5 Ways To Optimize Your Social Media Campaigns

A Practical Way to Turn Social Media into Real Growth

March 12, 2026/in Social Media, Storybranding /by SEO

In the modern digital era, it’s unimaginable for businesses not to be active on social media. However, most brands are guilty of merely “posting for the sake of posting,” thus, they get lots of “likes” but hardly have any significant impact on the bottom line. If you want to go beyond vanity metrics, it is essential to develop a business social media strategy that views these platforms as a viable continuation of your sales and marketing funnel.

At Stevens & Tate Marketing, we are experts at refocusing from noise to results. Indeed, a social media account is a huge potential growth lever, but it is also a challenge. Besides having a creative eye, a well-planned social strategy framework is needed, which should also be in line with other commercial objectives.

A social media growth strategy is a written plan that outlines how a brand can increase its awareness, engagement, and conversion rate on social media platforms over time. In contrast to a simple posting schedule, a real growth strategy emphasizes the “why” of each engagement, thus making sure each content item helps a potential customer make up their mind to buy.

The Three Main Components of a Social Media Marketing Strategy

It is necessary that your social media marketing strategy be based on three main pillars if you want to see growth that will be reflected in figures:

Audience Resonance: Getting to know in detail who your customers are and what problems they have.
Consistent Optimization: Leveraging performance data to enhance your tactics and make sure your social media plan stays current with platform algorithms.
Strategic Content Planning: Developing a purposeful content calendar and publishing strategy that aligns with business goals, maintains brand consistency, and delivers value to your audience across the right platforms at optimal times.

From Awareness to Advocacy

To transform social media into a major source of growth, you need to lead your audience through a coherent journey. That’s where a well-thought-out professional social strategy framework plays a key role.

1. Building Targeted Awareness

The very first stage of any business social media strategy is getting the right people to see your content. It’s not about the overall reach but rather the quality of the reach. Through a mixture of organic content and a targeted paid social approach.

2. Nurturing Through Engagement

After you’ve captured their attention, your social media strategy should be all about getting your audience to trust you. Here, the concept of “Storybranding” works wonders. Telling the story of your brand’s “why” and showcasing customer success stories can turn a passive follower into an active lead.

It can be quite daunting to plan a social media growth strategy from scratch. However, breaking it down into a series of small, doable tasks will help you get it done quickly and efficiently.

Identify Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Working without a clear vision of your goal is basically a waste of effort. Are you interested in website traffic? Or is it lead form completions that matter to you? If you want to know a great tip, then understand that any good business social media strategy starts with determining the end result first.
Content Pillar Development: Don’t mix up your content plan. Instead, choose 3–5 main content pillars that will act as a framework for your social media marketing strategy.
Implementation and Calibration: A social media plan is not a “write once, forget it” document. At Stevens & Tate, we focus on the critical importance of monthly reporting and recalibration. We look at posts and ideas that generate great engagement, and then we leverage our social strategy framework to maximize return on investment.

Strategic Integration

At Stevens & Tate Marketing, we do not consider social media on its own. We combine your social media strategy with our successful “Make Things Happen” process to reach the full potential of your marketing efforts.

In that way, we make sure that your social media presence corresponds well to your SEO, email marketing, and overall brand positioning.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a social media plan and a social media strategy?

A social media strategy defines the general ‘why’ and ‘how’ of your presence (goals, target audience, brand voice). On the other hand, a social media plan is the tactical ‘when’ and ‘where’ (content calendar, specific platforms, posting times).

Should my business be on every social media platform?

No. A clever social strategy framework concentrates on the platforms where your particular target audience most frequently spends their time. It is more beneficial to be strong in one or two platforms than to be a weak player in five.

What makes a social media marketing strategy “practical”?

A practical strategy is one that can be kept going. It is a good mix of ambitious growth goals and the real resources (time, budget, content) your team has available, and therefore, long-term consistency is guaranteed.

Conclusion

Social media should work for you, not be a burden. If what you do now just feels like trying to talk to an empty room, then you definitely need to reconsider your social media marketing strategy. Stevens & Tate Marketing employs a perfect mixture of creative storytelling and data analytics to assist you in converting your followers into your customers and customers into your passionate fans.

Don’t waste your time on guesses, be focused on your growth. Explore Stevens & Tate Marketing Services, and together we can develop a winning plan that really works for you!

TikTok Advertising Strategies Are Becoming More Common

March 10, 2026/in Articles, Blog, Brand Story Telling, Content Marketing, Digital Media, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Media, Mobile Advertising, News & Insights, Social Media, Trending, Video Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Most businesses these days are using at least one or two social media channels to market their brand. However, new social channels emerge every year, many of which are worth your attention. Take TikTok for example. Although initially dismissed by most as another social media platform for teens, more businesses are taking notice. This is because they are beginning to realize that TikTok is attracting more adult users every day. As such, TikTok advertising is well worth considering.

