Social Media As an Opportunity to Reach to The Audience

Essay, Pages 12 (2891 words)

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Executive Summary

Social media offers an opportunity for Tony’s T’s to reach to the audience they want and build a following which in return will help boost their brand awareness and overall sales. To optimize these services it is crucial to develop a course of action. This course of action will include platforms to use as well as how to manage them and track results. It is important to note that alongside planning for social media platforms, creating interesting quality content will be another important key to success.

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Understanding your audience and building a honest and compelling relationship with them will be a top priority. Along the way Tony’s T’s can begin to use results from each platform to help better understand what their audience is reacting too. For Tony’s T’s I will be suggesting the social media platforms Facebook (facebook.com), Instagram (instagram.com), and Pinterest (pinterest.com).

SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

FACEBOOK

Facebook stands above all the other social media platforms with the highest market share of 63.

71% and an average of 2.2 billion monthly users (Spredfast, StatCounter, 2018). This is extremely impressive when knowing that other platforms only see a few hundred million users a month(Spredfast, 2018). Between the various types of content you can post such as; photos, videos, status updates, photo stories, live video and gifs, and the services it offers such as; easy targeted ad creation, communication paths directly with your audience, and a convenient place to track your results right on your page, Facebook is the best place to start.

Understanding that Tony’s T’s wishes to reach young men and women as well as adults, Facebook users fit the demographic. The larger percent of users are in the age range of 18-49 which is a the exact age group Tony’s T’s is targeting. 88% of that group being age 18-29 and 84% being 30-49, while also having a large variety of older users 50-65+ (Spredfast, 2018).

Within the last 2 years American Eagle Outfitters used Facebook to successfully reach a larger audience. This included the use of dynamic ads and setting their target audience to a more broad setting (Facebook for Business, 2018). By doing this the company was able to reach those who weren't users of the app or hadn’t visited the company's site. The result was 4 times the return on ad spend and a 14.5% increase in broad audience targeting revenue (Facebook for Business, 2018). This is similar to the Facebook success of Active Faith, a faith based activewear company. Active Faith wanted to reach out to existing customers as well as new customers and set to reach them during March Madness (Facebook for Business, 2018). Last year, with the use of videos, dynamic ads, and defining their target audience Active Faith saw 3.7 times the return on ad spend as well as a 30% increase in purchases per month (Facebook for Business, 2018).

As seen in the case studies Facebook ads are a great way to reach out to your audience and also build a new audience. To help keep and further build your audience it is a good idea to make sure to post regularly as to give your audience something to look forward to and this will be more discussed in the “Time Management” section. It is also a great idea to interact with your audience such as; respond to comments on your posts and respond to messages you might receive directly in Facebook's messaging service Messenger. Going back to posting regularly, you will need content to share with your audience. As mentioned earlier it is important to alway produce quality content that is in the best interest of your audience. Something that they will want to see. Some post suggestions for Tony’s T’s Facebook page would be recent designs, photos of people wearing the shirts, mentioning what people are saying about the shirts, and videos on how the shirts are thought up or are created. You can sometimes repurpose content but it should be done sparingly and the content should be altered to be something that looks new.

INSTAGRAM

Instagram is a central place for artists and designers to show off their work. It is also a huge platform for product influencers and endorsement. This is why Instagram is my second suggestion for Tony’s T’s to use. Instagrams market share sets around 2.41% with 800 million monthly users (Spredfast, StatCounter 2018). A fun fact shared on Spredfast mentioned over 50% of teens saw Instagram as the best platform to discover new products (2018). A great feature recently added to Instagram is the shopping update which allows users to click on a product shown in the photo post and then be directed to the sellers site for easy shopping in one click. Instagram allows posting videos, images, live video, photo stories, and offers direct in app messaging. The demographic for Instagram also fits the target audience for Tony’s T’s. Instagram will be the place to best reach the younger crowd, ages 18-29 as it sets at 53% while also still allowing for some reach to the older adult audience in the range of 30-49 as it sets as 33% (Spredfast, 2018).

