3 pieces of social media marketing advice for Web Hosting sites
The majority of business owners see social media as nothing more than another channel to broadcast advertisements. The power of social however lies in the two-way communication and the ease in connecting with real people, your customers.
In this post we’re gonna dive deeper than your standard “how to post” and discuss three social media marketing tips that web hosting providers need to get a hold off to really use social media to increase exposure and drive up sales.
If content is king, context is god
Every day we are exposed to hundreds of pieces of content through social media, resulting in content becoming a commodity. In order to stay above the noise, you need to ensure you are sharing valuable content with your social media communities — but doing it in a smart way.
The first way is to do a breakdown of your community which you can do via the insights in Facebook and a service like twtrland for your Twitter community.
Once you have some idea of the demographics of your community and who you are attracting it gets much easier to cater to this community and speed up its growth.
When it comes to content always look for an opportunity to connect with your audience on a personal level. Make sure you are communicating in a context that your audience can relate to. Oakley do a great job of this in the example below where they understand that their customers are into action sports like the X Games so they publish timely content around that subject.
The right content in the right context is gold!
Use social reviews to automate word of mouth marketing
It’s no secret that in today’s social world many of us turn to friends and family to get recommendations on what to buy, where to buy it, and how much to spend. In fact a recent report mentioned that 90% of people believe brand recommendations by friends.
With more online content being created than ever before and an ever-increasing amount of noise online, it’s getting harder to get your message heard. Recommendation marketing has never been more important than now.
One service that helps you leverage recommendation marketing is Yotpo Social Reviews. Yotpo is a free plug and plays social reviews solution for eCommerce sites. Yotpo helps store owners generate tons of product reviews and allows them to automatically share this user-generated content with their Facebook and Twitter communities. Yotpo is a totally automated service so after the initial set up you can sit back and the reviews, traffic, and additional sales will come rolling in.
Below is an example of the highly optimized mail after purchase emails that Yotpo sends to each customer after a specific number of days after making a purchase. These emails convert between 6-8% of customers to reviewers.
You need to be getting on Instagram and Pinterest
We are visual creatures. Almost 50% of our brains are dedicated to processing what we see so it’s not surprising that images play a huge part in increasing sales. With most online retailers selling tangible products, it is a no brainer that imagery to play a bigger part in our social media marketing.
Most web hosts are already on Facebook and Twitter but many haven’t caught onto Pinterest and Instagram. Pinterest has already grown into the top traffic source for many retailers and both networks are growing at rapid rates which means lots of new customers! If you have a female audience you’ll find Pinterest could be huge while Instagram is strong for teens and young adults.
Get ahead of the curve and start exploring other social networks to find new customers!
Conclusion
Social media is changing at a rapid rate but that doesn’t mean ecommerce businesses can’t adapt and take advantage of the changing landscape. Remember to always remember that engaging in real relationships with customers is the key to social media marketing and being proactive with trying new tactics can bear lots of fruit. Go forth and conquer!