What is TikTok?

TikTok started off as a platform on which users could upload videos of themselves lip-synching to music videos. These videos were no more than 15 seconds long. In a way, they were like a more niche-based version of the now-defunct Vine social platform. As such, it was no surprise that the platform attracted a younger audience. However, older users began taking advantage of TikTok’s audience to showcase themselves in different ways. For example, comedians would upload short videos of stand-up routines. Another example is of skateboarders, who would upload tricks that they landed. Soon, TikTok allowed its users to upload videos up to 60 seconds long.

Who Uses TikTok?

TikTok still has a userbase that leans on the younger side with more than 66 percent of its users under the age of 30. However, if you have a younger target audience, then TikTok is very much worth your time. This is especially true when you consider the fact that more parents are using TikTok on a daily basis (it’s estimated that 41 percent of dads have used TikTok). Not to mention that TikTok currently has over six million users in the U.S. alone.

Video Marketing Ideas: Using Storytelling in Social Media

How Can You Leverage TikTok To Market Your Brand?

If your buyer personas match the target audience of TikTok, then you may be curious as to how you can use the platform to your advantage. The following are just a few effective tactics when it comes to TikTok advertising:

User-generated content

TikTok is a great platform for encouraging user-generated content. Instagram is the other social channel where user-generated content is incredibly effective. One of the reasons user-generated content is so successful on both of these channels is because it encourages active audience engagement. Not only will they be engaged with your brand, but they will also generate content that helps promote your brand. In a sense, you’ll be getting free advertising. Users are more likely to participate using TikTok as well due to the platform’s focus on video creation.

TikTok challenges

One of the reasons why TikTok’s popularity has exploded over recent years is due to the challenges that users engage in. For example, one type of challenge involves doing a specific dance move or physical challenge (such as taking off your shirt while doing a wall stand). Many of these challenges go viral organically, but businesses have begun creating their own challenges in an effort to engage more users. When creating a challenge, make sure to use a hashtag along with an appropriate title. Doing so ensures that the challenge has a better chance of being found and shared.

Influencer marketing

Just like Instagram, TikTok is home to users with enormous followings. As such, you should consider influencer marketing. Influencer marketing involves building a relationship with someone on the platform with a large influence (number of followers). As long as your brand is relevant to them, they will be able to influence their followers’ awareness and feelings about your brand. For example, if you create a challenge, you can get it exposure by having an influencer take part in that challenge. They can also encourage their followers to do the same.

TikTok’s advertising platform

Like other social platforms, TikTok does have its own advertising platform that you can use. Some of the options include in-feed videos, brand takeover ads, branded AR content, and more. TikTok can even help assist with your influencer marketing campaign via its customer influence package. Additionally, you will can customize your targeting options using website traffic, ad engagement, app activity, or customer contact data.

Begin Integrating TikTok Advertising As Part Of Your Social Marketing Strategy

Although TikTok has a younger user-base, it is continuing to grow, attracting more and more older users. As such, it’s worth considering TikTok advertising, especially if any of your buyer personas match with TikTok’s current audience.

How to Use Pinterest for Your Content Marketing Strategy

March 5, 2026/in Articles, Blog, Directors, Social Media, Trending /by Nicole Wagner

Pinterest is a very useful marketing tool to promote your brand using creative content. 88% of weekly “Pinners” have made a purchase based on content they saw from brands on Pinterest, yet only 28% of marketers are already using Pinterest. This platform remains relevant in popularity and is used as a resource for craft and decorations, home building (hyperlink to first Pinterest blog) shopping, and more. Developing content that is useful and creative on this platform can help generate brand awareness and creatively attract customers to your product.

Starting up your Pinterest Account

When starting up your Pinterest marketing account, ensure that you sign up as a business account. Organize your content into multiple boards for various target segments or topics of interest relating to your brand. Pinterest is a visual platform, so it is vital to keep in mind the following factors in content creation:

Use high quality, soft, and original images when possible
Images without faces perform 23% higher on this platform
Present information in creative and well-presented infographics
Be sure to size your images correctly
Simple is key

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Increasing Pins and Reshares

Gaining a following on social media is a timely process, but there are some key tips to be successful on building your Pinterest account:

Pin regularly.
Use keywords for SEO
Use promoted pins.
Use Rich Pins to offer more detail than standard pins.
Link your content to other boards and websites
Include hovering pin buttonson your website.
Post during Pinterest’s peak hours, which is between 2:00-4:00pm and 8:00-11:00pm.
Invite other companies to collaborate on a board.

