Social Media

Social Media has been around for more than a decade now. Even so, it is still in its infancy because of the way it’s used today…

It reminds of when email was first introduced, where business email was regularly used for mundane things like jokes, etc. Nowadays, you are seeing email being used in more of a meaningful way.

In the same vein as those early days of email, today’s marketing activities on social media lack meaning, often based on quantity over quality. It has a lot to do with the current timeline structures that exist in social media.

 
 
Social Media is making you swim upstream…

Imagine timelines being like a waterfall that you have to swim up against. On an organic level, the ways to move up that waterfall are:

Social Media  Get more ‘Likes’ or “Shares” to increase your reach.
Social Media  Upload posts in high quantity and frequency.

Social media companies have cleverly created these timelines to present a pseudo-gaming experience that encourages competitive behavior. Competing for attention online gives these companies the benefit of collecting data. The more you post, the more data they get. If you buy into their strategy, then you’re posting as much as possible. The problem with that is it’s only Contributing To The Noise – “noise” being all the low-quality content coming at us from all angles.

Social Media as a contribution to society…

Social media is on the cusp of being a highly effective tool. When it comes to marketing, it has shown us that businesses can market themselves at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing while gaining a wealth of data in return. These are game-changers to the marketing world!

Regardless of these advantages, we seem to forget that everything we do in that digital world is a contribution. It’s a contribution that remains there in digital form even if we no longer see it for ourselves. It’s a place where the content we post can never be taken back. This is why I believe that the real win is in “Bringing Value” online.

Thoughtful intentions will set your business apart from your competition. If your intention is to talk about yourself online incessantly, that doesn’t bring value to others. Remember that there’s more than just you out there in the Digital World, so let me ask you this: What if you switched your intention into helping others rather than just yourself? That change in mindset will bring value and will make all the difference in your marketing efforts.

Marketing is a lot like dating…

As a funny depiction, I’ll use my past dating life as an example. When I would go on a date, I would count the number of times the other person would say the word “I” and “You” during the conversation. When the number of “I”’s greatly outweighed the number of “You”’s, that hinted to me that the person could possibly be self-centered. Where’s the value in that?

How to Bring Value on Social Media

I can’t help you with your dating life, but I can help you with your social media marketing. It is one thing to tell you to “Bring Value,” but it’s another to know how to do it. That’s why I have created this short breakdown of considerations to help you navigate the social media landscape:

Identify Your Audience

You can’t sell to a buyer if you don’t know who the buyer is. That said, the big challenge is to define who your buyer is and figure out what is important to them. This is why Persona Development is so important in marketing. Persona Development comes in different forms like focus groups, customer interviews, etc. Reaching out to your current customers or polling potential customers will provide you a massive amount of insight.

Talk To Your Audience

You can’t convince a buyer to buy without speaking in their language. Just talking “at” your audience won’t help you here. You need to talk to your audience on their terms. In doing so, your buyers will relate and connect with your messaging better.

Meet Your Audience

You can’t talk to your buyer if you don’t know where your buyer goes for their information. Otherwise, you will just be talking to yourself. Google says a business can potentially have up to 500 touches online with a potential buyer before they make a decision.

The old movie line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it; he will come.”, just doesn’t apply in the social media world by itself. It’s crucial that you meet your potential buyers where they go. Meet them on their turf so that they can discover your business and what you’re selling.

To start Bringing Value to your audience, download my Buyer Familiarity Checklist to see what audience targeting is all about.

Looking for a digital marketing consultant? Kak Varley Digital Marketing Agency provides digital marketing services such as social media marketing for small businesses. Helping them grow their online presence and social media community.  Contact us below.

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Kak Varley
Kak VarleyChief Digital Officer
Kak Varley got the internet bug right at its inception. He started kakvarley.com in 2015 to help businesses grow and scale using various sales and inbound marketing methodologies. With 25+ years experience in Sales and has certainly mastered the sales craft and now focuses on helping businesses grow and scale.