness, increase engagement with customers? Why should you engage in a specific channel over another? Do not benchmark against your competition, but base your strategy by channel depending on where your potential/existing customers are. Analyze each channel from the eyes of your audience. Once the channels have been identified, then the brand tone should be set, the type of content that will feed each channel and how often should that content be posted.

4) Use visual storytelling

Online behavior has changed from reading text to communicate through visuals or videos, especially since our attention spam is low. In Facebook, videos are shared 12x more than links & textposts combined and photos are liked 2x more than text updates. For some brands, having a presence in Pinterest could really drive engagement and purchase intent. For example, the clothing and beauty industry can benefit the most since visuals are key to drive aspiration and desire for the products. According to a Shopify study based on referral traffic, Pinterest drives 2x average order value ($80) vs. Facebook or Twitter.

5) Engage, Engage, Engage – Drive experiences relevant to your target

When generating content, think what can your brand say that would generate meaningful conversations amongst your audience? Think how you can add value to their lives. There is so much noise in the digital space, that unless your brand offers something valuable, you will not get people to engage. Offer something unique, new, relevant and special that makes people want to talk about it. Useful content should be at the heart of your strategy, not at the end. For example, Sephora has a board on Pinterest that only offers tips about professional makeup application tips. This is a great value for their followers since they are being served with the information that is relevant to them.

6) Newsjacking is not for everyone

Newsjacking is when a brand injects their ideas into breaking news. It is an excellent way to stay relevant and join the conversation; however, it should be planned and executed carefully. The brand must find its relevance and add a fresh perspective. There are so many examples of newsjacking gone wrong, especially when a brand took a tragic moment to inject themselves and promote their products. Below is a good example from Oreo cookies when Prince George was born in the UK.

7) Measure against your goals

Ensure that your brand goals are being tracked for each channel. The most common metrics are followers/fans, engagement and click thru rate. RazorSocial provides an overview of the best social media analytic tools. It is important to note that testing is one of the best ways you can see what type of content works best to achieve your goals. Below are some of the key metrics that can be measured to determine social media success.

In conclusion, social media should be essential component for your brand digital marketing. It is clear that the landscape changes everyday and new technologies will continue to emerge. If you’re interested in the topic, here are the top 5 social media gurus that you should follow on Twitter: Gary Vaynerchuk, Sean Gardner, Ann Handley, Mari Smith and Chris Brogan.

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This post is part of Inbound Marketing Clinic, a research project at NYU School of Professional Studies.

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Originally published at anauribe.me on November 16, 2014.