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Pinterest Marketing Campaign Launch and Beyond

Build a strategy that takes consumers from awareness to purchase in the buyer’s journey by taking advantage of Pinterest ad formats such as Promoted Video for awareness and Promoted Carousel for consideration.
Because pinners are more likely to purchase new products at the beginning of their lifecycle, “heavy up” on media at the start of the campaign.
Use Pinterest’s Audience Targeting feature to gain repeat purchases.

Whether your goal is to generate leads or increase brand awareness, Pinterest is a fun, creative, and effective tool for business marketing.

Click here to learn more about social media from our FREE Social Prospecting Workbook

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Sourcing User Generated Content

February 4, 2026/in Advertising Agency, Articles, Content Marketing, Digital Media, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Media, Mobile Advertising, Public Relations, Social Media, Storybranding, Trending /by Nicole Wagner

One source of content generation you may not have tapped into yet is user-generated content. Content marketing is a critical component of any successful marketing strategy. However, it can take a lot of resources to produce your own content on a regular basis. Even if you’ve managed to regularly generate high-quality content, you should look for other ways to create new content for variety’s sake, such as high quality user generated content.

What Is User-Generated Content?

User-generated content refers to content created by consumers and not brands. Such content includes videos, pictures, reviews, articles, and more. For instance, if a consumer takes a picture of themselves using your product and posts it on Instagram, that’s user-generated content. The following are just a few of the benefits of user-generated content:

Free publicity

Your audience is essentially promoting your brand on your behalf. As a result, user-generated content can help increase brand awareness.

Free content

Creating your own content requires a lot of resources. User-generated content requires none — your audience is creating the content for you. While you don’t own it, you can share it and reap the benefits of it.

Positive word of mouth

Customers trust other customers more than they trust brands. Positive user-generated content can, therefore, help to boost your brand reputation by creating trust.

How To Source Usable Generated-Content

Considering how beneficial this free content can be, you’ll want to do everything you can to encourage it. However, the biggest challenge lies in the lack of control you have over the content. You can’t control the message, format, or quality, after all. But there are a few ways that you can guide your audience to create the content that will benefit you most. The following are a few tips on how to source high-quality user-generated content:

Encourage

Don’t just wait for your audience to create content relevant to your brand. You need to encourage it. For instance, hold a contest on social media in which users vote on the best submission. You can then give the winner a prize. There are many ways that you can encourage content generation.

Utilize Marketing Audiences on Pinterest Today

Provide clear guidelines

If you’re looking for a specific type of content, then you need to provide guidelines. For example, if you want user reviews, consider providing a basic review format. Such a format could list three broad questions that users can answer in order to generate a review.

Provide content creation tips

Your audience does not consist of professional content creators. As such, provide tips that they can use to create higher quality content. For instance, if you’re holding a video creation contest on YouTube or on Instagram, provide your users with a list of basic filming tips. Such tips can help cut down on the amount of poor quality content that you might receive.

Offer an example

If you’re looking for a specific type of content, then provide an example. When users see what you’re looking for, it will help them create the kind of content you want. For instance, if you’re hosting a picture taking contest, upload a few pictures of your own that would be considered exceptional examples. By providing an example, you also make sure that users understand your instructions more clearly.

Identify the channel

Make sure that your audience knows where to send it. The last thing you want is users posting their content on different platforms or sending it to you via different channels. If you’re promoting a contest, specify what platform they should post to or what hashtag they should use. Provide detailed instructions on how to submit content. By making it clear what channel you’re using, it will be easier for you to track and organize user-generated content.

Open a line of communication

Provide a channel through which your audience can contact you. This channel should be specifically for users who are creating content. You can do this by providing a specific support email address, a phone number, or a page they can DM on social media.

Monitor performance

Track how the content users create for your brand is performing. By doing so, you can identify what types are the most effective. You can then adjust your guidelines and instructions to encourage the creation of that type of content.

Enhance your Strategy Today

User-generated content can go a long way towards boosting brand trust. Not to mention that it’s a great way to expand your content marketing strategy. As such, make sure that you encourage the creation of high-quality user content. You can do this by providing your audience with general guidance and encouragement to drive effective user-generated content creation.

Social Media Solutions: Understanding The Importance of Social Media Engagement vs. Following

January 12, 2026/in Articles, Directors, Social Media /by Nicole Wagner

Social media has become one of the most important marketing platforms over the past decade or so. This is because there are hundreds of different social channels out there, all of which cater to different demographics. If you can find the right social platform, you will find it much easier to find and target niche audiences. However, one of the common mistakes businesses make is focusing too much on expanding their followers instead of engaging with the followers that they already have.

Why You Should Focus On Engagement

Social media allows you to connect directly with your audience. That said, spending your time developing relationships with your audience is much more important than increasing your brand awareness. There’s a temptation to try and get the most followers as possible, especially if you’re competing with similar businesses who are doing the same thing. This, however, will simply turn your marketing efforts into a popularity contest.

