How Ordinary Brands Can Have Extraordinary Success on Social Media

Social media isn’t limited to only large or exciting brands. As long as a brand has customers, suppliers, and staff, they have the basis for a social media community. This community has an interest in the brand and wants to learn more about it. And even companies that are new or have few customers still have knowledge to share, plus they can benefit from the brand awareness and connection that social media offers. Many mundane brands have thriving social communities, proving that brands don’t need to be trendy or offer popular products in order to build a social media presence. To help run-of-the-mill brands become runaway social successes, Forbes.com posted some pointers.

Secure Support from Senior Management
One of the main reasons brands have success with social media is because they have executive support from the top. This can be challenging because management often demands solid metrics to support business decisions, but social media provides intangible benefits like brand awareness and loyalty that can be hard to measure.

Luckily, there are now tools to track certain social elements such as reach, conversation volume, sentiment analysis, and other general gauges of engagement to demonstrate that social media is benefiting the business in some way. This should make it easier to convince executives that social media is worthwhile, but many are still hesitant about this newer form of media. But for real success, executive management must believe that social media will add value to the business and support these initiatives with the required investments.

Invest in a Social Media Marketing Team
Social media doesn’t manage itself, so a brand needs to assemble a social team to create content, tweet updates and articles, post photos, write blogs, and collaborate with other social media outlets to ensure a consistent and compelling stream of content. This team should also attend certain industry events to represent the company, as well as cover their activities for the brand’s own social media and cross-promote the brand with other social media sources. This team needs to be able to handle the demands of providing and maintaining quality social media content. Remember, social media may be free, but a brand must invest in the right resources, such as a social media marketing firm, to ensure that it pays off.

Maximize Your Presence with Multiple Accounts
Most companies offer different products and services to different target markets, which is why it can be wise to have more than one social media account. Some companies create a separate account for each product or develop special accounts for specific markets. Others have different accounts on different platforms to both leverage their unique features and ensure full market coverage.

Just remember, keep the number of accounts manageable so they can be updated frequently with quality content and all feedback can be answered in a timely manner. It’s fine to start with a single account and then create others as the need arises, but just be open to the idea of having several accounts.

Ask Questions to Get Followers
It’s important for a brand to foster interaction in their social media to make people want to follow and return. The easiest way to get people interacting is by asking questions because that prompts a response. The more questions you ask, the more opportunities you have to get people communicating with both the brand and each other. This creates engagement with current followers and attracts new followers. And the questions can be simple. As long as they spark conversation and engagement, they’ll make more people more likely to follow the brand.

No matter what a company sells, what’s important is for a brand to unite all of its followers into an engaging social media community where they can share, interact, and learn about the brand and its business.

Discover new social media marketing strategies. Contact MDG.

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