Social Media Marketing

You have a business twitter account, Facebook? Instagram? Why? Do you have a sales funnel?

What do you want your customers to do? 

In this blog I aim to outline some theory around social media marketing. I will show you how high quality imagery can help your business achieve higher engagement, gain more followers and yield higher returns from investment in social media. – research and learn about sales funnels, or marketing funnels

Have a goal. This is the key to your sales funnel. Do you want visitors to your social platforms and website to follow, engage, interact, click on links, buy products, read about the business, learn about the business  submit an email address? – this is kinda topsy turvy, because the result is the end, but by knowing your result, you can construct a strategy to get to it.

Create usable, interesting and engaging content on blogs/features on your website. Get people to your website and funnel people through a journey to stores where they can buy products. Pin point precisely, with one (or very few clicks) to get customers to the product they want to buy, or to an enquiry or booking form – funnel them to a desired destination on your website.

Make your plan, write it on a pad, get a wall chart, scribble on desks, transfer it to a calendar, investigate and do research into what your clients are after. 

How?

Demographics. Utilise tools like Twitter Analytics, Google Analytics, and Facebook Insights. Trust me, they look overwhelming at first, but after a little while, the data they present to you will be invaluable when deciding what you will be publishing on social media. 

The most powerful thing about analytics is it will present a clear picture of who is looking at your social media channels. Are they Male/female, their age range, their interests, as well as what particular elements of your site are popular and what social content is working, and what is not. This last point needs some analysing itself, though. It might be that your midnight rant about Donald Trump generated 400 clicks through to your website and 1 million retweets, it may not however, have a positive effect on your turnover. 

More interesting still, is the information contained in your owns websites analytics. This will give you information on what pages people are visiting. It will also tll you how long they are on your website for. If it’s not for very long, why is this..? Is it that your content is not very interesting? Or are you some sort of web guru that is delivering the information your customers want immediately? – if you are, tell me, and you can write a guest blog.. 

I didn’t read the link – what is a sales funnel?

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“Funnels are simply the route you want your customers to take on their journey through your website. It’s a tool to provoke a desirable action from your client, usually a sale. ”

With social media as the entry route to your website, you must control what visitors see when they land on your page. Have a plan and layout your blogs, features and webpages in a way that a provokes a natural flow of predictable behaviour. A successful funnel leads the web visitor through your content to move towards a simple one click action – to submit an email address – or even better, results in a genuine enquiry to secure your services, or buy a product. 

What should I post?

Pictures and visual content such as videos engage followers on social media. Here’s some proof.. but by all means, Google it.. 

..and that’s just for Twitter. But, the same is true of Facebook, too. Now, as it’s not quantifiable, there’s no stats on how the quality of a photograph effects this.. But, there’s no doubt a professional photo, will engage more people than a bad one.

Professional photographs demonstrate clearly what it is a company does. With a great photographer, you can start being more creative. Businesses build brand awareness, customer loyalty and grow their customers trust within their brand through imagery. Don’t believe me, go look at Coca- Cola and Pepsi, compare Asda to Tesco and then compare those to Waitrose. See a difference? 

It’s human nature to make assumptions from the images presented to us. We make quick and deep seated opinions of companies based on their chosen imagery. Do you really want that image, directed to your customers, to be determined by a non professional image maker? 

As a professional photographer, my duty is to be aware of all these factors when creating images for companies to use on their websites and social media. 

One of my most challenging commissions was for NCP Car Parks. To change the perception of car parks, and to “make car parks sexy..”
You be the judge as to whether I succeeded.. The Beauty of Car Parks

The image above received over 10,000 likes on Facebook. Unprecedented for the Skinny Chimp Brand. It encapsulated everything the brand was about and engaged it’s target audience. It resulted in higher sales, more engagement and incredible brand awareness for the fledgling clothing label. 

What looks like a spontaneous moment, was rigorously planned, designed and orchestrated, then it was all down to the amazing ability to the highly trained gymnasts to perform the tumbles. 

Skinny Chimp held back the shot, with a pre prepared schedule of social releases, teasers and prepped blogs, web pages and got stock ready for the anticipated influx of interest. Was it all down to an incredible photo..? No, of course not, but shows perfectly how a pre-planned strategy can reap rewards. 

These are just two examples of brands that I have helped. You can see more by visiting the Diary section of this website.   

Each commission that I take on is dealt with the same way. I need to understand the business. What are it’s key aims, it’s brand message and how can I communicate it. Whilst not a social media consultant, I have a wide and varied knowledge of marketing a range of businesses. 

There’s yet more examples of what I do on my own companies social media channels – links can be found here: Avant Social Channels  

So, have I given you enough to think about..? Has this blog been of help..?? Want to see more..? 

Well, here’s a one click option for you…