Where To Begin with Digital Advertising 

There are many different apps and websites to choose from to engage customers online. It can be difficult to determine how a small business can most effectively reach customers and develop a community. While there is always chatter about the “new app” or Google changing its algorithms, one thing should always be at the core of your social media strategy; engage your customers. They might find you funny or an expert, just as long as they find you. Social media provides lots of tools to interact with customers but they are just that, tools. It’s still up your company to use the right tools that make sense for your business to interact with the right customers.

Engage Customers With Social Media

Search engine optimization (SEO), Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn along with all the other platforms are simply a way to connect with your audience. When it comes to business, it’s important to not give in to all the hype around social media and keep the perspective that these apps are just a way to promote dialogue with your customer. By posting relevant content to your company’s social media feeds you providing the content your customers like. Ideally, it will also drive them to your website or the shopping cart to buy your product. Monitoring what content works and what doesn’t is very much trial and error but eventually leads to a well defined social media strategy.

The first question to ask is… what do you want your social media to achieve? Are you going after a new customer lead? Driving walk-in traffic into a retail store? Brand awareness of your company or services you offer?

Messaging

The next point to consider is your message. What do your customers expect to see from you? What product or service do you offer that solves a problem for your customers? This can all be worked out in the text and content you are offering to your followers. This text should be thoughtful engaging and authentic. Writing in an engaging way will retain your customers and more importantly prevent them from going to your competitors.

Content

So what text should you use to engage your customer? There are many ways to source these essential words out online but start by just thinking of some key phrases or words that help describe your business. Developing these will prove to be your best “keywords” that will help move your social media strategy forward. Keywords will help your customers discover you. For example, think about what are people typing into the Google search bar to find you? Does your website have those same key search words? While not as important as they used to be, zeroing in on the right keywords are still part of the foundation for websites and digital advertising.

Let’s say you own a coffee shop and want to improve your how your company comes up on Google. One way is to use Google Adwords to buy your way into search results. This can take time and can be costly if the words are very common. A second way to consider what questions customers may have about you or your shop. By answering those questions either on your website or even a blog, you will engage your customers with important information to them and keep your store’s brand at the forefront of their mind. Having valuable content is very key because Google rewards this type of information when you are giving something of value to the end user. This will help you rank higher with Google over time.

Connect Regularly

Social media platforms are the tools you use to promote your content and engage your customer directly. Finding what content interacts the best will help you clearly see who your main customer is and what gets them excited about your product or brand. Likes, comments and shares are how you will see how well you can connect with your audience.

Social media is a tool to engage your customer. The tools will change and evolve. Some are easy to manage and some are more complex but the main driver is to meet your customers where they are at and solve their problem. Like so many things in business, social media requires routine engagement to be successful over time, build brand awareness and engage customers.

Need help with a social media strategy? Contact Us