By James Thorpe
Social media marketing is big business. A Marketing Sherpa survey found that 95% of 18-34 year olds and 92% of 35-44 year olds follow brands on social media. No innovative business can afford to leave social media marketing out of its business these days.
What is social media marketing?
In a nutshell, social media marketing means harnessing the power of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in order to promote your brand. It’s a huge area of modern marketing, with a host of different strategies attuned to different social media sites.
Online bingo – a case study
Online bingo sites are well versed in the importance of social media marketing to their business. Games like those offered by bgo mobile bingo services target modern, tech-savvy players who are wide open to social media recommendations. So what makes the difference between a site like bgo, which has successfully harnessed the power of social media marketing to promote its brand, and competitors like Swanky Bingo and Robin Hood Bingo, which are less well known?
Having a solid social media strategy is a key starting point. Social media marketing can seem rather an overwhelming topic, but it doesn’t have to be. If your business wants to get to grips with social media marketing, start by outlining your goals. Are you aiming to use social media to make your brand more well-known, to sell a specific product or to add to your membership database? Your individual company’s motives will to a large extent determine the best course of action.
Having a famous brand ambassador who is instantly recognizable to social media users can also be a help. American actor and comedian Verne Troyer promotes the bgo brand. Easily recognizable to those who’ve grown up with Austin Powers and Harry Potter films, his endorsement adds greatly to the brand’s social media marketing efforts.
Social media marketing – the next level
Once you’ve begun carrying out your social media strategy, the key to taking it to the next level is analysis of your results. Reviewing the success of social media marketing activities can seem like something of a dark art, but there are plenty of ways to measure the response to your social media actions. According to Simply Measured, 56% of businesses use engagement metrics to measure the success of their social media marketing. In simple terms, that means monitoring your likes, comments, retweets and shares in order to see what works and what doesn’t.
Don’t forget mobile
As a final word, don’t forget the importance of targeting mobile users when it comes to your social media strategy. Mobile browsing now accounts for more than 50% of all web browsing. Make sure that your links from social media sites lead your potential customers through to a fully optimized site that they can easily browse on their phones. If you’re not optimizing correctly, you’re missing out – there’s little point in investing time and effort in implementing a social media marketing strategy if the website that all those efforts lead to is not user friendly!