Louis Vuitton recently used Instagrams stories feature to launch their new 2017 Spring/Summer collection. They created exclusive content just for the stories and took advantage of the full screen as when you open instagram stories they fill your entire phone screen, which gave them a chance to really show off their looks (Instagram for Business, 2018). In return, Louis Vuitton saw a 28 point increase in ad recall and a 2 point increase in recommendation (Instagram for Business, 2018). Another fashion company by the name of DefShop, a fashion resale seller based in Europe, had huge success with Instagram. DefShop explored Instagram's new shopping feature, creating looks and allowing followers to easily be able to purchase the pieces of the look. Using this feature allowed for followers to click on a piece of clothing they like and be directed to the sellers site to easily purchase the item. It is in the convenience of the buying process that made it successful (Instagram for Business, 2018). As a result DefShop had a 64% increase in sales, 13% higher conversion rate, and 56% more website visitors (Instagram for Business, 2018).

Similar to Facebook ads, Instagram allows you to create sponsored posts that can be directed at your target audience. This will help to build your audience. A great feature Instagram has over Facebook is hashtags, this will allow you use popular and relating key words to help users find you and your content. Keyword usage will further be discussed in the “Online Marketing” section, but it’s notable to always use hashtags relating to what you post. Like Facebook to help build and keep your audience it is good to reply to comments and messages from users. Stories is great way to create a small daily interaction with your audience as well. Instagram content is more visual and focused on photos so make sure they content is interesting and in high quality. For Instagram I suggest also posting photos of designs and people wearing the design so Tony’s T’s can incorporate Instagram’s shopping feature.

Pinterest has recently been making its way up. As being known as a go to place to search for ideas and explore products this makes a great third recommendation for Tony’s T’s. Pinterest has a higher market share of 14.88% with 200 million monthly users (Spredfast, StatCounter, 2018). Like Instagram, Pinterest is also photo based. Pinterest will allow for Tony’s T’s to visually inspire their audience and pull from alike companies to create a community of followers. Pinterest like Instagram, offers a direct shopping experience from a click and you can even do it with apps for direct download. Pinterest ads, called sponsored pins, are like other ads and can be directed at a targeted audience. A great feature with sponsored pins is when someone saves one of your sponsored pins, all of their followers will see that pin, and the special part of pinterest ads, is that the look more natural not feeling like an obvious ad (Pinterest for Business, 2018). Like the other two recommended platforms, Pinterest demographics meet Tony’s T’s target audience. Ages 18-49 are about tied in percentage of users with ages 18-29 at 36% and ages 30-49 at 34% (Spredfast, 2018). Similar to Instagram, Spredfast mentioned another fun fact that 80% of millenials use Pinterest to search for products (2018).

Nordstrom is the perfect example of the influence Pinterest can have on a company. Through Pinterest, Nordstrom was able to inspire their customers and create conversation around their brand and products. They created awareness and demand for their products and gave their audience what they wanted by watching trends (Pinterest for Business, 2018). Eventually they integrated trends in their stores, tagging popular products with the tag Pinterest most trending and saw a huge increase in traffic and demand (Pinterest for Business, 2018). Nordstrom currently has 4.4 million followers (Pinterest for Business, 2018). Like DefShop from Instagram, shophearts took a similar approach on Pinterest setting up buyable pins but during a holiday time allowing users to purchase the product from the company without having to leave the site making shopping a breeze (Pinterest for Business, 2018). shophearts result was a 15% increase in sales, a 20% increase in website traffic, and customers spent 30% more than average (Pinterest for Business, 2018).

Sponsored Pins are a great way to spread your pins and build your audience. It’s a good idea to create several boards and try to give each their own life (Pinterest for Business, 2018). You want to share your products but also create inspiration and conversation. Keep your audience engaged with content and once the conversation starts that's when the audience will build (Pinterest for Business, 2018). This works like the other social media recommendations. Some content suggestions would be pictures of t-shirt designs, different style inspirations for the tshirts, themed boards based of shirt subjects.

TIME MANAGEMENT

The goal of good time management is to streamline your social media accounts. To streamline your social media you need to post regularly and have it planned out in advance. Tony’s T’s should create a posting schedule for each platform to make sure content is going out when it should to optimize results. To help create a smoother posting process it is important to get plenty of content ahead of time. Once you find sources for content or create your own keep up with trends and your results from your audience. To make sure that post are not forgotten or even to ease the planning process there are services like Hootsuite that allow you to run all the important pages and their features from all of your social media platforms in one place. You can comment, post, check trends. You can even schedule future posts and Hootsuite will automatically post them at your set time. This makes management of your platforms a lot easier.

One helpful piece of information we have been supplied with through social media studies is how often to post and when. These times are important because its when people are on their social media engaging the most. When your content is posted at that time, it is more likely to be seen and even interacted with. As little as 3 posts is recommended per week for Facebook with a good average being 1 post per day (Ellering, 2018). For every other day of the week it is suggest to reshare a post (Ellering, 2018). Below on a data map, created by Alex York, shows traffic rates on Facebook throughout the week. This data was collected by sproutsocial through the collection of their customers data (York, 2018).

