It is an amazing fact … social media has been with us for over a decade now. So there are many examples of social media initiatives that you can learn from. Many awesome ones that are useful as well as entertaining. And new ones are being created every day.
Businesses have seized upon this as it matured and in 2013 according to a CMO survey by Duke University is 6.6% of marketing budgets (about $4.6 billion in dollar terms) and is expected to climb to nearly 16% over the next 5 years. So social media is still a small part of digital and marketing budgets. But in reality, it has just begun.
Be useful, be entertaining, or be ignored.
When choosing to learn from others’ social media marketing campaign strategies, it is always helpful to choose the best of the best. Those that are most innovative and very eager to try lots of new and different ideas. And not afraid of a failure or two. Real social media marketing innovators. You want to frequently come up when marketers are discussing the best in social media marketing.
Review this article to learn about secrets to winning social media initiatives:
Twitter
Use images for better response rates. For images implement Twitter cards so that any tweets of your content will include visual media.
Many businesses are including images, not so surprising. The best ones on Twitter are customizing the title tags. You can attribute content to creators and use images up to 500 by 750 px.
Pinterest
This platform has been our best website referral source over the past 2+ years. You can brand pins with your logo to create visual reminders.
Nordstrom, one of our favorite brands, is the most followed brand on this platform. One of their most creative ideas is to offer free shipping on most pinned items. This creates both online engagement and in-store sales.
Google+
One of our favorite platforms for a variety of reasons. You can cross-post between G+ (hangouts) and YouTube videos. This way the video you have created of the hangout and any comments will automatically show up in the G+ news stream, which is a very good value add.
One of the best examples on this platform is Toyota. They call their hangouts Toyota Collaborator. A great way to incentivize cooperation with customers … and engage and work with them. Think you could obtain some valuable insights in this manner?
LinkedIn
There are many ways to use creative ideas on this platform. Here is one for your consideration: build an interactive resume by adding rich media and detailed descriptions.
Think about including status updates photos, presentations, and demonstrations. Pottery Barn, as an example, showcases images of its products in use illustrating creative menu items. This does a great job of building more views and engagements.
Facebook
Not a very good platform for business-to-business engagement. But an awesome site for our family to share pictures of grandchildren and interesting activities going on in their daily lives.
350 million pictures are uploaded every day. Amazing.
YouTube
Does your business like to use videos and are you looking for more? Take advantage of YouTube’s video editor and combine some existing videos to create new videos that show off your products in action.
Our business security system supplier, ADT, has an interesting initiative to consider. They allow viewers to have a look into the homes of athletes who use the ADT pulse service.
Key takeaway
Building a positive social media community engagement is very similar to making friends. Keep it simple and be genuine.
Being social with a great positive engagement isn’t a new way of marketing; it’s a way of doing business. Follow these simple initiative examples and you will be leading the way.