By spending your time engaging with your current followers instead of chasing the followers you don’t have, you’ll find that your efforts will have a more lasting impact. By building your relationship with your followers, you will eventually build trust and brand loyalty. This can translate to repeat sales from the same followers. Additionally, once you’ve built relationships with these followers, they will turn into brand ambassadors. They will engage with your content by sharing, liking, and commenting on it, thereby exposing followers in their personal social circles to your brand.

5 Ways To Optimize Your Social Media

How to Improve Your Engagement

By focusing on engagement, your followers will help you get more followers. The following are a few Social Media solutions to help you improve engagement with the followers you have:

Post content on a regular basis – Use your social channels to post links to your newest blog posts. When followers share your content, it will be seen by more people. The engagement level of your content can also give you a good idea of what types of content resonates with your audience. This allows you to adjust your content strategy so that your content is more relevant to your specific audience.
Incite conversation – When posting content, ask a relevant question to what you’ve posted in order to encourage your followers to comment on it. You can also simply spark a conversation by asking general questions on your social pages. Twitter is a particularly effective channel for this strategy.
Always respond – If your followers take the time to post a comment, take the time to respond. Whether their comment was positive, negative, or simply just a response to something you posted, answer them. This shows them that you are actively engaged and that the conversation isn’t one-sided. Be sure to respond to negative comments as well instead of simply deleting them (unless they are purposefully inflammatory). Your followers will appreciate your efforts to deal with negative experiences in a friendly and professional manner. In this way, social media can be quite effective as a PR tool.
Hold contests – Social media contests are a great way to engage followers. You could do something simple like hold sweepstakes in which only followers can enter, or you can hold a contest that’s a bit more involved. For example, you could hold a photography contest on Instagram. You can even have the winner voted on by the followers themselves.

How To Use Social Media To Drive B2B Sales

Social media solutions that improve engagement will eventually help you to increase your followers as well. Be sure to use these social media solutions to help improve engagement with followers on social media.

Current Video Trends on Social Media for Service Businesses to Succeed

August 22, 2025/in Articles, Directors, Social Media, Video Marketing /by Terry Becker

Summary

Video content is essential for service businesses looking to connect with customers and grow their social media presence. Video trends on social media, such as short-form videos, behind-the-scenes content, live streams, and user-generated videos, are shaping engagement today. By leveraging these strategies, businesses can enhance their brand, build trust, and drive sales.

Short-form videos – Quick, engaging content on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts
Behind-the-scenes (BTS) content – Showcasing employees, daily operations, and service processes
- Interactive live streams – Hosting Q&As, service demos, and exclusive promotions
User-generated content – Encouraging customer testimonials and shared experiences
Micro-storytelling with text overlays – Creating engaging, silent-friendly videos with captions
Hyperlocal & personalized content – Highlighting community involvement and local customers
AI-enhanced video editing – Using AI tools for subtitles, smart editing, and voiceovers

Why Video Matters for Service Industry Businesses

With so many screens vying for our attention, video content isn’t just an option—it’s a necessity. Service businesses like senior living communities, restaurants, salons, fitness centers, and auto repair shops can use video to engage audiences, showcase expertise, and build lasting relationships with customers.

1. Short-Form Video Dominance

Short-form videos, typically between 15 to 60 seconds, have become the go-to format for quick engagement. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts make it easy to share:

Quick tutorials
Customer testimonials
Before-and-after service transformations
Industry-related trends and challenges

2. Behind-the-Scenes (BTS) Content

BTS videos help humanize brands by showcasing what happens behind closed doors. This type of content builds trust and makes businesses more relatable. For example, some ideas include:

A day in the life of an employee
Service preparation or work in progress
How products are sourced, made, or delivered

3. Interactive & Educational Live Streams

Live videos create real-time engagement and foster direct interactions with customers. For instance, effective live content ideas include:

Q&A sessions to address customer concerns
Live service demonstrations
Virtual tours of facilities
Limited-time offers and exclusive promotions

4. User-Generated Content & Customer Stories

Authenticity is key on social media, and nothing is more convincing than real customer experiences. Therefore, businesses can:

Encourage customers to share video testimonials
Feature user-generated content in marketing campaigns
Host video contests to increase brand engagement

5. Micro-Storytelling with Text Overlays

Since many users watch videos without sound, captions and on-screen text help ensure engagement. Specifically, popular styles include:

Mini case studies showing customer transformations
FAQs presented in a visual, engaging way
Stories told through quick text animations

6. Hyperlocal & Personalized Video Content

Service businesses thrive on local engagement. Consequently, creating region-specific content makes brands feel more personal and relevant. Ideas include:

Highlighting local partnerships
Featuring community events and involvement
Showcasing local customers and employees

7. AI-Generated & Enhanced Video Editing

AI-powered tools make video editing more accessible and professional-looking. In particular, businesses are using AI for:

Auto-captioning for better accessibility
AI-generated voiceovers for multilingual content
Smart editing tools for smoother transitions and effects

For service industry businesses, video marketing is both essential and affordable. By incorporating short-form videos, behind-the-scenes content, live streams, and AI-enhanced editing, brands can engage audiences, grow their reach, and boost customer trust.

