Is Facebook the only social media network a business needs?

            The answer to that question is “maybe” but probably not. There is no one-channel-fits-all solution to the question “What social media does my business need?” The answer depends on the type of product or service your business offers and how your customers use social media.

            To determine the right social media channel(s) for your business, you need to answer the following questions about your customers:

• ·       What social networks are my customers using?
• ·       How are those customers using each network? Are they “liking” content? Are they tagging friends and sharing content?
• ·       Are customers engaging with brands? Are they visiting brand websites or initiating purchases through the social media channel?

You should also answer the following questions about your business:

• ·       How much time and money will the business devote to social media? Joining most social channels is free, but money will matter, even if it’s just in staff time devoted to social media.
• ·       Will you advertise on the social channels?
• ·       How many employees will devote time to social media and how much time can they spend on social media?
• ·       Do you want to engage with your customers or just provide brand awareness? My personal opinion is that businesses should always engage with their customers, but there are differing opinions on this question, sometimes even within one organization.
• ·       Do you have a growth plan in place for when the activities on your social networks require more staff or more time from the current staff?

Where do you start?

            If you’re not using social media already, the first inclination may be to start a business page on every social channel you can find. It may look good on your website to have multiple social media links, but you need to be active on all the social sites you promote. It’s best to start with one or two social networks and add more if and when it makes sense to your marketing strategy.

Which Social Network Is the Best One for Your Business?

          Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and the list goes on…which channel or channels are best for your business? The best channels for your business are where your customers are. Let’s take a closer look at the most popular social channels mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph.
            With more than 1.55 billion active users, Facebook is the most popular network. Facebook is constantly improving and adapting to become more relevant to businesses in many categories (Helmrich, 2016). It’s easy to use and businesses can post a variety of content, photos, videos, updates on your business, links to your website, etc. Since purchasing the image-based Instagram social network, Facebook has placed more emphasis on images and video. Facebook’s auto-play video feature rivals the power of YouTube videos. A Nielsen study found:

“…from the moment a video ad was viewed, (brand) ‘lift’ happened across ad recall, brand awareness and purchase consideration. As expected, lift increased the longer people watched the ad. (Harrison, 2016)”

Image source: (Harrison, 2016) SHIFT Marketing Communications 

Research suggests that the auto-play feature has lifted the engagement rate on Facebook videos 40% higher than YouTube videos (Harrison, 2016). You don’t need special equipment to create Facebook videos. Many businesses create effective videos with smartphones. SHIFT Marketing Communications offers these tips to create effective Facebook videos:

• ·       Keep the video under 60 seconds long.
• ·       Use strong images to grab the viewers’ attention in the first 5 seconds of the video.
• ·       The video has to be engaging without audio. Viewers have to click on the video to turn on the audio. If the silent images don’t grab attention, viewers will not turn on the sound and watch the entire video.
• ·       Make the video feel authentic. Don’t use a highly produced commercial – save the commercials for YouTube.
• ·       Include a call to action (CTA) and your website URL (Harrison, 2016).

Facebook has recently introduced live video feeds that give business an exciting new avenue to connect with customers.

            Twitter is another network that is easy to use and lets businesses post a variety of content – with a 140 characters limit.  Despite the limited amount of text, tweets can include links, videos, or images. Twitter will challenge you to be concise in your messaging, but it’s a fast way to share your message. Your customers who use Twitter can easily engage with your brand, retweeting, asking questions, responding to polls, or sharing their recommendations of your business. To keep your Twitter feed interesting for your customers, you shouldn’t stick strictly to promotions for your business. Add in relevant tweets from your industry or thought leaders that will interest your customers and followers. Twitter can also be an additional customer service channel, as long as you’re “listening” and are prepared to respond quickly to comments and questions (Helmrich, 2016).

            Facebook-owned Instagram is an image and video-based social network and it’s primarily a mobile channel. There is a web version of Instagram but it has limited capabilities and is used primarily for viewing Instagram feeds. Image is everything here, so it helps to have a good photographer posting on your Instagram feed (Helmrich, 2016).

            Pinterest is a digital bulletin board and it may not be a good fit for all businesses. However, if images are important to sell your product, for example, clothing, food or jewelry, you will definitely want to investigate Pinterest. Every Pinterest post must be an image or a video and you can organize your posts into categories. Customers can follow your boards, like them and share them. Research shows that customers use Pinterest to share their intent to purchase and to learn more about products (Jackson, 2016).

Image Source: (Jackson, 2016) SproutSocial. 

