From GOOP Digital at the SMX East digital marketing conference in New York
We’ve all been in that situation. Remember it? It was that time you were earnestly telling somebody what you thought was important when suddenly you noticed they were fidgeting, glancing around, scanning the room, not really listening to what you were saying. Then, their face lit up as they spotted somebody – hopefully not something – obviously more alluring and interesting than you and suddenly, with a brief excuse and apology, they were gone, leaving you mid-sentence, jaw flapping and red-faced with embarrassment.
What happened, you wondered?
What happened? What happened – unless it was Beyoncé or Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson who walked into the room to steal the spotlight – is that you didn’t capture and hold the interest of your audience. More bluntly, you probably bored them and had nothing to say they valued or found relevant. So they left!
Guess what? Social media works the same way, except your online audience won’t apologise or make an excuse to leave, they’ll just unfollow your social media account with the tap of a finger or click of a mouse.
A match made in heaven
Stephanie Wallace, senior director of SEO at US digital marketing company Nebo, had plenty to say about the role, implementation and importance of social media when she addressed the SMX East digital marketing conference here in New York.
Speaking on the topic SEO and Social: A Match Made in Marketing Heaven, Wallace pointed out that 41 per cent of people would unfollow a brand if they found its social media irrelevant.
As Wallace said, social media is an opt-in network and people can choose to enter or leave whenever they want.
Drive conversations
So, what’s the message here for GOOP Digital clients, or any business for that matter?
It’s quite simple. Make your social media content interesting and use it to drive conversations, not to flog the latest product for sale, the latest amazing offer, the funny meme you lifted from somebody else’s account – the same old boring whatever that’s about as interesting and helpful as a smartphone with a dead battery.
As a business owner you need to use social media to provoke people, to advise people, to get them thinking.
Social media is not about sell, sell, sell or buy, buy, buy.
Instead, your business needs to use its social media in a manner that has people thinking about what your business has had to say on issues, how it provided handy advice, helped out with suggestions and free tips – even recommended somebody else who could resolve a problem.
Handle your social media right and when the time comes that a follower wants what you offer, or knows somebody who wants what you offer, your business will be front of mind.
Social is more than Facebook
As popular and as easy and you might think it is, don’t focus your social media marketing attention and efforts on Facebook alone. As Wallace pointed out, Pinterest has two billion searches every month and in the US it’s becoming known as the social search engine.
And what about YouTube? With 30 million visits a day YouTube is the second-largest search engine on the planet. What are you doing in that space? Have you got a video library online? Have you optimised your videos for maximum search visibility?
Building brand awareness
There’s a world of opportunities out there on the social media frontier and your business should be using them to your advantage, not to bore people so badly they dump you and go elsewhere.
Remember, social media is not about quick sales. As Stephanie Wallace told her captive audience, it’s all about building brand awareness.
If you’d like to know how to become the centre of attention and build your brand awareness through social media, contact GOOP Digital. As we’ve discovered at SMX East, there’s plenty happening on the social media stage and we want to share what we’ve learned.