While you can use social media without running an inbound marketing campaign, your inbound marketing strategies need to take advantage of using social platforms to attract, engage, and delight current and prospective audiences. Social media has proven to be an integral part of inbound marketing, especially as more and more people are migrating to social media to interact and engage with their favorite brands.
In fact, Nielsen reports that 71% of consumers who’ve had a memorable interaction with a brand on social media are likely to recommend it to others. So what does that mean?
Well, it means that social media is a fundamental part of your inbound marketing. It can expand your reach, form meaningful relationships, build brand awareness, and drive word-of-mouth advertising. But, just like every other aspect of inbound marketing, it is mandatory to understand the entirety of your audience.
As you construct your inbound marketing strategy, ensure to ask the following questions as you examine and define who your social media target audience is:
What social channel is my audience primarily active on and using?
Once you have identified adequate answers to these questions, you can begin designing high-quality content that will appeal to your audience.
Social media has billions of users across all platforms. Having this massive audience means you have the ability to attract new customers to your business. Of course, this is easier than said, but incorporating social media features, such as hashtags, social media stories, short-form videos, or influencer marketing tactics can assist in transforming viewers into contacts for your business.
Social media allows you to create content that can increase the reliability and authority of your brand, which can be achieved by posting relevant content that explains the problem your target audience is having while providing a dependable solution. Once accomplished, your audience will start associating trust and credibility with your brand, making them want to purchase your product or service.
There are plenty of successful businesses on social media platforms; therefore, some may see this as a detrimental aspect of social media. However, having those accomplished businesses opens opportunities for other businesses to learn from their successes and failures while discovering ways to improve their social media strategy.
Basically, once you get to know your audience and start creating valuable content that’s relevant to them, you should start seeing more engagement on social media, visits to your website, and an increase in revenue. And who doesn’t like the sound of that?
To learn more about our inbound marketing services, download our free eBook, The Art of Inbound Marketing, or contact us, and we’ll be happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have!