Which Social Networks Are Effective for Your Business?

            Once you get started with social media, you should review each channel for effectiveness. Are you gaining followers? Are customers engaging with your brand? Are customers finding your website through your social media? You can use the social media analytics available on each social channel and Google Analytics to measure the most effective channels for your business. The Google Analytics (GA) “Channels” report can tell you how much of your web traffic results from social media (McLaughlin, 2016). The report will look like the sample below:

Image source: (McLaughlin, 2016) 

Select “Social” to see a breakout of traffic from individual social media channels, as in the example below (McLaughlin, 2016).

Image source: (McLaughlin, 2016)  

For more information on how to use GA to analyze social media channels, please review How to Use Google Analytics for Social Media Measurement .

Alex and Ani Uses Social Media to Expand the Brand

Jewelry company Alex and Ani is a good example of how a company can use social media channels to increase sales. Alex and Ani, best known for their charm bangle bracelets, has found that social media is a vital segment of their marketing strategy. The company started slowly, first assigning an employee to respond to tweets (www.twitter.com/alexandani) mentioning the brand, then posting images of their jewelry collections on Facebook and responding to comments on the Facebook page. Noticing the image-based posts received the most amount of engagement (comments, likes and shares), Alex and Ani moved their image marketing to Pinterest, adding photos of all product lines. The Alex and Ani social community began sharing favorite products and their plans to purchase those products. Wanting to strengthen and track the relationship of image-based social media to sales, Alex and Ani partnered with marketing analytics vendor Curalate (Bonifacino, 2013). Alex and Ani used data from Curalate and GA to translate social media engagement to sales. Curalate data tracks “pins” and posts of a photo of an individual Alex and Ani product and can link those posts back to sales.  Alex and Ani attributed $1.31 million 2013 sales to social media engagement (Enright, 2014). In iMedia’s video interviews (below) Ryan Bonifacino, Alex and Ani’s vice president of strategy, and Apu Gupta, CEO of Curalate, discuss the importance of images to Alex and Ani’s marketing. Bonifacino and Gupta tell how they learned that customers use Pinterest to show what they aspire to buy and they use Instagram to show what they actually purchased (iMedia, 2013). Links to videos:

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RbEdYYU9f8

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDk6N75Cic8

Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyUyQb67LFw

Content or Conversation: Which one is king?

            Some brands may downplay conversations with customers on social media, but I think there is little conversation without good content. As I mentioned earlier, businesses can set up their Facebook pages so customers can’t post comments. I think that’s primarily to avoid negative comments from customers. We have this debate in my current organization. The social media manager for one office doesn’t allow fans of that office’s Facebook page to post on that page. That doesn’t stop negative comments. People who want their complaints heard just post them on pages for other offices. In my opinion it’s allowing the conversation, positive and negative, is the way to build a stronger relationship with your customers.

Sources:

Bonifacino, R. (2013, Nov. 7). How Alex and Ani struck gold with visual marketing. iMedia. Retrieved from http://www.imediaconnection.com/articles/ported-articles/red-dot-articles/2013/nov/how-alex-and-ani-struck-gold-with-visual-marketing/

Enright, A. (2014, March 25). Web sales skyrocket for Alex and Ani in 2013. Internet Retailer. Retrieved from https://www.internetretailer.com/2014/03/25/web-sales-skyrocket-alex-and-ani-2013

Harrison, M. (2016, Feb. 2). How Facebook videos are outperforming YouTube. SHIFT Marketing Communications. Retrieved from http://www.shiftisgood.com/2016/02/facebook-videos/

Helmrich, B. (2016, Jan. 29). Social media for business: 2016 marketer’s guide. Business News Daily. Retrieved from http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7832-social-media-for-business.html

iMedia Connection. (2013, Nov. 5). How Alex and Ani struck gold with visual marketing, part 1. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RbEdYYU9f8

iMedia Connection. (2013, Nov. 5). How Alex and Ani struck gold with visual marketing, part 2. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDk6N75Cic8

iMedia Connection. (2013, Nov. 5). How Alex and Ani struck gold with visual marketing, part 3. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyUyQb67LFw

Jackson, D. (2016, April 12). How to find the best social media channels for your business. SproutSocial. Retrieved from http://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-channels/

McLaughlin, D. (2016, Jan. 19). How to use Google Analytics for social media measurement. The Simple Measured Blog. Retrieved from http://simplymeasured.com/blog/how-to-use-google-analytics-for-social-media-measurement/#sm.00000f1jaigxgvezrx6czzeet8c3r