Platform Politics

We've all seen it. We have a favorite brand that we follow on every platform of social just so we can stay up to date on sales, new campaigns, new news, etc. We have liked them on Facebook, followed them on Twitter and Instagram and occasionally even enjoy their funny Vines. Then we notice something odd. Well, it may not be considered "odd," since so many brands are doing it, but you know what I mean. We notice that the content put on Facebook is strikingly similar to the content put on Twitter. Oh, that 's because it is!

Social media marketing is adapting from being just a last minute option for growing your business to being absolutely vital to staying up to date and relevant in the eyes of your consumers. With this comes the need for businesses to be educated on how to use each of the platforms to their highest potential in order to attract and retain customers and build their brand. So, I present to you, Platform Politics.

Facebook:
Facebook, despite the rise in several other platforms over the years, is still the most popular social media platform by a long shot. Here are a few things to focus on when using Facebook as platform for marketing:

• Track engagement: Facebook has some pretty awesome features that will help you determine the level of engagement you get with your posts. It will allow you to measure what content resonates with what customers. Want to continue to be relevant in the eyes of your best customers? USE THIS.
• Tag other pages: What 's better than benefiting from someone else's hard work? Just kidding. But tagging other pages relevant to your company can increase the number of people that see your brand. this basically opens up a hidden gold mine of previously unreachable users. 
• Use photos: Posting photos instead of or in addition to text has proven to increase engagement by 120%. BEWARE: Dumb cat pictures are dangerous. Use caution.

 Twitter: 
Though Twitter is second in popularity, it actually comes in fourth when it comes to usage. Here are some good ways to use Twitter for your business:

• Push offers: Consumers are more likely to follow a brand on Twitter than on any other platform. This is where they come to stay up to date. Take advantage of their curiosity and use this platform to advertise deals and offer coupons.
• Develop a personality: Use Twitter to build a human-like personality for your brand. Best practices include talking about trending topics, being cultured, and being entertaining. The best brands act like a real human would on Twitter, not some creepy robot.
• Community management: Twitter is best used when the brand is focusing on building a community of followers rather than just e-commerce.

Instagram:
As social media marketing goes, Instagram is the new guy. While extensive research has not been done, here are some tactics to keep in mind when using Instagram as a platform for marketing:

• Sharing: Encourage the people that buy your product of service to share their own experience. This will build your brand and increase your reach, as your brand will now be visible to your sharer's followers.
• Make a stand: Instagram allows you to create hashtags about anything and everything. Create a hashtag the resonates with your followers and the campaign could go viral.

Noise: What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing.

Let's be honest. We all want to make the sale. Whether it be selling medical equipment to multi-million dollar hospitals or selling a single glass of lemonade to that annoying neighbor who always seems to have a problem with the color you stain your fence, the end goal is to end the day better off than how you started. In a world shifting toward online marketing, the burden to make the sale has become exponentially lower. Gone are the days of door to door salesmen and marketers jamming their product in your face while you're just trying to enjoy the one meal a week that you managed to not burn in the oven (or is that just me?) Today, our fingers spend more time scrolling, typing and swiping looking for things than they do sifting through mail or flipping through the pages of a newspaper or magazine.

It now becomes the marketer's job to adjust to the inevitable and learn to adapt to new norms of online marketing, and more specifically social media marketing. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Vine are taking flight and you can either stay and freeze your butt off or fly south and bask in the heat of the social marketing world.

But wait, it's not that easy. So many brands these days just get it flat out wrong. Joining the social media marketing world does not mean posting a video of a dad getting hit in the crotch with a baseball bat, slapping your brand on there, and then calling it a day. This is what I like to call "The Foreign Exchange Student" of social media marketing. You know, that new kid in your class who is trying really hard and thinks he's doing a great job, but in reality he makes no sense and is just confusing the crap out of everybody. Having a presence on social media is vital, but if the content is just making noise and doing nothing to build your brand, then you might as well move in with Tila Tequila and Paris Hilton in the Land of Irrelevance.

Marketing is all about having an end goal and taking different approaches, some direct, some indirect, in order to achieve that goal. My blog, Know Soliciting, aims to deliver today's marketing professionals with the insight needed to do exactly that. I will help you develop important and necessary tools in creating relevant and meaningful content for the social sphere and maybe even entertain you along the way. So join me or judge me, either way you'll be talking about me.