It is an undeniable fact that right now we are living in the digital era and if you look around yourself, you will see almost every company and every single industry getting digitized. Why? Because people now know the fact that the survival of their business is only possible if they have a strong online presence. Now, even having a well-designed website or a well-established social media page isn’t enough for your business because the real game begins when you have to market your business and your online presence.
You might be selling the best products or you might be offering the most unique and the best services possible but if you aren’t focusing on social media marketing then there’s no point of being “perfect” in your business in the first place. You need to understand the fact that your business needs social media marketing and it’s now imperative if you really want to increase your customers.
Social media marketing is directly proportional to increasing visibility. The more visible you are to your audience, the more they will trust you and hence you will end up creating a good brand image. Long story short, it’s a circle that starts from social media marketing and ends on revenue generation.
Video Content and Marketing is the Way to Win at Social Media
When is the last time you logged onto Facebook and didn’t see a ton of video advertisements scrolling through your feed? Most likely, it was around a year ago. Video is growing at a rapid pace and this is just the start of things to come.
Let’s take a look at how online video was projected to grow over the past several years. Jump back a few years and we can see that simpleshow released their own set of stats on just how game changing video would soon become in the world of online marketing and branding.
- Within 3 years 90% of all internet traffic will be video
- 60% of online videos are watched on YouTube/Google; 28% on Facebook
- A video is 50 times more likely than any other web property to appear on the front page of Google for a search query
- 32% of people who watch online videos do it because they actively want to find out about a product or service before purchasing
- 8% of people who watch a video to find out about a service/product will then always click on the brand website
- 10 minutes is the average amount of time people spend watching online videos in a single session
- 82% of tablet owners watch an online video on their device at least three times a week; 78% of iPhone owners do the same
- 56% of people who are online watch videos every day
- 51% of all online video consumption happens between 18:00 and 21:00
Jump forward to today, and nearly all of these figures and stats have been blown away. Not just from a perspective of video usage, but also at the increase and scale of mobile usage across the world today.
If you want to win the content creation and marketing game on social media, you need to be focusing your efforts on video content creation, and marketing. The good news is, Facebook and Instagram make both of these aspects pretty simple.
To create an effective video marketing strategy, we recommend you follow these quick social media video tips.
- Context is Key – No matter what, use videos that match your audience and end goals.
- Short and Sweet – 30 to 60 seconds videos will often work better than longer ones.
- Native Videos Do the Trick – Make sure your videos don’t look like video ads.
- Every Story Has a Beginning – Stories keep people compelled to watch more.
- Precision Wins – Video content needs to match titles and call to actions.
When it comes to online video, everyone is getting in on the action. Even the biggest names in the industry like Apple, Coca Cola, Microsoft etc need social media marketing so there’s no point in the first place to even think that your small business will grow itself without any marketing.
Want to know more? Well, here are the 10 best examples of the biggest brands that are using social media marketing to grow their business.
1 – Cisco
For those who don’t know, Cisco is a multinational company that is also considered to be an IT, cybersecurity and networking leader of the world. To be honest, Cisco is a well-established name in the market now but even then they always make sure to come up with the best possible social media marketing campaign. The company used the scenario of elections going around and keeping that in view Cisco came up with a marketing campaign that focused on inviting people from all around the world to talk about making the world a better place to live in. Cisco highlighted its technology in the campaign which attracted the people and made them realize that the infrastructure of IT is somehow related to their daily lives. This recent campaign by Cisco was a win-win because for starters, it made the audience think that yes, the company does care about what’s going around and how to make the world a better place but along with that, the campaign also a perfect fit to the requirement of the audience and Cisco showed them what they were expecting.
2 – Pampers
For generations, Pampers has been the leading brand but even then, they know that maintaining the position of the brand is a must for them which is why even they opted for social media marketing and every now and then, they come up with campaigns that help them grow more. Recently the company shifted its focus from pamper-promoting marketing strategies to emotion-supporting marketing strategies. Yes, you read it right and if you look at their campaigns at the moment, you will see that Pampers is focusing less on (diapers) now and they are focusing more on the emotion and joy that is connected with holding and caring for a newborn. The company is now using emotional appeal in their social media marketing campaigns first to attract the audience and make them think that yes Pampers, cares about the special bond between a parent and a child and secondly, they aren’t sounding too salesy because people nowadays don’t like that touch in a brand.
3 – JetBlue
We know what you are thinking at the moment that why exactly would an airline company need social media marketing in the first place? Well, guess what? It’s not only Pampers, Coca Cola or Pepsi etc that need marketing, in fact, even an airline company nowadays needs to be active on social media to grow their audience. Speaking of, JetBlue first used to sound a little promotional in their campaigns but now instead of using Twitter to post pushy messages and discount offers etc, JetBlue is using Twitter to improve their customer service. Yes, you read it right and if you head to their Twitter handle right now, you will see that most of the comments by this airline company are @replies. Believe it or not, having a good customer care service makes a huge difference and it helps in building a brand image on the internet which is exactly what’s being done by JetBlue at the moment.
4 – Uber
Uber needs no introduction at the moment because the name itself is enough to tell what it does in the first place and on top of everything it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Uber is currently ruling the world. Now, as far as their social media marketing is concerned, well, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Uber is the smartest of all companies as they advertised their company on the internet with little to no investment. Yes, you read it right and what worked so well for them is the power of “word of mouth”. Uber recently started a campaign that offered students discounts and free rides when they shared their Uber coder on their social media handles. That exact “sharing” part advertised Uber on a whole nother level and it worked as a word of mouth for them which is why “Uber” is now a verb and not a noun anymore.
5 – Poo-Pourri
It’s a fun product that has been the talk of the town for a while because yes, it’s weird and it’s funny. Poo-Pourri is basically a spray that you use before going to the bathroom so that you can limit the bad smell that comes from the toilet once you are done peeing or pooping. Sounds weird and funny? Well, it does and we totally agree with you on this one but it’s an actual brand with an actual product so even they had to take the support of social media marketing to grow their business. They recently started a very funny campaign “Girls don’t poop” and we must say that they handled the campaign real well in which they used an actual girl called “Bethany” who makes videos of the taboo sides of girls using bathroom. Now, here comes the fun part, this campaign by Poo-Pourri actually helped them in selling 20 million products. Yes! Isn’t it shocking? Well, it actually is but on top of everything it’s a lesson for every business out there that if you come up with engaging and interesting content and if you use the right social media marketing strategy, you can end up winning millions of hearts out there.
6 – Staples
You might not be fond of paper clips and staples alone but guess what? There’s an actual company out there called “Staples” and they use social media marketing to grow their business which is actually working quite well for them. If you go to the social media handle of this company, you will be amazed to see how they poked a little fun out of their campaigns and how they used different funny and engaging images to promote their products. They use different themes, different messages and different occasions to sell their products and you are just going to love their marketing strategies.
How to Win the Daily Battles of Social Media
Long story short, it’s all about creativity, struggle and passion.
Most importantly, you need social media as much as social media needs you and none can deny with this fact. So, whether you are running a small business or a big business, know that you need to be present on the web but even before that you need to learn social media marketing.
We have seen brands going down just because they couldn’t come up with creative marketing strategies and we have seen simple and ordinary brands like Staples going up just because their strategies were worth appreciation. In a nutshell, if you want your business to succeed and if you genuinely want your visibility to increase among your audience then social media marketing must be on top of your priority list and the sooner you realize this, the better it will be for you and your business.