Optimizing Your Social Media Strategy: SEO Pitfalls to Avoid

April 25, 2025/in Articles, Search & Social, SEO, Social Media /by Nicole Wagner

Crafting an effective social media strategy is essential in today’s digital marketing landscape. A well-optimized approach can lead to increased brand visibility, engagement, and conversions. However, various SEO pitfalls can hinder these outcomes. This comprehensive guide explores crucial SEO issues to avoid, ensuring your social media efforts are both effective and rewarding.

First, let’s take a look at SEO’s Role:

Enhances content discoverability on search engines: Implementing SEO practices can significantly improve the likelihood of your content appearing in top search engine results. This visibility is crucial for attracting potential customers who are actively searching for related topics or products.
Applies to websites and social media profiles/content: SEO is not limited to websites alone; it extends to social media profiles and their content. By optimizing social media posts and profiles with relevant keywords and metadata, you can boost their discoverability both on social platforms and search engines.
Increases visibility and drives traffic: Effective SEO strategies lead to higher visibility online, making it easier for your target audience to find you. This increased online presence directly contributes to more traffic to your website or social media profiles, potentially leading to higher engagement rates and conversions.

Platform-Specific Optimization

Optimizing content for each social media platform’s unique algorithms is crucial for maximizing engagement and reach.

Unique Platform Algorithms:
- Each social media platform operates with its own set of algorithms and best practices that dictate content visibility. Understanding these can significantly enhance your content’s performance.
- Tailoring your content and engagement strategies to align with each platform’s specific algorithms can lead to better visibility and interaction rates.
Examples:
- Instagram: This platform’s algorithm prioritizes engaging visual content and the strategic use of hashtags to increase discoverability among targeted audiences.
- Twitter: Known for its preference for brief, impactful content paired with timely and relevant hashtags, Twitter is ideal for real-time engagement and news sharing.
- LinkedIn: As a professional network, LinkedIn values insightful, industry-related content that fosters professional growth and networking opportunities.
- Facebook: With its diverse user base, Facebook’s algorithm promotes a variety of content types, from videos and images to in-depth articles, to engage a broad audience.

Also Read: The Secret to SEO and 5 Tips on Optimizing Your Results

Overlooking Keywords

Incorporating relevant keywords into your social media strategy is essential for enhancing visibility and attracting the right audience.

Keyword Integration:
- Embedding well-researched, targeted keywords into your social media profiles, posts, and hashtags can greatly improve your content’s searchability and reach.
- Conduct thorough keyword research to identify terms that your target audience frequently uses, ensuring your content resonates and is easily discoverable.
Balancing Act:
- Achieving a balance between incorporating relevant keywords and maintaining a natural, engaging content flow is key to keeping your audience interested while optimizing for search engines.
- Avoid overusing keywords in your content, as this can lead to a decline in content quality and user engagement, potentially harming your brand’s reputation and reach.

Now Let’s take a look at the top SEO Issues that can sabotage your social media strategy optimization efforts:

1. Ignoring Local SEO

Geographic Targeting:

Incorporate location-based keywords for businesses with a physical presence or local target market
Utilize geotagging features in posts and profile settings
Local Engagement:
- Engage with local communities and events
- Share location-specific content to enhance local relevance and visibility

2. Inconsistent Branding and Messaging

Brand Identity Consistency:

Maintain a uniform brand voice, imagery, and messaging across platforms
Use consistent logos, color schemes, and brand messaging to reinforce brand recognition

Content Cohesion:

Align content themes and messaging with your overall brand strategy
Ensure all posts contribute to a cohesive brand narrative

3. Ignoring Visual Content Optimization

Visual Appeal:

Use high-quality, engaging visuals in line with brand aesthetics
Optimize image sizes and formats for each platform

Alt Text and Captions:

Include descriptive alt text and captions with relevant keywords
Enhance accessibility and SEO with meaningful, keyword-rich descriptions

4. Neglecting User Engagement

Interactive Content:

Create posts that encourage user interaction, such as polls, questions, and calls-to-action
Monitor and respond to comments, messages, and mentions promptly

Community Building:

Foster a sense of community among followers
Encourage user-generated content and share user stories relevant to your brand

5. Poor Linking Practices

Share links to high-quality, relevant content
Avoid excessive linking that can detract from user experience

Cross-Platform Promotion:

Promote your social media content across different platforms
Include links to your social profiles on your website and in email signatures

6. Not Leveraging Analytics

Performance Tracking:

Use social media analytics tools to track the performance of your posts and campaigns
Analyze engagement rates, reach, and follower growth

Insight-Driven Adjustments:

Adapt your strategy based on analytics insights
Test different content types, posting times, and engagement tactics to optimize results

Expanding Your Strategy

Explore emerging content formats like live videos, stories, and reels
Stay abreast of platform updates and new features to leverage them effectively

Collaborations and Partnerships:

Partner with influencers and other brands to expand your reach
Collaborate on content creation to tap into new audiences

Social Listening:

Monitor social conversations about your brand and industry
Use insights from social listening to inform content creation and engagement strategies

You Can Do it!