(Image created and owned by sproutsocial) (York, 2018)

For Instagram it is recommended to post on average 2 times per day. Alex York has also created a data map showing traffic for Instagram throughout the week (2018).

(Image created and owned by sproutsocial) (York, 2018)

For Pinterest it is recommended to post 11 pins per day, but you can get by with a minimum of 5 pins per day (Ellering, 2018). This may sounds overwhelming but if you aim for 11 pins, 6 can be repins from other boards (Ellering, 2018). When posting to pinterest it is suggested posting between the times 1am-4am, 1pm-3pm, and 8pm-11pm (Ellering, 2018). The information suggested by Nathan Ellering on CoSchedule is an average of the data collected and suggested by 14 different studies (2018).

ONLINE MARKETING

Earlier in this strategy targeted ads were mentioned. Each of the suggested platforms offers sponsored ads that can be aimed at a specific audience by filtering the demographics. This can be by age, location, gender, interests, and a few other things. These demographics can be combined together to help you reach your target audience and pull them in. For example; let's say Tony’s T’s creates a funny fitness tee that is aimed at the younger audience who are into fitness. When creating the ad you can set the age to 18-29, likes would include fitness pages or programs, or working out in general, and you can set the location to everyone who lives close to a gym. This would then place the ad on the social media streams of those who will most likely be interested in your product. This could mean new potential customers and followers.

The next important part beside ads is keywords. These are similar to the hashtags I mentioned earlier for Instagram. Keywords are words used to describe something and help users reach your content when they do a search. Lets say Tony’s T’s tags their tees as ‘trendy’ or ‘funny’ when someone searches for trendy tees there's Tony’s T’s will be included. Where this gets tricky is that there are billions of online users and accounts so it can be hard to be seen out of the thousands of other content that could also use the key word trendy. Google offers a infty tool called Keyword Planner (ads.google.com) that helps with looking up which combination of keywords will help you stand out. The keywords should always be related to your content desc bring it accurately. Finding the right keywords and combinations of keywords can help Tony’s T’s have a better chance of showing when users do a search. Using keyword planner I used the key words ‘trendy’, ‘graphic tees’, and ‘t-shirts’ and was given an expected results of 254 clicks and 76k impressions. This sounds great but in actuality can be hard to achieve. By making sure relevant keywords, posting good content, and targeting your audience with the right filters, Tony’s T’s can increase their chances of being found.

CONTEST

Contests are another great way to reach your audience. When just starting off, contest are a great way to help create an initial following and create buzz around your company. To create a successful contest it is import to direct your contest at the users who match your target audience, offer a prize people can get excited about and have a goal and way to measure if your hitting your goal (Finch, 2012). For Facebook I would suggest running a contest on why people love Tony’s T’s. When people start posting about why they like the products it could give others a reason to become a customer. For Instagram I suggest hosting a design contest offering a chance fr followers to create their own design to be featured on one of Tony’s T’s. Since INstagram is more on the creative side this will also fit with the user demographic. Be sure to create a hashtag for the contest that will let others easily tune in to the contest and then easily access Tony’s T’s account. Lastly fr Pinterest I would recommend hosting a contest on how customer wear their Tony’s Ts. THis contest would include followers creating looks based on the Tony’s T they are wearing. As already being a popular trend on Pinterest this will inspire followers to create new looks while showing of their Tiny’s T’s t-shirt.

EVALUATION

All of the hard work in social media finally pays off when you can see results. Results will help Tony's T’s see what is and isn't working for the company. This will help Tony’s T’s give their audience what they want, plan ahead, and create more strategies. This will all help with building an audience and the success of their social media accounts. As mentioned earlier Facebook includes its own nifty Insights page which will give Tony’s T’s all the information it needs on how the page is doing. Information is broken down into many details and even graphs data for the ease of looking at trends. PInterest also provides its own analytics tracker which will also break down how the audience is engaging and places it into charts for easy trends. For Instagram, an Insights page does exist but it is not as detailed as the other 2 platforms. Tony’s T’s can use Instagram Insights to track data but other programs exist that will track even more and will even track the other 2 platforms all on one place. The best program I found for this is Simply Measured (simplymeasured.com) which offers the most in-depth analyzation of Instagram analytics, it is a program created by sproutsocial.