Oh hi there! What’s crack-a-lackin’? My name’s Jords and I’m the Social Media Hero behind Scrunch Social.
I know what you might be thinking: Why the heck is a social media specialist popping up on a blog that’s meant to tell me how to improve my SEO?
It’s a fair question, but I’ve got an even fair-er answer for you.
Social media and SEO both fall under the overarching banner of marketing. We hear this term thrown about pretty casually these days, so it’s easy to misunderstand what marketing truly means.
Put simply, marketing is the act of promoting your business.
The whole purpose of marketing is to help make your business money. Whether you’re selling your services, your products or your soul [what… who said that 👀😂], marketing helps you sell these things to the people who need it most.
Both Rhi and I specialise in different disciplines that fall under the marketing umbrella, but we agree wholeheartedly that the best approach to marketing your business is a holistic one.
In other words? Not putting all your eggs into one basket.
Invest time into SEO. Keep showing up on social. Build your email list. There are so many different ways you can [and probably should be] marketing your business, but I’m here to share three reasons social media should be an integral part of your marketing strategy.
Get ready to have your socks well and truly knocked off, my friend. Let’s dive in!
#1 Talk to the right people, in the right place, at the right time
If you’re new to the marketing game, you might not know the key principle that underpins just about any marketing strategy.
Talking to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.
And social media? Well, my friend, social media is one of the best ways to do this, with 21.45 million social media users in Australia alone. Not only are there bucketloads of Aussies with social media accounts, they’re also pretty darn active, with the average Aussie spending over 1.5 hours on social media every single day. That’s a lot of eyeballs spending a lot of time looking at their social media apps every day, which means there are bucketloads of opportunities to get your brand in front of your kinds of people.
I could throw more numbers your way until the cows come home, but the numbers are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the power of social media.
For me, these numbers simply paint a picture of how social media is integrated into our daily lives. Everyone spends at least a bit of time on social media every day. Whether you’re waiting for your morning coffee at your local café or riding the train into work, social media is the go-to app you open to keep yourself entertained.
Yes, this means we all spend a bucketload of time on social media.
But as a brand, this means that our audiences spend a bucketload of their downtime on social media.
And this gives us plenty of opportunities to get them to know, like and trust us.
That’s what social media is all about.
Yes, it’s about conversions [because you can’t have a biz that doesn’t make any money].
But you get these conversions through community.
#2 Community is everything
Before social media and SEO and all other forms of digital marketing came about, there was one key way businesses thrived.
Networking.
Whether they attended their local town hall for a function or went to a dedicated networking event for their industry, networking [and as a result, referrals] has been the leading way to grow your business since pretty much forever.
Even now, word of mouth is still a tip top way to get your brand in front of more people. In fact, 64% of marketers agree that word of mouth is still the most effective form of marketing. And us marketers are pretty protective over our own disciplines, so the fact that a decent majority of us can agree that referrals are the most effective way to grow your business? Well, that’s a pretty bluddy good sign that it works.
But what does this have to do with social media?
Instead of thinking about social media solely as a way to sell, sell, sell, we want to think about it as a way to build our networks.
By implementing a solid community engagement strategy [which is fancy industry speak for simply starting conversations with other businesses in the comments and DMs], we can build out networks full of relevant business owners who are likely to refer clients onto us.
Let’s look at an example.
If you’re a website designer, your clients are likely to ask after copywriters and SEO experts to help fill their website with content and optimise it for search. These three industries work together so seamlessly that just about any web designer, copywriter and SEO expert has connections in each category.
Why? Because when their clients come asking for a red hot SEO expert to help optimise their new, beautifully designed site, you want to be able to point them in the right direction.
And if you’ve been chatting with this web designer in the DMs, or if you’ve been showering them with love in the comments section of their post, your name will be top of mind when they need to refer their clients to someone who does what you do.
It’s all about staying top of mind, building your networks and creating a community that love what you do and will share your business with anyone who will listen.
It’s not as easy to build your networks with other forms of marketing. Quite frankly, a lot of other forms of marketing aren’t designed to build your referral traffic.
But social media makes it easy as pie to connect with likeminded businesses, create a rock solid community of people who wanna spread the word about your biz and grow your business through the art of the referral.
#3 Tell your story
Social media presents a unique opportunity to tell your brand’s story every. Single. Day.
It plays into the idea that a customer needs to see a brand at least a gazillion times with a before they’ll even consider buying the product or investing in the service [it used to be the rule of seven, but some marketers now report brands needing 20+ touchpoints before a customer will consider dropping some dollars #Yikes].
That’s the beauty of social media. You can easily show up multiple times a week, build these touchpoints and tell your story in a way that is inviting, engaging and builds a heck of a lot of trust. While it can be exhausting to maintain social media accounts because they’re not evergreen, I find there’s a whole lot of opportunity to keep your brand super relatable and top of mind.
This is especially the case when we look at all the different ways we can tell brand stories on social media.
Let’s look at Instagram as an example.
Not only do we have all the different mediums we can play with on the ‘gram [photos, videos, carousels, stories], we also have different themes that lend themselves well to social media.
Memes. Testimonials. Case studies. Brand values. Industry opinions. Promotion. BTS. The list goes on [and on].
The beauty of having a bunch of different themes [or content pillars, if you wanna get jargon-y with it] is that you can always find a new and exciting way to tell your story, relate to your audience and position yourself as one-of-a-kind in your industry.
Sure, you can include some of these elements on your website or in your blog content, but the ability to tell your story in ways that evolve with your audience is a true strength of social media.
If you’ve ever seen my content over on the ‘gram [or LinkedIn, Facebook or emails], you’ll know just how passionate I am about the power of social media marketing.
There are a lot of people on social media every single day. There are a lot of people you can share your story with, connect with and invite to see a side of your brand that’s a little more raw and real than your super polished website.
There’s a lot of power in social media marketing and I fall in love with it every single time I see the results flood in for my clients.
But I also know social media can’t [and ab-suh-freakin’-lutely shouldn’t] be the only way to market a business.
That’s why Rhi and I have come together to talk about the power of omni-channel marketing. You can find her over on my blog talking about the power of SEO in a holistic marketing strategy, and who knows, you might even catch us over on the ‘gram, talking about this in an IG Live [if I can bring her over to the sunshiney side of social media, that is 😉].
Until then, it’s been an absolute pleasure chatting to you beauties about the power of social media in a holistic marketing strategy. If you have any questions or wanna chat, you can get in touch over on my website here.
‘Til next time 👋
