Globally, social media marketing has gone mainstream
Are you one of those businesses in South Africa that is still uncertain about the value of social media marketing?
You’re not alone. In 2014 advertising spend on social media accounted for only 3% of total spend across all media. Some estimates have put this figure at 9% for 2016. And this compared with 40-50% being spent on digital marketing in Europe and the US!
But it’s a no-brainer to be marketing where your customers are hanging out – for more than 3 hours a day in South Africa, according to the Global Web Index. In fact, in the current economic climate, social media should be your first choice of online marketing platform.
The stats for internet and social media usage in South Africa speak for themselves:
- 7 million daily visitors on Facebook (equal to the number of listeners on Metro FM and readers of You, Huisgenoot & Drum; also millions more than the audiences of Mnet, Daily Sun or the Sunday Times)
- 5.7 million unique users on News24 in April 2016
- 40% of internet browsing is on smart phones
- 12 million internet searches per day on Google
Can you afford to be left out?
Social Media is an online marketing tool for ranking on Google
What you post on social media can drive people to your website. And you do know that the more traffic you get to your website, the better your ranking on Google, right? Also, you can give your ranking on Google an extra boost by posting keyword-rich content on Google+.
Social media has become the primary digital platform for link building; i.e. attracting visitors organically (not through paid advertising) to your website from other locations on the internet.
For these reasons alone, you should be doing digital marketing on social media, using a strategy that is integrated with the marketing you are doing on your website and in other areas.
Make sure that your social media marketing is integrated with your overall marketing strategy
Planning a strategy for social media is the first step to ensuring that social media works for you. This means making informed choices about where, what and how often to post, and aligning all your social media activities and messaging with your overall marketing strategy.
You should also measure the engagement you get, and evaluate how effectively you are building brand awareness on social media. It’s the most effective platform for being able measure actual customer engagement. Social media analytics are far more meaningful than advertising value estimates (AVE) of traditional advertising.
How we can help you with your social media marketing
Do you need help in setting up your social media platforms? Or planning the campaigns you will run there? Does the thought of having to come up with fresh content every day terrify you? Where will you find the time? We can provide these services for you.
Young entrepreneurs are understandably more comfortable with using social media for their businesses. But we often encounter older clients, especially in the case of small to medium-sized businesses, who have never had the time to get used to social media and don’t know how to be proceed. This is where we can make a real difference:
- We can set up your social media accounts and help you to develop your social media networking strategy. We can teach you how to use your social media accounts yourself or we can manage the whole process for you.
- We can design your covers (the banner image at the top of a social media page) and the profile pictures (the icon images that appear next to your posts). We also source suitable photos and design memes and infographics to grab attention and ensure a memorable experience for your followers.
- We assist with creating online content schedules and posting on multiple sites every day. We can help you interpret the analytics and use these insights to improve your marketing strategy.
- We can also research interesting, engaging and appropriate content that you can use on your social media pages.
- We can write your blogs and research articles, opinion pieces, images, quotes and relevant news that you can comment on and share across all your social media platforms.