To maximize the impact of your social media strategy, it’s crucial to navigate around common SEO pitfalls. By focusing on platform-specific optimization, strategic keyword use, local SEO, consistent branding, and engaging content, you can elevate your social media presence. Additionally, embracing visual content optimization, active user engagement, strategic linking, and analytics will further enhance your strategy. By avoiding these SEO issues and continuously adapting your approach based on insights and trends, you can achieve sustained success!

Also Read: When Are the Best Times to Post On Social Media?

Ready to boost your online presence and avoid common SEO mistakes on social platforms? Let the best social media marketing agency guide your strategy to success. Don’t let poor optimization hold your brand back—partner with experts who know what works. Contact us at 630-627-5200 today for a free consultation and discover how we can make things happen for your business.

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How to Leverage Influencer Marketing for Your Brand’s Success

March 10, 2025/in Articles, Blog, Social Media /by Nicole Wagner

Starting a business is one challenge, and building it into a success story is another. Several startups fail due to factors ranging from poor planning and ineffective marketing strategies to economic downturns and operational inefficiencies. As far as marketing is concerned, there are several lessons to learn from some of the most successful companies.

In the below information, we’ll discuss influencer marketing and how influencer collaboration with the right influencers can be a beneficial for your brand success. You’ll also learn how to maximize influencer collaborations and make this marketing strategy work for your brand.

What is Influencer Marketing, and Why Does it Matter?

As the name suggests, influencer marketing is a technique where you partner up with a popular figure or celebrity to help promote your products or services. Influencers can be individuals or a group of people with a huge following, especially on popular social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok.

Whether your business is a startup or an established entity, influencer marketing can help drive brand awareness, increasing traffic and conversions. It’s worth noting that every business is unique, and how effective influencer marketing will be for your business depends on factors such as:

Nature of the business: Beauty, lifestyle, and fashion businesses have a natural fit with influencers, while those in the B2B sector may find this marketing technique challenging.
Online presence: A robust online presence, characterized by a well-designed website and active social media profiles, will attract the best influencers and may translate to better conversions.
Target demographics: The influencer’s ready audience should be your preferred target market. Otherwise, a mismatch will see your marketing campaign struggle.
Choice of influencer: Consider the influencer’s values, reputation, and audience engagement before striking a partnership deal. More on this later.

Besides having an engaged and loyal following willing to buy your products or services, influencers put a personality and face to your brand, making it more reputable and trustworthy. The right influencers will also push your product or services to a broader audience, thanks to the varied platforms they’ll use to promote your brand.

How Can You Leverage Influencer Collaborations to Drive Brand Success?

Most influencers have great ideas on how they can partner with you to market your brand. Even so, you may specify how you want them to promote your products or services. And while there’s no wrong or right way to promote your brand, some influencer marketing techniques are more effective than others. Here are a few ways to leverage influencer marketing for maximum impact:

Try Podcast Endorsements

According to PEW research, 49% of adults in the United States have listened to a podcast in the past 12 months. Therefore, it makes economic sense to partner with podcast hosts to promote your brand among their loyal following. To make this strategy work best, you want to sponsor specific episodes of several podcasts your target audience is already subscribed to.

Use Influencer Content as Paid Ads

Standard ads on social media platforms rarely convert since everyone sees them as a nuisance. However, this won’t be the case if you partner with an influencer and let them create a social ad with their face or voice on it.

Use Brand Ambassadors

Over the years, businesses have used brand ambassador programs to build trust and win customers. With this technique, companies tap into loyal customers who already use their products or services and partner with them to recommend their brand to their following or audience. This program works well when the loyal customer you want to pick has a huge following that can convert easily.

Try Contests and Giveaways

With this technique, you’ll provide your influencers with a product or service they can reward or give to their followers. You can modify this technique to have the influencer’s followers like your brand’s page or post. The giveaways may come in the form of contests or challenges meant to boost social media engagement, brand following, and awareness.

Gift Influencers and Obtain Honest Reviews

Another way to leverage influencer marketing is to gift an influencer your product or provide them with your services for free and let them give their followers an honest review of what they think about your product/service. If the influencer thinks your product/service is excellent, they’ll recommend it to their followers. Otherwise, they won’t.

