As digital marketing consultants and trainers, our clients ask us loads of questions on the daily.
We thought we’d share a few of the most commonly asked, along with the short version of our responses. Read on and discover some resources, advice, and answers to things you’ve likely wondered about social media and digital marketing.
1. Can social media really help my business?
Yes.
Ok, let us elaborate. As of early 2022, 90% of Canadians are using some form of social media, so trust us… your customers are using social media.
By integrating a social media plan into your marketing and consistently applying it, you’ll be creating genuine connections with your existing and potential customers in a way that traditional media typically doesn’t allow.
As you grow your following, engaging directly with your customers to give them a positive perception of you, you’re also collecting real time feedback from your market. This will enable you to create connections between your customers and what you’re offering, establish a stronger brand identity, establish a level of trust with them, and reach people where they’re more likely to be found.
2. Which platforms should I be on?
The short answer is pick as many as you know you can do really, really well, and pick the ones where your audience is most likely to be present. If you’re a small team, using 1-3 platforms is a great place to start without spreading your resources too thin. If you’ve got a huge team with plenty of resources (people, budget, time), then feel free to tag on a few more. Whatever you do, don’t try to be everywhere to everyone.
3. Where can I find content ideas?
We’ve all been there, it’s 11:15am, and you’re supposed to have a post ready to go in 20 minutes… but you’ve got absolutely no idea what to post. You end up creating something boring about one of your products and it falls flat.
While it’s what we inherently default to posting when we’re out of ideas, the truth is, people don’t want to see a bunch of products and ‘selling’ posts on their feeds. So it’s super important that we do our best to keep our feed fresh, unique, and mix it up when we can. To help you out, here are a couple tips to help you stay creative and find great content ideas.
One idea when you’re feeling creatively fatigued is to do some research and dig up some inspiration! Check out other industries, markets, and social accounts to see what’s working for design, messaging, photography, themes, and format. Part of being a great digital marketer is staying up-to-date with trends and what’s happening online, so get on there and tell your boss you’re scrolling Instagram for “research”.
4. What’s the difference between organic and paid social media?
While they’re equally important and valuable for your business, these approaches serve very different purposes.
Organic social is the use of any free services, tools, and functions of a social media platform: posting status updates on Facebook, sharing stories on Instagram, sharing an article with your connections on LinkedIn. The payoff with organic is more likely to be brand building, growing your audience, gaining trust, sharing your expertise, etc.
Paid social media refers to any actions on social media that you put money behind. Social channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.) allow you to spend some money to have your content shared with specific people, and paid social media is really popular due to how affordable it is relative to more traditional forms of advertising. With paid, you’re looking to generate leads, clicks, conversions and sales.
Check out this article to learn more about why you should be using both paid and organic social media!
5. What should my monthly investment in social media/digital marketing look like?
We get asked this question a tonne, and honestly the only correct answer is that you need to be investing something! Gone are the days of wild success purely based on an organic approach… in order for you to meet your goals, you’ll need to start investing in your social media and digital marketing. The good news: digital marketing is historically far more cost-effective than many forms of traditional marketing so if you think strategically, understand your audience, and are willing to adjust as the data comes in, your dollars on digital will likely go a lot further than anywhere else.
If you’re ready to take the first step to investing a little in your social media/digital marketing, check out this article on why you should be boosting your organic content.
And if you’re ready to start investing a bit more to reach more of your marketing goals, check out this article for advice on how to spend your marketing budget on digital.
Bonus: Why would I need digital marketing training; how would it help my business?
We believe that nobody knows your business as well as you and nobody can connect with your audience better than you. That’s why it can be really challenging, time consuming, and expensive to pay someone else to create engaging content for your industry and audience.
Given the proper tools and strategies, we believe business owners and internal staff are entirely capable of creating and delivering organic and paid digital marketing content that will get results. This will allow more of your budget to be allocated to the actual ad spend, and hopefully help you reach even more customers.
If you want to know more about our Digital Marketing Certification—and how you could receive up to 100% funding to cover the cost of training, click HERE.