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Sales Enablement: Helping Customers Discover Your Product

1. Using social media to sell your products

Although social media is all about awareness and engagement, businesses can also promote their products and help customers in the phase of product discovery.

55% of respondents who discovered a product through social media proceeded to purchase later on. ~ Mary Meeker, Internet Trends 2018
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In this report, Facebook tops the social media channels where people find out about new products. Use this opportunity to make it easier and faster for your audience to move down your sales funnel.

Easy-to-Digest Content, Ads, and Stories

2. Omnichannel marketing

Omni, which means ‘all or every’ is about managing customer experience in all channels whether offline or online. The idea is that the customer’s journey may start in one channel and move to another seamlessly towards the end point—your product or service.

With the help of a Social Media Virtual Assistant, you can reach and interact with your audience anytime through the use of email marketing, online advertising, social networking, and other platforms because nobody today shops exclusively through a single medium.

3. 24-hour stories impacts how people consume content

Stories are visual content in a vertical format that lasts for a day and first became popular on Snapchat and later on copied by Instagram and Facebook.

These stories are easy to create, fun, engaging, authentic, and don’t last long so there’s that sense of urgency to consume them before they’re gone.

This means more and more brands will use this in-the-moment style content vs. overly produced, pre-packed content.

Currently, 400 million people are consuming Stories on Instagram on a daily basis, while Facebook is trying to integrate Stories to our daily routines.
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4. Growing social media ad spend across marketers

One of every four Facebook Pages now use paid advertising as part of their social media marketing strategy.

But always consider not relying too much on one platform, either for organic or paid growth. One recommended way to do this is to just boost your top performing organic content.

Marketers increased social ad budgets up to 32% in 2018. Facebook accounts for 23% of total U.S. digital ad spending.
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5. Invest some time in creating great content

In our blog Why you need to hire a social media manager for your business, we discussed how a social media VA can help you increase conversions by sharing your content on social media.

6. Join more communities through LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn is already making a huge push toward becoming a connection nurturing network among executives and younger demographics entering the workforce. It’s also constantly updating its groups in an aim to drive more community.

LinkedIn reports that likes, comments, and shares on the network increased more than 50%.
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Engagement and Influencer Marketing

7. Love and care about your social community

Connecting with your audience, responding quickly to customer inquiries/requests, and addressing issues are just few of the reasons for using social media marketing.

Businesses that monitor and participate in conversations with their followers and potential customers can expect more loyalty form their fans and develop deeper and longer relationships.

8. Working with influencers and micro-influencers

Working with the best influencers can be expensive so this is where micro-influencers (ordinary digital citizens) come in. Try tools like Mavrck, Neoreach, and Traackr to find key micro-influencers so you can test the waters of influencer marketing on a budget.

Example: a food brand may see better results by using a rising food blogger (micro-influencer) with 30k followers than a celebrity chef who may ask for 20x of the budget.

Facebook Groups are a hot spot for engagement and a place to focus social media efforts in 2019.
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Social Media TV, Videos, Podcasts, and Live Streaming

9. Highlighting video content marketing

More on social media tips for business – The launch of IGTV by Instagram was one of the biggest social media trends of 2018. And according to Statista, more than 50% of digital videos are now viewed on mobile in vertical video format.

Among the top picks of marketers are: Live video or live streaming, interactive video, short videos, and vertical videos.

10. Share authentic stories and important moments

“Stories create a more transparent and meaningful relationship. That means less of static updates and more behind-the-scenes, raw, and intimate stories.” – Anna Crowe, Assistant Editor of Search Engine Journal

Business owners will need to tell more stories and moments that matter to the people, and not their brand. You can take your best-performing posts and evergreen web content and create one-minute videos or convert them to blog posts.

One-minute videos get 400 – 500% more reach on LinkedIn compared to Facebook.
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Messaging Apps, Automation, Chatbots

11. AI and automated messaging for customers

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automated messengers for customer service support means that the expectations about the response time are increasing. Huffington Post reported that 60% of the Millennial population are the quickest adaptors of chatbot-based customer experiences.

12. Understanding how people use messaging apps

People widely use private messaging, whether it’s simply about reaching their families or staying in touch with their favorite brands. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, and WeChat hold a large percentage of the messaging market.

13. Personalized, Private messaging, and chatbots

Facebook Messenger and chatbots are one of the most effective ways to reach and build audience engagement—it’s email blasting done via messenger.

“Businesses that market via Messenger earn 60 to 80 percent open rates within the first 60 minutes.” ~ Kristi Kellogg, Founder & CEO of Dazzling Digital

Many experts predict that by 2020, more than 80% of all customer service interactions will be powered by AI bots.
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The Importance of Trust and Transparency in Social Media Marketing

14. Making customers comfortable in sharing their data

Because of recent data breaches on some platforms, building trust with your audience is now more important than ever. Be transparent and prompt enough to update your customers on a recent change or admitting your mistakes and working on to resolve issues.

