There has been a tremendous amount of change in the business marketing landscape. We have entered late-stage social media, and many of the tactics that worked previously for creators and businesses aren’t as effective today. “Social” platforms have moved from “social graphs,” where our feeds are driven by posts/content from friends and family, to “interest graphs,” where content is primarily tuned to our personal interests and originates from brands or creators that know how to game the algorithm. Not to mention how every third “post” is now an ad.
Meanwhile, a follower or subscriber isn’t a 1-to-1 relationship anymore. At this point, most of us passively consume on social, but when you choose to post, you could get dozens or hundreds of views on a post today and 100,000 views the next. It can be difficult to get consistent results, even if you have a large following and are willing to get out your pocket book and pay to boost your content in hopes of getting more views.
With social, you are effectively playing on rented land, and the rules can change at any time. No one wants their business to turn upside-down overnight because of a platform change. While it’s important to participate on social for reach and awareness, businesses should have a marketing and channel strategy that goes beyond social media alone. In my experience, the real benefits of social come when you are able to move those viewers who show interest and engagement off of social and onto your business’s “owned” channels.
The Challenges Of Social Media Marketing
Social is typically great for top-of-funnel, but it’s difficult to build a business on likes and shares. If you don’t have an end game beyond serving content up for social, you may spend all your marketing time and energy chasing the algorithm, making content decisions depending on what they are prioritizing, and making videos that are never seen again after 48 hours.
When it comes to monetization, you could turn on ad-matching services or enrol in a creator fund, but unless you get large viewership numbers each month until the end of time, you’re unlikely to see meaningful pay-outs. The creator fund model in particular is challenging to master, as the pool of funds established for pay-outs are often fixed amounts of budgeted dollars for a set period of time. This means that as more people get traction, everyone earns less while the platforms make more.
TikTok has been addressing this by turning to more affiliate-based models, where products are promoted by creators en mass in exchange for a kickback in order to train audiences on how to purchase directly from the platform. However, it’s more rare to small businesses and brands selling their own custom products “direct” through these platforms with the same type of success.
Worse yet, transactions through social platforms put a third party between you and your buyer. This means you know less about who is buying, have fewer options for reengaging with them and, in the end, may become less visible and lose top of mind with your audience as more transactions happen via the “platforms” instead of your own website.
How To Attract Social Viewers To Your Domain
If you’re ready to rewrite the narrative and use social media to your advantage, there are several strategies you can use to bring folks back to your website and build a home base where you control the content, audience, data and transactions:
• Use LinkedIn’s Newsletter feature to post regular content relevant to your industry. Build an email list, and stay top-of-mind with your target customers and partners. In my experience, this tactic is especially good for B2B companies selling into specific roles like CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, marketing directors, etc.
• Post “How To” videos to YouTube that address common questions or concerns. This will allow you to appear in YouTube search results and helps make your business more discoverable. Include your business details in the description.
• Make social posts that go over new arrivals, then tell viewers to go to your website to buy online before they’re gone. For example, I have seen clothing boutiques use this strategy effectively by offering weekly tips on what to wear.
• Go live across all your social channels, then end the stream on social and redirect users back to your website. This redirect might be to watch the content in full or to reward visitors with extra “behind the scenes” content. This is a common practice for talk shows and podcasts that go live to discuss a show after a new episode airs.
• Post TikTok videos that include a testimonial from a customer. This tends to feel more authentic and get viewers’ attention. When the customer talks about your product or service in the testimonial, make sure they mention your website.
• Create “Lists” on X (formerly Twitter). Group X users together by company, industry or geographical location to help you focus on conversations you want to monitor. You can include brands and companies in your list without them being a follower. Rowan Cheung did this early on for AI-focused startups and has established himself as a go-to source for AI-related industry news and updates.
Finally, webpages with video typically see more time-on-site than pages that don’t, so consider how you can borrow a page from social’s playbook by including videos on your site. By following these strategies, you can not only increase time spent on your webpage but also help visitors learn more about what you have to offer.
Feature Image Credit: getty
By Nicholas Mattingly
Nicholas Mattingly is the CEO and Co-Founder of Switcher Inc. Read Nicholas Mattingly’s full executive profile here.
