Business visibility is not as difficult as it used to be because of the presence of social media. Today, owing to the simplified process that these platforms use, anyone can use social media outreach to get news about their brand, business out to the world.
Research shows 71% of small-to-mid-sized businesses use social media to market themselves, and of those who do so, 52% post at least daily Another research from Oberlo says 73% of marketers believe that social media marketing has been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business. 54% of social browsers use social media to research products.
It’s clear that social media has helped more businesses build online presence, draw leads and customers, and even improve their brand awareness because of social media. However, if this is your goal and you don’t know how to start off, an explanation of social media outreach will give you a great head start.
What is Social Media Outreach?
Using social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to create an awareness of your brand, content, or to build relationships is called social media outreach. Unfortunately, some marketers use social media outreach as an opportunity to spam influencers. Instead of trying to build genuine, mutually beneficial relationships, they make it transactional.
Reaching out to dozens or hundreds of people you’ve never interacted with and asking them to share your blog post is not outreach. It’s spam. You will learn how to do social media outreach without annoying your audience.
What Type of Account Should You Use For a Social Media Outreach?
Would it be ok to reach out to people through your brand’s social media accounts, or should you delegate social media outreach to someone from your marketing department?
Most brands entrust their social media outreach to their community manager or social media manager. This approach has the advantage of personalizing your campaigns. Instead of being contacted directly by Apple Inc., prospects are contacted by John, who works for Apple Inc.
You can use your brand profiles for social media outreach since they seem more official, particularly if your company is well known. Responding to the official Nike Twitter account may be quicker than responding to someone claiming to work for Nike.
Make sure the person doing the outreach is clearly associated with your company if they are a member of your team.
11 Ways Social Media Outreach Can Boost Your Business
A simple social media outreach can do so much for your business and brand. You easily get to connect with your audience, create interaction forums, and get feedback on your ideas and new releases. To put into perspective, some ways an outreach can boost your business includes:
1. Improves Brand Awareness
An organization’s most important marketing goal is to gain brand recognition. Basically, brands you recognize are more likely to be purchased by consumers. Thankfully, social media allows for a quick and easy way to build brands.
In comparison to traditional media, social media can help you get your brand in front of people much more quickly and easily. Additionally, it gets your audience thinking about your brand even when they aren’t thinking about it. Your logo should be strategically placed so that people can see it easily.
2. Raises Conversion Rates
An effective social media marketing strategy will generate conversation about your brand, products, and partners. When you release a new product and people start talking about it, the fear of missing out will get other people interested in what this product is and what they can gain from it.
With zero marketing costs, you can get to let a lot of people make orders for your products because you harnessed the power of an aspect of social media marketing.
3. Connects Audience Through Social Listening
Monitoring social conversations around a certain topic is called social listening. It helps you understand what’s important to your audience and identify trends that they are following.
As a result, you’ll be able to create content that addresses their pain points. You can also determine the tone and language your target audience uses.
Nike’s branding strategy incorporates the catchphrase “Just Do It.”. You’ll discover other popular keywords as you do your social media outreach, and how they can help your brand.
4. Relays Brand’s Story
The story of a brand (or business, if you prefer) encompasses the facts and feelings that make up that brand. Unlike traditional advertising, in which brands are shown and told, a story must inspire an emotional response. Whether you like it or not, this narrative exists.
Your brand’s mission can be shared through social media by sharing stories. The image of your brand can be affected by effective storytelling. Depending on what you believe will work best, they can be simple or extensive.
Apple excels at this. Take a look at their computers. Think about the experience you had at the Genius Bar. Look at their major product announcements. Each is aligned behind a story of innovators creating beautiful products that push the limits of innovation. Apple is successfully leading the conversation around its products.
5. Gets Customer Feedback
Your leadership team can use feedback to chart a course for every part of the company – from product to user experience and customer service. In terms of customer satisfaction, that’s especially important.
Customer feedback is information, insights, issues, and input provided by your community about their experiences with your company, products, or services. Even (and especially) when negative feedback is provided, it can enable positive change in the customer experience.
A company’s customer feedback serves as a guiding resource for its growth. This doesn’t have to be difficult since social media outreach can make things happen.
6. Builds Customer Loyalty
A company’s customer loyalty indicates how likely a customer will be to buy from them again in the future. A business will be successful in the long run when its customers are satisfied and receive positive experiences, along with value for their money.
Starbucks is a good example of customer loyalty. By offering exemplary loyalty programs, the company has retained and grow its customer base. By leveraging its accomplishments in creating a successful, recognizable brand, Starbucks strives to improve the customer experience every time, every time, at the same level of success.
The company also offers a customer loyalty program called My Starbucks Rewards. Starbucks’ loyalty program includes a mobile app that allows users to pay for their coffee using built-in payment features. So customers can pay for their coffee easily and quickly while reducing the use of credit cards. Starbucks rewards them with loyalty points and discounts in return.
Customer loyalty is built from the company to the customer. Customers are more likely to repeat business with a firm if they are satisfied.
7. Draws Traffic to Blog/Site
You can direct customers to your site with the help of social media outreach. Search engine traffic is unlikely to be all you get. Inbound traffic streams from social media platforms can be more diverse.
As great as social networks are for getting traffic to your site, you need to consider not only what to post, but how often. Your customers won’t appreciate you if you become overbearing.
Posting content on a regular schedule is a good idea (link to one of our blog posts). By doing this, you will ensure that your content is not only posted at the right time, but that you can edit it to support your SEO efforts as well.
8. Makes Virality Possible
Social media content achieves a high level of awareness because of sharing and exposure on social media networks, news websites, aggregators, email newsletters, and search engines.
Content that is viral can generate a significant amount of traffic to your website and brand awareness.
Professional Chef and Media Personality Salt Bae got into the limelight because of his unique style of seasoning his beef with salt. By creating clips of this content and getting other celebrities to replicate the same style, his content gained virality which has boosted his business immensely.
9. Helps Retargeting
Social media marketing uses retargeting very effectively. It is rare for a customer to make a purchase during their first visit to your site. There are still 98% of people who are not reached by advertising. Retargeting ads are one way to accomplish this.
You can use retargeting to track visitors to your site by placing anonymous “cookies” on their browsers. A retargeting service displays ads when visitors visit a social media site. By doing this, your company will be seen more often by customers outside of when they are on your website.
10. Monitor Your Competition
Competitive monitoring refers to identifying and tracking the actions of competitors, particularly on the market and in the pricing of products. By changing their prices according to market trends and competition, a business can retain or gain new customers.
In order to minimize losses, you can identify the mistakes your competitors made and avoid them. You can predict what your competition will do in the future by closely studying what they have done. Your business will benefit from this because your products and services will stand out.
A typical competitive intelligence study includes information and analysis collected from a variety of sources, including news media, interviews with customers and competitors, market experts, trade shows and conferences, and government records.
11. Remain Ahead in Your Industry
Things move quickly online, so don’t get left behind. Being aware of upcoming changes to your industry is the best way to stay ahead of them if your business depends on them.
By starting and sticking with great social media outreach, you can learn about the big moves in your industry and how you can be a part of them.
Conclusion
Social media outreach is the best path to take when you consider building visibility online. You might not have it all figured out initially, but you’ll find your way as you keep going.
Many professionals make the mistake of using a personal account to start their social media exploits, but this comes with a boomerang effect. Hence, it is always best to use a professional account that just anyone can operate and would also be devoid of any personal attack.
By putting your brand out online, you can experience massive growth in many areas of your business without spending a dollar on any advertising costs. As you keep expanding, you’ll branch into advertising to help build stronger brand awareness.