15. Earn and keep the trust of your followers

Finally, always aim to capture the trust and confidence of your customers every single day. With all the fake news and privacy disasters this past year, it’s imperative that you ensure people that their personal online privacy is in good hands.

Interested to start working on how to improve social media for your business? Reach out to us and we can discuss your social media marketing strategy and overall business objectives.

Our experienced social media virtual assistants (VA) can help you with sharing posts, lead generation, increasing your followers, customer support, and promoting your brand so you can continue to thrive online and make an impact this 2019.

Virtual Assistant Talent is a top-notch virtual assistant staffing agency helping professionals from different industries such as the real estate, insurance, small business, coaching/consulting, and executive leadership.

CALL US at 1-866-596-9041 and discover how our highly qualified and trained virtual assistants can help in your everyday tasks and objectives.

Reference:
www.searchenginejournal.com/
blog.bufferapp.com/
medium.com/
www.martechadvisor.com/

Since Instagram updated their services, business owners are turning to this social media site to promote their businesses as well. The new app – 15-second video has been added to its features and few more tweaks made waves to its follower.

Related: Reasons to Use Social Media Marketing in Your Business

1: Show Your Products

Everyone loves to browse products so let your followers do some mobile window-shopping! Show off a collection of the products you offer, share a photo of a new or lesser-known product or zoom in on a product and engage your Instagram followers by asking them to guess what it is.

2: Show How It’s Made

Let followers in on the origins of their favorite products with snapshots taken at various points in the manufacturing process. If that process is a long one, you might consider making it a multi-part post that follows the process from planning to production to delivery.

3: Go Behind the Scenes

Getting ready to launch or promote products and services is hard work, but presents many opportunities to get some great content for Instagram. Doing a photo shoot for a catalog or ad? Filming a commercial? Getting made-up for a media interview? Or getting ready to step out on the red carpet? These are moments that very few people get to experience in real life.

Instagram is a way to give your followers an exclusive backstage pass!
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4: Show What Your Products Can Do

Sometimes our imagination only takes us so far. Use Instagram to create demand by helping consumers imagine new or novel uses for what you offer.

This is also a perfect opportunity to invite user-generated contents. Have fans submit their own photos demonstrating creative use of your products and pick the best ones to post on Instagram.

5: Give a Sneak Peek

Everyone likes to be the first to know… well… anything. Hire your virtual assistant to help you not only increase your Instagram followers but also engage them. Make your followers feel special and let your VA give them exclusive previews of products and services, or virtual tours of your new stores, production facilities or offices in the making.

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Things never seen before make for particularly shareable content, so be sure to publish the post to Facebook and Twitter as well, since Instagram does not yet have a sharing or reposting function.

6: Show Your Office

People who follow their favorite brands on social media have probably asked at one time or another, “I wonder what it’d be like to work there?” Well, show them!

Post photos that provide a glimpse of a-day-in-the-life at your office—work areas, the corporate gym or play-field, decked-out cubicles, brainstorming meetings in progress, training sessions, employees at lunch, employees at play—the opportunities here are countless.

7: Take Us With You

Going to a trade-show or sponsoring an event? Use that as an opportunity to take your Instagram followers with you wherever you’re going.

Followers in those locations will be tickled to know you’re in their neighborhood. Folks can also get a better feel for your brand by learning about the events or causes you attend, support or sponsor.

8: Introduce Your Employees

Humanize your brand by using Instagram to…

Introduce your fans to the people who make your company what it is.
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Spotlighted employees will enjoy the recognition (and a few seconds of fame) and Instagram followers will get a chance to see the people behind the brand. You might even want to make this profile an ongoing campaign that takes fans around the office to meet staff serving a variety of roles within your company.

Be sure to punch up the post and share a little about each employee in the caption.

9: Share Celebrity Sightings

Let’s face it. We live in a society that is crazy about celebrities—we know who they’re dating, what they’re eating and where they go to vacation.

Cash in on celebrity cachet and share pictures of them interacting with your brand, whether they’re signing autographs at your sponsored event, speaking, visiting your office or even using your products or services. These posts will be sure to get followers talking.

10: Share the Cuteness

There is no denying the appeal of animals in social media. Lolcats, CuteOverload and the countless other awww-inducing blogs out there are proof that there is capital in cuteness.

Whether they’re pets visiting the office, starring in your ads or animals sporting your schwag, never miss an opportunity to get a snapshot to share on Instagram. Our furry friends can be counted on to get likes and comments from followers.

Source: Vanessa Au is a Sr. Analyst at Spring Creek Group (IPG subsidiary), a social media agency in Seattle, Washington.

