We’ve all been there… late at night scrolling endlessly through social media; looking but not really taking it in. But every now and then something catches your eye and your brain wakes up to what you are seeing, causing you to click a link or hit that like button. If you are the owner of a business, your future success could rely on whether or not it is YOUR brand that is causing this response in a potential customer. And with a clear, consistent and effective social marketing campaign there is no reason for it not to be.
According to recent online polls, an average of 86% of social media users follow multiple brands from multiple industries, and most of this group want to see company content at consistent and regular intervals. It is one of the key ways that consumers keep up with their favourite brands, new products and potential changes and trends in the industries they are interested in. However, when someone follows a brand, usually they are only interested in relevant content and they hate being bombarded with pointless, cringey, or out of touch posts.
In fact, research shows that for most companies who post around 10 times a week, their return on investment drops and they actually start to lose followers after a prolonged period of time. This is because of overkill and a lack of planning. Oversharing or posting meaningless waffle is a sure-fire way to annoy your consumer base. However, not posting enough and going AWOL on social media for weeks at a time is also incredibly damaging to your brands reputation. That’s why having a clear strategy on social media with high quality content and regular engagement is now considered the key to business success, and here we are going to tell you why.
The first reason is the most obvious: the more active you are on social media, the bigger your online presence which equates to increased visibility. This is pure common sense, but it is something that a lot of companies overlook when it comes to marketing. Increasing your social media output also has a huge effect on your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) rankings. SEO and SERP rankings work by collecting the data of your website, and comparing its credibility, activity and ease of use against others to determine which results will best serve the user of the search engine. Simply put, if your website is well-made, contains credible information and is visited frequently you are much more likely to come at the top of a Google search than your competitors. And one way to improve your chances of this is by using an effective social media campaign to drive traffic to your website.
The effectiveness of your campaign however is minimal if you cannot retain your customer’s interest. Having a new customer like one Instagram post and then briefly visit your webpage isn’t going to have any lasting effect on SEO or social media visibility. You need to maintain an ongoing relationship with your customers so they don’t forget about you, and the easiest way to do this is through consistent posting on social media. If you are posting frequently however, the need to distribute high quality, engaging content becomes very important, as you don’t want to bore your audience. Video is the perfect medium for this, and never has it been more apparent than right now.
By 2022, 82% of internet traffic will come from video streaming and downloads. Due to this, 80% of businesses have started or plan to start using video as a marketing tool in the next year. Why? Because it works. Both customers and Search Engines love video and consume an insane amount of it every day. Not to mention its effectiveness in creating revenue: In 2019, 93% of marketers said they’d attracted a new customer directly from a video on social media. With most of your competition probably already producing video in some form, this isn’t something you can afford to miss out on.
Using video to engage with your clients and provide updates is so much more effective than typing this information out and aimlessly hitting send. Despite the stratospheric numerical increase in online consumer bases, customers’ attention span has actually gone down in the past few years as they look for snappier and easier ways to consume information. This is why consistent social media posting that is high quality and easy to digest should be one of the main tools in your marketing arsenal. Too little of this and you will be overtaken by rivals; too much of it and you will overwhelm your audience who will switch off and look elsewhere.
Another benefit of a regular and planned posting strategy is that it builds brand loyalty and helps you form a ‘business personality’. The more your customers see your face or your products through video, the more they will start to get to know you and your brand. From this, viewers immediately know that your business is still active, and therefore feel more comfortable with you as a reliable brand to buy from. Staying in people’s minds without annoying them by posting too much will create brand loyalty and subconsciously make viewers trust you, which is proven to lead to increased sales and referrals.
Although it is always beneficial to promote yourself and build brand loyalty, not every video or social media post is going to lead directly to multiple sales. Understanding which posts were more effective than others can be extremely helpful, and this is why consistent posting is critical to the success of your marketing strategy. Video performance is actually easier to track and measure than you might think as it provides detailed viewing data that will help you understand whether or not your distribution strategy is working.
It allows you to test the waters and gauge a real understanding of what your audience likes so that in the future you can focus on the one or two specific types of video that were the most successful. This would not be possible if you only posted one video every 6 months, as the data given from that one video would be isolated and useless when considering the overall impact on your customer base. However, with regular videos you can easily spot trends in the data and use this to your advantage.
If you want to take your video marketing strategy to the next level, you can delve deeper into the data analysis with specifics such as completion and conversion rates. Completion rate is the number of people who completed your video divided by the number of people who played it. Conversion rate is the number of times visitors completed your desired action (e.g. buying a product) divided by the number of clicks. These engagement metrics are a great way to understand a viewer’s reaction to your video, giving you a detailed and focused inspection on exactly what benefits you are getting from your website and social media posts.
Knowledge is power (especially when it comes to growing your business), so invest some time and learn all you can! Understanding how SEO works, analysing the data provided by engagement metrics and following the tips we’ve outlined for you in our blogs will in time guarantee success and help you achieve your vision.
As always, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here at Title Productions! We’d be happy to help with any queries you might have.