How to Identify the Right Influencers for Your Brand Target Audience?

Before comfortably trusting an influencer to promote your brand, you must follow due process throughout the sourcing and selection stages. The right influencer for your brand is someone you can trust and who believes in your business. Here are a few things to look out for when choosing an influencer to partner up with:

Relevant audience. Not all influencers have an audience that resonates with your business or target demographic. Do your research to ensure you partner with someone who will directly add value to your business.
Brand Values. The right influencer will have values that resonate with your brand and target audience. You can check the influencer on social media platforms to learn more about their values and belief systems.
Communication and professionalism. One of the pillars of the 4Cs marketing model is effective communication. Customers always want to know how buying your product will benefit them, meaning the influencer should do a great job selling your brand. Similarly, you want to work with a professional influencer who has strong communication skills.
Content Quality. As much as the influencer is authentic, trustworthy, and meets the brand alignment metrics, you also want to ensure the content they produce meets your expected quality standards.

Bottom Line

Whether turning your employees into influencers or picking celebrity figures to partner with, influencer marketing is generally a true and tested technique. The goal is to choose a trustworthy person with a reasonable social following committed to walking the marketing journey with you, one step at a time. Use the tips above to guide you throughout the influencer marketing campaign, and where necessary, seek professional help for brand strategy services from a reputable marketing strategy agency.

How To Use Social Media To Drive B2B Sales

November 15, 2024/in Articles, Attraction Marketing, B2B Marketing, Directors, Social Media /by Nicole Wagner

In spite of the enormous success of social media marketing, many B2B companies still haven’t successfully jumped on the social train. This because many B2B companies are unsure how to utilize their social media platforms to the best of their advantage. Sharing will help alot, when it comes to attraction marketing.

Social media channels enable you to reach a wide net of potential customers and connect with individuals on a more personal level. More people are using these platforms to research potential purchasing decisions. Therefore, your posts should be educating potential buyers about what you have to offer and showcasing why you’re an authoritative source. Despite what you may have heard, you don’t have to post memes or funny videos to stand out.

If you’ve put your social media strategies on the back burner, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. Here are some ways to improve B2B sales via social media:

How to reach your target audience:

The first step in developing your social media strategy should be to develop a roadmap of whom you want to send your social media messages to. This outline will help you reach the right people at the right time and ensure your messages won’t be lost in all of the noise. Your outline should include the messages you wish to send to your target audience. You’ll want to ask yourself the following:

Who is your audience?
What social media platforms do they use?
What is the end goal of your social media posts?

Once you’ve developed your plan, it’s time to set your posts into action.

Read More: B2B Branding Tips For The New Buyer

How to target businesses on social media:

When most people think B2B sales and social media, they think of Linkedin. While LinkedIn is known as the top social platform for businesses, this doesn’t mean other platforms should be ignored. Social media isn’t solely about generating B2B sales leads; it’s also about strengthening your brand awareness.

With social media, you’re able to humanize your brand by personally engaging with your audience. Since most people are turning to Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter, to look for solutions to their problems, your company should be visible on these platforms and ready to assist them.

How to cater your message to businesses:

Social media is a great place to showcase your brand’s level of expertise and gain trusted adviser status. Since most buyers are 60% into the buying decision before they even reach out to a sales representative, your posts should reach them early on in their journey. You can do this by posting helpful and educational content that will nudge potential customers along the sales cycle without seeming “pushy”. Case studies, blogs, product demos, and videos are great ways to initially convey your messages to your audience.

Read More: Customer Engagement Strategy

How to turn interest into a lead:

Like all marketing, social media marketing’s end goal is to generate qualified leads. All of your posts should have a content offer or call-to-action in order to urge your visitors to take steps toward purchasing. Make sure all of your social media platforms redirect to your website, and vice versa. Easy navigation is key to successful online marketing.

Your company’s social media marketing will be successful if you create personal relationships with your customers and provide them with valuable and educational content. Social media gives you the opportunity to reach a larger audience than ever before. Take this opportunity and run with it!

The Power of an Influencer Marketing Strategy: How and Why It Works

October 25, 2024/in Articles, Digital Media, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Social Media /by Terry Becker

We’ve all been through it—you’re scrolling through your social media feed when suddenly you come across an individual passionately endorsing a product or service. What’s more? They have a massive following. You notice this is different from the typical celebrity endorsements. That is because the individual you are seeing is a social media influencer, which makes the premise of an influencer marketing strategy so much more unique.

As a true millennial who’s seen its effects, I can attest to how important it is to be leveraging social media to enhance your marketing efforts. The following is an outline of everything you need to know about Influencer Marketing. This includes how much it costs to hire an influencer, the top social media platforms to run an influencer campaign, how to measure the success of this marketing strategy, and examples of how it’s been done successfully.