As a virtual assistant provider, Virtual Assistant Talent has all the services you are looking for and the best Virtual Assistants in town.

Sign up your no obligation request now or CONTACT US at our main number 1-866-596-9041 (510-400-8006 local).

We are proud to be a Better Business Bureau Accredited Company (bbb.org).

Why is that? Well, a recent HubSpot survey featured in Forbes indicated 92% of marketers claim that social media marketing was an important part of their business—and 80% indicated their efforts increased traffic to their websites.

A social media virtual assistant can help build your brand reputation, build a following, and increase your market exposure and potential sales and conversions. There’s no time like the present to get your business up to speed and avoid falling behind your competition. Here are five reasons to use social media marketing in your business:

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1. Increase traffic and brand recognition

Your social media presence paves the way for new customers to access your brand and content easier while making you more familiar and recognizable for existing customers. The social media networks you create are new channels for you to build reputation by increasing your visibility online.

For example, a Twitter user could get interested about your company after just seeing your hashtag retweeted by his friend. Or, an online buyer might check out your website after seeing your promo posted on multiple networks. It’s all about making use of every opportunity you can get to broadcast your brand in the internet world.

2. Build a following and brand loyalty

A conclusion from a report published by Texas Tech University stated that a strategically designed social media plan could prove influential in encouraging consumers into being brand loyal. Businesses should take advantage of the tools social media gives them when it comes to connecting with their audience and building a following.

According to the report, brands who engage on social media channels enjoy higher loyalty from their customers. Furthermore, another study published by Convince&Convert found that 53% of Americans who follow brands in social are more loyal to those brands.

Related: Smart And Creative Ways To Promote A Business

3. Convert visitors to customers

Did you know that every post you make on social media platforms is an opportunity for customers to convert? Whether it’s a video, an image, or a blog post, what you share online is a chance for them to react and/or take action.

You will have access to new customers, recent customers, and old customers, and the great thing is, you’ll be able to interact with all of them simultaneously! Remember that each of their reactions could lead to a site visit, and eventually a conversion.

However, not every interaction with your brand results in a conversion. But keep in mind that every positive feedback increases the likelihood of an actual conversion. The opportunities you have on social media alone are very valuable.

4. Decrease marketing costs

According to Hubspot…

84% of marketers say that 6 hours/week on social media helps generate traffic.
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In fact, if you hire a virtual assistant (VA) or remote worker to spend just one hour a day developing your content and syndication strategy, you could start seeing the results of your efforts.

You can also go for paid advertising through Facebook and Twitter. It is not that pricey depending on your goals and can be a valuable investment. For example, a VA can go over your page insights and develop a strategy for you and once you get a better feel for what to expect, you can increase your budget or time allocation for the efforts.

Additionally, the VA can consistently monitor your social media account, reviewing and responding to prospective customers and existing customers inquiries, comments, and concerns, escalating important things that come up for you to address and take action as needed. VAs can also create and populate dashboards for you to monitor the traffic and measure the activities and success of your social media.

Using virtual assistants saves you up to 76% in labor costs vs. office-based employees.
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Further, virtual assistants can be a highly cost effective alternative to utilizing PR firms or marketing agencies depending on your business needs and budget.

5.The sooner you start, the better

The sooner you start your social media marketing, the sooner you will reap the benefits. You will see your network grow rapidly as your followers tell their friends, their families, and so on. The earlier you start, the sooner you’ll be able to start establishing your presence and growing your audience. And, with the feedback you get in the social media marketing process, you’ll know if there are issues right away and take steps to resolve them.

Studies have shown that…

Consumers appreciate those who respond to good feedback & also to complaints AND make things right.
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So make sure you are all ears when it comes to this, as social media is the most viral marketing ever—word gets out faster than before.

Now is the time to start growing your network. If you don’t have the time or expertise to do so, you can hire a VA to start inviting connections, creating, writing, and posting content and engaging in conversation and follow up with your audience or customer base.

The important thing is you build your online presence and make it easier for prospective clients/customers to find you, and interact with you. This opens the door and increases your market exposure to create more opportunities in delivering your message and unique selling points for increased sales conversions of your products/services.

References:
www.forbes.com
www.contentfac.com

Few years back, having a social media account seems to be a luxury. Not anymore as companies saw the potential it can bring to their business. Though some business do not believe the power of social media but still, more are trying their luck and the benefit it can bring.

According to Forbes, “In 2014, businesses of all sizes will discover the power of social media like Instagram and Vine to creatively market content.”

The trend of sharing through visual and video, rather than text-based content is a strategy that is increasing and getting a high following not only for individuals and personal use but for business as well. Image and video based social media sites like Youtube, Vimeo, Instagram, Slideshare, Flickr, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms continue to improve their service to compete with each other in terms of sharing of videos and photos on their websites.