As of January 2021, there were close to half a billion new social media users, with 1.3 billion dollars spent using the internet and trillions of dollars spent on e-commerce, according to the Digital 2021 Report by Datareportal.
Businesses are increasingly transforming to digital platforms, even more so now since the pandemic forced nations to have movement restrictions and take safety precautions. Most of the offline retail world has had to operate from the internet to drive and sustain their business, using social media to market their brand.
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and mom and pop stores are the ones who face the toughest transition to digital, as most of these owners have no support or experience in riding the social media wave. However, there are three strategies businesses can start practising today to get more traction on their websites or create better content for their social media business accounts.
The Right Social Platforms
98% of the users of any given social media platform also have at least one other social platform, according to Social Trends 2021 Report by Hootsuite. This means that the social media strategy one uses doesn’t need to include every single social channel.
For example, roughly 85% of TikTok users also use Facebook, according to the Digital 2021 Report. This means that if businesses are already on Facebook, there’s no need to rush to TikTok or Instagram.
Lionel Lee, a web consultant who advises new start-ups in developing their online platform, recently gave a webinar about building a digital presence.
“Be selective, as you can’t be everywhere at once—and you don’t have to be to reach your customers as long as you choose a couple of platforms that work best for your goals and stick to them,” he says.
According to Hootsuite’s Social Trends 2021 Report, 87% of marketers consider LinkedIn to be the most effective platform for business-to-business (B2B) industries.
Spending time and resources on the social channels that are the most relevant to the brand is key, as having a presence on one to two of the larger platforms, businesses can have the most potential to reach almost all of the world’s social media users.
Get Your Brand Noticed
Social listening is when owners track their social media platforms for mentions and conversations related to their brand and industry and then analyzes them for insights and discover opportunities to act.
If businesses employ social listening as part of their social media strategy, they can learn how people feel about their brand. This allows businesses to better understand customers, keep their company roadmap on track, and respond appropriately to positive and negative posts.
Social listening has become an essential way to engage audiences, especially as the world shifted to virtual—half of the marketers globally have turned to social listening to understand consumers’ changing preferences during the pandemic.
The Hootsuite Social Trends Survey 2021 says that 66% say social listening has increased in value for business organisations in the last 12 months.
One way businesses can start social listening is to use the Instagram Search Bar (at the top of the Explore page) to find accounts, hashtags, and places that are relevant for their company to follow and monitor.
Sell With Social Commerce
Selling on social media is about so much more than just setting up a Facebook, Shopee or Lazada store. It’s about creating a social experience that allows customers to discover, research, compare, purchase, and advocate for your products and services.
People are increasingly turning to social media when deciding what products or services to buy. Nearly 45%of all internet users globally use social media to research a product or service. Among teenagers and young adults, social media has overtaken search engines.
One tip for selling on Instagram is by tapping into the power of user-generated content (UGC). UGC is any content—text, videos, images, reviews, and more which are created by people, rather than brands. Brands will often share UGC on their own social media accounts, website, and other marketing channels.
According to research by TINT on the State of UGC 2021, 93% of marketers agree that consumers trust content created by real people rather than content created by brands.
Imagine scrolling through Instagram and seeing that a brand you follow has reposted images of everyday people wearing the shoes you’re looking to buy. Now that you’ve seen them in different colours and settings, you know exactly which ones you want.
That’s the exact strategy that retail modest fashion company Dewy Diary uses to sell their clothes. On Instagram stories, they reshare posts from customers who wear and love their apparel. They always provide calls-to-action like “tap to view a product,” “swipe up to shop,” and “shop the look” so that people can easily browse and buy the products they’re looking at.
Sharing exceptional UGC is a great way to spark brand desire and help with purchase decisions. It’s a powerful tool that has a direct impact on sales. If you’re tight on time and resources, UGC is also an excellent time saver because other people can create the content for you too.
