August 6, 2018

3.4 : Social media channels for buyer persona

3.4 : Social media channels for buyer persona

Dr. Aleksej Heinze, Associate Professor at KEDGE Business School (France), Visiting Lecturer, Salford Business School, UK

When you have developed an understanding of your buyer persona and their preference for social networks, it is important to try and understand what is the best way for you to engage in those social networks. The reality is that most individuals will be active on one social network on a regular basis and then two, three, or four, or even more than this on a sort of ad hoc or whenever they become aware of certain content on those networks.

So for business point of view, it presents itself a challenge; whether you will have to developsay a very high profile on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other network. Our recommendation is try and develop the most important presence for your social media on your website and that is through your blog.

Yes, it is good for you to be developing a presence on Facebook and it is good for you to develop a presence on Twitter, but the reality is that not all pages are accessible for all countries and, for example, if you are trying to reach out to a Chinese audience, you will realize that a certain networks are forbidden in that country, and therefore the content that you publish in those would be preventing you from reaching out to those buyer personas.

A blog on your website is one of the most effective social media engagement platforms, reaching beyond borders and trends

So therefore, if you were to use your blog as the main channel for amplification, you are standing a much better chance for driving individuals to come to your site through all the different social networks and you can still develop the networks there but just to amplify the content that’s on your blog rather than something that is the primary engagement for the audience.

Colin Telford, Managing Partner, The Candidate Ltd, UK

So we research the different social media channels by basically a test-and-refine strategy. So there are different channels and different ways of being able to interact with candidates appearing, you know, on a weekly and a monthly basis. And it’s important that you test each of these different channels, perhaps with a very small budget, to find out if the response rate is right, if the engagement is right for your business to make that commercially viable in the long run.

There are always new social media platforms emerging where you can evaluate your presence with a pilot

So in the marketing department that we have at The Candidate, we try our best to trial the different channels that exist and see if there’s going to be any conversions further down the line. The problem is that there are so many new online pieces of software and portals being produce that it takes long time to go through them all, so perhaps a word-of-mouth or some research online to see the effectiveness of the new channels will help you get to the point of identifying those that are commercially viable quicker.

Alex Charalambidis, Digital Marketing Strategist, MONKS, Greece

You can use social listening tools and identify where the traffic is coming and what they are thinking about your brand.

Kristina Chokoeva, Marketing Director, DINO, Bulgaria

There are many lessons that we’ve learned from digital marketing of our business. Digital has taught us to be authentic both in our offline and online business.

Think about the quality of your content and how it adds value for your buyer persona

Simply retweeting is not enough. It’s not the quantity that pays off, it’s the quality. Creating content that adds value is what makes a digital campaign successful.

Ways to Find Great Social Media Conten

Set up Google Alerts – https://www.google.co.uk/alerts

Additional material

Can you do it with social media?

Watch this video from Social Media Examiner:

 

What can you learn from this?

Would you like to learn more about blogging – see this short resource on blogging http://blogs.salford.ac.uk/business-school/how-to-start-a-blog/

References

Fan Pages

 http://fanpagelist.com

Thackeray, R., Neiger, B. L., Hanson, C. L., & McKenzie, J. F. (2008). Enhancing promotional strategies within social marketing programs: use of Web 2.0 social media. Health promotion practice, 9(4), 338-343.

 http://www.researchgate.net/profil…

Drury, G. (2008). Opinion piece: Social media: Should marketers engage and how can it be done effectively?. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 9(3), 274-277.

 http://www.palgrave-journals.com/d…

Pleae see chapter 3 links below:

3.0 Buyer persona development
3.1 The importance of understanding who the target audience is
3.2 Planning integration of search and social media
3.3 Keyword research for buyer persona
3.5 Develop keyword plan for a campaign
3.6 PPC keyword vs organic keyword plan
3.7 Develop social media editorial calendar