What is an Influencer?

An influencer is somebody who has the ability to “influence” potential buyers by endorsing the offerings on social media. There are several factors that indicate whether or not someone is an influencer. However, the most telling one could be that the individual’s followers fit into a particular niche, and there is active engagement between them and the actual influencer.

Rather than just being “marketing tools”, influencers are assets to a company’s social relationships with whom they can collaborate to accomplish their Marketing goals. This is what makes a social media influencer entirely different from a celebrity endorsement, and perhaps, more successful.

In celebrity product endorsements, there is less of an emphasis on engagement and more on capitalizing on the person’s fame and name recognition to benefit a brand. In short, the objective is to capture the attention of a broader audience, unlike the niche audience of the influencer.

The Cost of Influence

As you may assume, influencers can be costly and there is no set rate for incorporating them into your campaign. It’s a common practice for digital marketers to follow the “one cent per follower rule”. Some marketers know this as the $100 per 10,000 followers rule. Factors to consider include engagement rate, client budget, and campaign lengths. However, according to Instagram Influencer, Matt Crump (who has composed his own rates), creative mandates, production costs, timeline, and rights affect the cost of hiring him for your campaign. Crump explained that the price range per sponsored post varies based on the number of followers he has during that time period. The price can be as low as $100-$500 for 5-10k followers, and as high as $10,000 for over 1,000,000 followers.

It’s important for marketers to identify which platform will bring the greatest Return on Investment for their influencer marketing campaign. According to Linqia, over 68% of marketers recognize Instagram as the most effective social network for an influencer strategy in 2019. Coming in second was Facebook with 51% with YouTube, Blogs, Pinterest, Twitter, and Snapchat following behind. The takeaway is simple: If you’re considering an Influencer Marketing strategy, Instagram is the place to start!

Similar Article: 5 Ways To Optimize Your Social Media

How to Measure Success

Although over 60% of marketers are primarily focused on driving brand awareness, engagement, and impressions (Linqia), it’s still important to track sales generation from such campaigns as well as conversions, audience sentiment, and clicks. Since influencer marketing is an ever-evolving industry. Marketers need to consistently evaluate their measurement practices to ensure they’re held to the same standards as other media investments.

Similar Article: Effective Inbound Marketing Strategies

3 Examples of Successful Influencer Marketing

Now that you have an understanding of what an influencer is, how much they cost, the top social media platforms to use for your influencer marketing campaign, and how to measure its success, it’s time to take a look at influencer marketing strategies in action. The following are four examples of successful influencer marketing:

Naked Juice –

When seeking to raise their brand awareness, even more, Naked Juice decided to collaborate with Instagram influencers, Beth Norton and Kate La Vie, through sponsored Instagram posts. Kate La Vie features images of her outfits and beauty essentials. This made it easy for the brand to strategically collaborate with her snapshots. The campaign saw much success. According to Social Bond, within 24 hours the Instagram post generated more than 2,000 likes and comments combined. Additionally, this campaign enabled Naked Juice to position itself as more of a “premium juice” brand. Following the success of the campaign, the company made $57.4 million in revenue by the end of 2017.

Sperry Boat Shoes –At the end of 2016, the popular boat shoe brand, “Sperry” collaborated with more than 100 Instagram “micro-influencers”. The key influencers here were “Sperry Enthusiasts”. To create engaging content with its audience, Sperry identified fans on Instagram who were already sharing pictures of their shoes. Subsequently, the brand invited these users to develop content for its Instagram account. The strategy worked. According to Curalate, Sperry’s most engaged photo of 2016 got 8,278 likes. How did they do this? The photo was taken by influencer Slava Daniliuk who had 4,500 Instagram followers at the time. Additionally, Daniliuk posted with the brand’s trademark hashtag, #OdysseysAwait which increased engagement even more.

Walmart –

As proven by a successful retail company, influencer marketing can also be highly effective when promoting philanthropic incentives as well. Walmart took a “Cause Marketing” approach when embarking on its “Feeding America” mission with several influencers on Instagram. The strategy was simple: For each like, #FightHunger comment, or post share, 0.90 cents would be donated to the organization. Logan Paul’s most-liked post from the campaign generated over one million likes. Due to the success of these influencers in the #FightHunger campaign, Walmart raised close to $1.65 million in addition to boosting positive sentiment for their brand.

Similar Article: Social Media Campaigns for Attracting Prospects and Generating Leads

With the numerous advantages that influencer marketing provides, it’s no secret why so many brands are going with this strategy. As soon as you scroll through your social media feed once again, you’ll come across one of these campaigns. However, you’ll now have a better understanding of what an influencer marketer is and all of the marketing elements involved.

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