Social Media Guaranteed Strategies to Monetizing, Mastering, and Dominating Any Platform for Your Brand Facebook, Twitter,…

Increasing Sales

In a recently conducted research, one in every ten online purchases globally came from social media platforms. Of course, this number is bound to grow bigger, even surpassing the \$1 trillion dollar mark.

Social media postings are just as influential as television ads and what's more, it isn't as expensive as television or newspaper ads. A single non-paid ad on Twitter can engage millions of people that are interested in your product or your message.

Interaction on a Humanized Approach

Interaction in social media gives a platform for audiences and businesses to engage on an organic level, in other words- not forced. It also builds stronger ties and increases a trust in a brand. Social media also gives brands a human face- giving them personalities and making a brand more approachable, relatable and connected to the masses.

Mass Posting

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If you have plenty of content to post up, companies can use certain tools such as Hootsuite, TweetDeck, SproutSocial and Buffer to distribute content across the different social media platforms simultaneously. T'his means that a marketer does not need to visit one site at a time to share a new post. Also, each social media now has the ability to sync making messages easier to post in real-time across a variety of platforms.

What Platforms Should you use?

The table below gives you a brief idea of what each social media is about and who should use to post what kind of content.

These are some of the most popular social media but there are plenty more out there such as Tumblr, Snapchat, Periscope and so on.

It is always a good idea to explore each of these platforms because it is all unique in one way or another however, for more traction, audience reach and access, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram should be your top priority.

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CHAPTER 2: SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDIES

Sometimes, the best way to learn things is by trial and error. Often, learning also takes place from observing others. The same can be said for social media. If you want to create a social media campaign, one of the first things you should do is some research. This research is required to find out what kinds of social media campaigns have brands, and companies conducted, how they have used the different types of social media as well as the best practices employed to get their message out to the masses. In this chapter, we will look at a few examples of how some businesses have used social media marketing to get their brand name out to the masses, increase sales and just connect with their audience:

Twitter

Bath Ales, a premium ale brand in the UK took to Twitter to conduct a campaign that ran from October 2010 to January 2011. Their objective with the campaign was simply to reach out and connect with their audience, especially loyal and long time fans of the ale. In this campaign, they urged Twitter users to tweet when they were drinking any of their ales and in return; Bath Ales would tweet back a thank you. This personal touch resonated with their audience and followers of their audience also drank the ales and twitted to Bath Ales. Sales increased by 56% during this period compared to the same time the year before when no social media activity took place. The cost of this campaign- low. The ROI received- impressive!

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Use of Hashtags

With the use of #SausageSaturday hashtag, Heck Food kept their audience regularly updated with their line of sausages. They consistently posted messages related to the hashtag to maintain their customers enthused and inspire other ways of cooking sausages. These posting made the family-based brand more connected with their audiences, delivering a more family oriented brand image.

Starbucks also used instagram and created their own general yet very specific hashtag- #redcupcontest. Hosting this for the second time in a row, Starbucks took to Instagram to checkout customers Instagrams of the hashtag. This content received more than 40,000 entries. All customers had to do was tagging a photo with the hashtag and stand a chance to win prices worth \$500! The best part is,

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Starbucks did not specify if they had to drink a Starbucks drink, but Starbucks was the only one with the Red Cup.

Travel bag manufacturer, eBags also used the power of hashtags through the #TravelTipTuesdays to give their customers tips to make travel and packing easier. Their content is curated to provide useful advice on travel hygiene, packing and travels hacks and much more. This content went above, and beyond self-promotion and because of that, their audience was more open to sharing this content and thus widened their audience based.

Pinterest

One of the newest social media on the block, Pinterest is a great way of pinning everything and anything you see on the World Wide Web. Four Seasons Hotel, realizing the potential of the multitude of travel boards on Pinterest, created their own account and manages several beautiful boards related to travel destinations, travel fashion suggestions, bucket list suggestions, foodie tips and travel hacks, along with their own promotional content. The Four Seasons Pinterest page is an excellent way of using social media to connect with your audience in a non-promotional context.

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Vine

Lowes loves Vines and you can tell by their #fixinsix hashtag. Instead of using vines like how everyone does, Lowes creatively used Vines to share 6 second videos of cleaning, construction and home improvement hacks. They gave out useful, substantial and concise content.

