If you’re like most small businesses out there, you’ve created a social media presence online in some form or another. Just consider that out of three billion internet users worldwide, two billion are active on social media.
But you’ve probably wondered, how does social media fit in with all the other advertising you’re doing? How tightly should my social media strategy and messaging be integrated with other mediums like TV, radio, and print?
The answer is yes, integrating social media marketing with your other channels is a must if you want to ensure a consistent brand experience for your customers and sales prospects.
Here you’ll learn how to integrate your advertising with social media in order to create a powerful brand, drive engagement with your target market, and increase movement through your sales funnel. The following are tactics and strategies that you can implement now for a highly optimized integration of social media with the rest of your advertising:
1. Utilize Social Sharing and Following Buttons
We’re all familiar with social media buttons that encourage people to share content on social media or to follow a business’s social media account. Make sure to include these buttons for your business on different marketing materials. This includes your website, blog, email newsletters, and any other places you have a digital footprint. These buttons allow users to quickly and easily share your content with their peers or to follow/like your brand for future marketing content. It’s a marketing integration best practice you’d be wise not to ignore.
2. Drive Traffic to Your Social Media Accounts
Any other channels that you advertise on (radio, print, digital, etc.) can contain some form of call to action that drives traffic to your social media accounts. This will allow visitors to engage with your brand on a more personal level, and can also be based on your current offer or promotion. For example, if you’re currently offering discounts or have a contest underway, a call to action in your radio ads can direct people to enter the contest or obtain a coupon code on your Facebook or Twitter pages. These so-called “social spots” work well because the call to action can only be completed on your social media pages.
3. Promote Your Blog on Social Media
Promoting your blog on social media is a great strategy for showcasing new content. This is true whether it’s a new blog post, case study, demo video, or anything else in your content marketing portfolio. You can either promote original content on your blog or write a short blog post backlinking to another piece of content (video, webinar, etc.) that will ultimately drive traffic back to your website. Just remember that nobody likes “being sold”, so make sure that your blog content is objective, useful, and positions your business as a thought leader.
4. Create Tweetable Quotes or Information in Your Content
On many websites now when you select a piece of content on a webpage, you’ll be prompted by a pop-up box to tweet out that selected quote to your followers on Twitter. This feature is made available through various content highlighting tools now available online. Not only will the quote be tweeted out, but so will a link back to the original content for followers to click on. Tweetable quotes go even a step further towards integrating social media with your overall advertising. It extends the social shelf-life of content by allowing readers to share different parts that they find most interesting to their followers.
4. Promote Social Media Accounts and Hashtags in Your Email Signature
Think about the number of emails you and your team send out every day, it’s probably in the hundreds. And don’t just count the number that are sent personally or directly, consider the amount of automated emails that are sent out from your business with email signatures. These are all opportunities to add social sharing or follow buttons in the signature. You can also include brand specific hashtags in the signature for prospects that prefer to engage that way.
Integrating social media into the rest of your marketing mix doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming. By taking simple steps such as adding buttons to your email signature and utilizing tweet quoting tools, you’ll be well on the way to a tightly integrated marketing strategy with social media marketing playing a key part.
