How To Use Social Media To Engage With Local Audiences

Every day, 42% of the global population logs into a social media account. This is where your buyers connect with loved ones, find brands to support, and give their ideas a voice.

Social media marketing is thus one of the most potent things you can achieve with a mouse. There are 60 million active business pages on Facebook alone, but only one brand like yours.

Digital marketing guru, Seth Godin once said, “In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.” Glossy campaigns and creative giveaways will only carry you so far here.

Social media is inherently sociable, so when you market on Instagram, Twitter, and other networks, local engagement should be your highest goal.

Free tools like Google Wildfire will help you to scout neighborhood rivals and build better benchmarks over time, but simple geo-targeted content that builds relationships will carry you even further.

Every virtual ounce of content you post has the potential to carry visitors deeper into your site and closer to a buying decision.

Hard sales tactics and gatekeeper-style marketing need to be put to bed in exchange for a city-focused content marketing strategy that delivers true engagement. Think smart, and you’ll earn smart.

1. Branding Magic

To leverage social media marketing’s profit-building potential, you must first understand what it is and what it isn’t.

It’s not blogging or advertising, and if you approach it as such, you’ll generate endless rhetoric that fails to humanize your brand. The web’s top social networks are at their most profitable when you use them to build relationships.

Social media listening tools will carry you straight to buyers in your district, allowing you to engage in conversations about your brand. To leverage these tools well, you need to develop the voice of our brand.

The most effective campaigns aren’t afraid to be human. Treat your followers as friends, and they will return the favor. Relationships build the kind of loyalty that followers will never offer, so always maintain the “social” part of your social media presence.

Giveaways, polls, and events will humanize business while building the brand ambassadors you need to introduce new adopters to your company.

Local pages on Facebook and Twitter offer another potentially profitable way to drum up local interest–a goal you can maximize by engaging with local philanthropic efforts.

Donating to partnering charities in exchange for likes and tweets can form the thrust of a geo-targeted campaign that will push your reputation to unprecedented heights.

 

2. Building Loyalty

The Pareto Principle holds that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your audience. Build your loyal 20%, and your profits will soar.

You can set up loyalty programs with a few clicks of a mouse while simultaneously sending crowds to your website and further along your buying funnel.

Live broadcasts build the intimacy you need to engage your following, while social media influencer marketing puts a face onto your brand at a local level.

Trust is the first step towards loyalty, so false promises and inauthentic brand stories might work for a digital minute, but you’ll lose hordes of followers in the long run.

Spam is almost as damaging, so don’t fill your followers’ inboxes with unwarranted advertising. This is a relationship game, after all.

 

3. Paid Advertising

Without followers, you can’t achieve much. Most social media advertising programs allow you to market by location, drumming up support in your area.

These campaigns work best when combined with social media’s veritable treasure trove of analytics tools.

To win the social media marketing race, you must remain relevant and engaging. That’s not something you’ll achieve perfectly the first time, so dig into your data to find out where you’re going wrong. Key metrics to study include:

1. Post engagement rates: The number of engagements you have divided by each post’s impressions Organic Brand Mentions.
2. Individual engagements such as likes, comments, and retweets.Ç
3. Impressions: The number of times each post appears in timelines and feeds.
4. Reach your follower count and the number of shares each post receives.
5. Return on investment: The profits you make relative to your marketing spend.

Iterative marketing entails developing the perfect marketing strategy one minute, one mistake, and one success story at a time. Analytics gives you the data you need to gradually evolve a perfect campaign.

 

4. Leveraging Automation

63% of businesses that use marketing automation are outgrowing their competitors, shaving an average of three hours off their campaign planning.

Automated tools can respond to follower contact within seconds and generate engaging posts at a fraction of the cost of traditional content marketing. Better yet, many social networks offer them free of charge.

 

5. Integrating Your Online Presence

Your social media platforms represent the first and last spots in your buying funnel, generating interest and acting as a platform for after-sales service. Your website and online presence must fill in the gap. Social networks must be carefully chosen, too.

A Facebook page will do little to engage a B2B audience, and a LinkedIn page is unlikely to appeal to an e-commerce audience. Pinterest and Instagram will place you fashion or décor brand on the map in a way that Twitter will never achieve.

Social media is one of the most profitable tools in the online landscape, but if you use it poorly, your brand will be invisible.

This is your opportunity to connect with those who will become your most enthusiastic brand ambassadors, so treat them like the kings and queens they are.

Author Bio

Delan Cooper is a writer with years of experience in marketing communication. He enjoys meeting new people and reading more books to get inspired for his own book. Connect with him on Twitter.