How to Maximize Impact on Social Media

Digital marketing is always changing, but the most important component continues to be social media. According to the Pew Research Center, social media use among American adults grew from 5 percent in 2005 to 69 percent today. This makes social media platforms an incredibly effective way to reach your target audience.

But social media isn’t just for advertising. The best brands take a holistic approach, embracing customers at every point in the purchase path. Listening to prospective buyers, responding to customer inquiries, managing relationships with brand ambassadors, and keeping tabs on the overall climate of the marketplace are huge features of an effective digital marketing strategy. Indeed, these action items prove to be far more important than simply pushing ads.

Read: “Why Nobody Believes Your Ads”

So don’t fret when Facebook changes its algorithm or Twitter cuts back on post distribution. Networks may be making it harder to share your own corporate content, but aggregation and display services like Twine make it easier than ever to hear what customers have to say and use that UGC to boost conversions.

Here are a few tips on how to strategically move forward.

Listen to fans – and skeptics.

It’s not enough to check your company’s social media accounts for comments and likes. To gain an accurate picture of what people really think, you’ll need to dig deeper. According to Brandwatch, a whopping 96 percent of people discussing brands don’t even “follow” official brand accounts. That means the bulk of the conversation is happening behind your back.

Consumers post complaints, praises, and opinions about your brand, products, and competitors in a publicly-accessible stream of consciousness. This valuable opportunity to glean insights should not be overlooked. Listening in not only improves overall brand development but also often helps protect your reputation, too. After all, one impassioned customer is all it takes to fan the flame of a viral hashtag.

Fortunately, building a social media hub offers an extra benefit. In giving brand managers the ability to create and save searches in 12 of the most popular networks, like Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Facebook, you can get a healthy sense of what the marketplace wants.

Do you want to monitor certain hashtags and feeds? Boom. Easy. Done. With TwineSocial, organizations of every shape and size can hone in on relevant content. Whether you choose feature that user-generated content as social proof (more on that here) or simply compile UGC as a research tool for further brand development, we highly recommend taking advantage of the company’s free trial offer.

Respond and engage.

Customers today expect to be acknowledged, and social media is the primary method for young consumers eager to engage. Assigning product managers to regularly review respective feeds ensures no stone is left unturned, no customer left neglected.  As one of the most sophisticated martech tools available, Our Twine dashboard empowers brand managers to configure multiple team member logins, giving each department access to work in applicable hubs.

Like the UGC you see coming in? Don’t keep it to yourself. Fans love to be recognized and see peer content displayed, too. It’s why, as a recent Forbes article indicated, pop stars like Ellie Goulding are pulling in social media to market their music. Goulding compiled fan-submitted photos from Instagram when revising her 2012 Anything Could Happen music video. Why? Because “the filtered photos illustrated the song in a more organic way than the initial polished production.”

You may not be making a music video, but fan content can be tremendously helpful in e-commerce, tourism, hospitality, education, and agency implementations. Indeed, across the industries, consensus is clear: candid photos and genuine conversation give brands credibility in the eyes of consumers. And with a few updates to social strategy, the most successful digital marketers are getting maximum lifetime out of highly-influential UGC.

Collect, moderate, style, display, and engage. That’s the magic recipe, and thanks to Twine’s expert engineers, social media aggregation is no longer rocket science.  But do buckle up. Success is a thrilling ride!

For more ideas on how to promote shared enthusiasm around an idea, product, or community, check out our solutions gallery. Then, kick off your own success story with a free 7-day trial of TwineSocial. Let us know how we can help!

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