As a boutique digital marketing firm that focuses and specializes in creating powerful and engaging online brands for startups, entrepreneurs and small businesses, we’re often asked what the purpose and benefits of a social media strategy is for our clients, as well as what can they expect from their online brand. Many of our clients have heard of Facebook and Twitter, and maybe even Instagram. But they are rarely well versed in utilizing social media profiles in their business to build brand recognition, reputation and even sales. So, MyDigiBrand always lets our clients know that our three primary objectives for establishing their online brand is as follows:
- To establish and maintain an online presence. In this day and age, if you’re not online, you’re wasting time. An ever increasing number of consumers are researching companies and vendors online before they do business with them. MyDigiBrand makes sure that when people Google our clients, they find a clear and consistent brand that represents them well.
- To build credibility. Of course, having a Facebook page or an Instagram profile is fairly worthless if you’re not doing anything constructive with it. Posting pictures of what you had for lunch yesterday, the outfit you wore out on the town last Friday night, or how you looked the following Saturday morning does little to instill comfort or confidence in you, your customers, or the services you offer. When people are researching your business online, they want to know if you’re an expert in your field, if your actively involved in your industry, and if other people trust you. MyDigiBrand creates a social media strategy that is specifically geared towards building our clients online credibility.
- To build relationships. Effective communication is never one sided, and that includes communicating via social media. A good social media strategy should always endeavor to actively engage your followers, as well as entice them to communicate with you and your company. MyDigiBrand works tirelessly to get our clients followers involved in the conversation, because we understand that’s how you build relationships, and more importantly… that relationships build revenue.
At MyDigiBrand, our efforts go far beyond just creating social media profiles and making them look pretty. We work hard to make our clients social media strategies powerful and engaging, and to achieve the three goals outlined above. However, MyDigiBrand also recognizes that every industry and situation is different, and social media strategy results may vary. That being said, we always ask our clients to keep the following in mind when it comes to our social media efforts:
- Our target is to maintain an average of 7-10% engagement. By way of example, if you have 100 followers on Instagram, then at least 7-10 of those followers are engaging in your social activity by either liking, sharing or commenting.
- The impact of this engagement will vary by industry, and is not tangibly measurable without certain tools in place (i.e. customer surveys at point of sale, etc.). Those sorts of impact measurement tools are complicated and costly to implement, and beyond the scope of services that MyDigiBrand currently provides to it’s clients.
- Rather, to gauge social media impact, MyDigiBrand recommends that our clients develop some internal assumptions based on gut feel. For example, for market reach analysis you might assume that for every 100 people that sees your business name on social media a total of 6 times, you will recognize one sale. For engagement analysis, you might assume that for every 100 people that engages you on social media, you will recognize 2.5 sales. Obviously, a sale would mean directly to the follower, or the follower referring your business to one of their friends. NOTE: The assumptions you make should be realistic and relative to your product and industry (i.e. I’m sure Lamborghini dealers would love if they were able to sell one new Lamborghini for every 100 social media engagements, or even every 1000 social media engagements… but that is not realist and extremely unlikely).
- As a small, local business, you should also recognize the value of branding (name recognition) as a result of your social media efforts. This simply means that regardless of the impact on sales, your social media efforts are specifically targeting and engaging people in your respective markets, so that when they hear your name (i.e. through a friend, an advertisement, a flyer, driving by your store, etc.), they are able to associate it with who you are. The biggest mistake small businesses make is that they abandon social media because they don’t feel like it’s having any immediate impact on their sales numbers. Branding takes time and continuous effort. Results cannot be achieved in 30, 60 or 90 days, because it usually takes longer than that to get your name in front of someone enough times for them to remember and recognize you. Plus, regardless of how you personally feel about your business, your potential customer’s memories are much, much, MUCH shorter than yours. So if you put out a marketing effort one week, and then take a month or two off, your potential customer will not remember you and you will be literally starting over again from scratch.
If you are not an existing MyDigiBrand client but would like to discuss how we can help you build a powerful and engaging online brand, please don’t hesitate to contact us at 800-494-1405.