Instagram

The famous burrito makers took advantage of Instagram by allowing fans behind-the-scenes access to see the production line of their ingredients before they become burritos. Chipotle shows videos of avocados being made into guacamole, corn chips being salted, freshly washed jalapenos being sliced. The videos reinforce Chipotle's message of preparing food with real and wholesome ingredients.

LinkedIn

Coca Cola's Linkedln Page uses its LinkedIn page to. post up content related to the Coca-Cola Journey, the soft drink company's digital magazine that produces over 2,000 stories since its November 2012 launch. The magazine has been a huge hit especially on social media. The magazine's demographic is

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59% of audience aged 18 to 35 year old and receives a lot of interaction from its followers on Linkedin which has amassed to 1,107,008 followers. According to Co-Managing editor Jay Move, LinkedIn is a major driving force for traffic for the company. 'That's obviously a different audience. It's a professional audience. It's professional social network versus more of a social network. We see great clickthrough rates on story links that we publish on LinkedIn. The percentage of clickthroughs is markedly higher than it is on Facebook, and to a degree, Twitter." With the professional audience in mind, The Coca-Cola team choose to share its magazine content on LinkedIn, thriving on the site's consumerfocused groups, business innovations, workplace details and jobs.

Snapchat

Conceptualized in 2011, Snapchat became a hit by 2012. Some of the most important users and uses of Snapchat was by political candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton that used SnapChat in 2015 to reach a younger audience. Hillary Clinton, for example, took a Snapchat of her #justchilling. This marks the first time where politicians have used Snapchat as part of their campaign marketing initiatives.

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These case studies show the enormous potential that social media marketing can do for any business depending on what these business needs are from reaching out to a new set of audience, expanding the audience, connccting with existing clientele and increasing profits.

Here's a look at some of the benefits that social media marketing can do to improve your business statistics:

Heightened Levels of Brand Recognition

Every opportunity to increase your brand's visibility is valuable. With social media networks, you now have new channels to voice out vour brand's voice and content without relying on conventional channels such as the television and newspaper. Social media provides an easier way for your audience to access you and it makes it easier for you to access new audience- it works both ways. A Facebook user could have stumbled on your business by seeing their friend liking one of your posts. A Twitter user could've heard about your company by clicking on a trending hashtag. A dormant customer could be more acquainted with your products or services after seeing your brand pop up everywhere.

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Increased Brand Loyalty

Brands that engage in social media read the rewards of higher brand loyalty. A recent report by the 'Texas Tech University stated that a strategic and open source social media plan could help in changing mindsets and increase brand loyalty. Starbucks for example still remains a force on Twitter, ranking in #4 in the Top 100 Twitter Brands. Starbucks remains in the top 10 because they are constantly engaging with their customers. Their tweets are either replies to individual tweets or re-posts of their consumer's tweets. One and off you'll see targeted promotional Starbucks material. In essence, Starbucks is listening to what their customers are talking about and giving feedback whenever necessary.

Madeline DrentlawrOmdientlaw37·Oct 12 sitting at Starbucks and an elderly couple just walked in and ordered pumpkin spice lattes to enjoy together. literally so emo rn

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Increase the Opportunities of Conversion

With every post you make, every video you post, every link you share and every like you give- you open up the opportunities for customers to convert to your brand. With social media, you need to build a following, and when you do, you open up access to recent customers and new customers, and you'll be able to interact with the, through posts, images, videos, and comments. For every post, there is also a reaction that could lead to a website visit, a purchase of a product or even a re-tweet to a whole new customer base.

Just take note that not all reactions result in a site visit, but every positive reaction or interaction leads to a possible conversion down the pipeline. Opportunity is present at any given time when it comes to social media so always be sure to react when you can!

Increase the Human Approach

With social media, brands create a face and personality and also a more humanized approach in their interactions. Social media is the place where brands can act like people and this is crucial because everyone likes doing business with other people and not with companies. A survey done by State of Inbound Marketing showed that social media generates a 100% higher lead-to-close ratio than outbound marketing. The statistics shown at Hubspot.com also showed that people are more trusting towards brands that have a strong social media presence.

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