Neworld, Great relationships build great brands

In recent blogs we spoke about being authentic and building brand loyalty on social media. We suggested that a key part of creating an authentic social media presence and nurturing brand loyalty is understanding your audience- where they live online, how they behave, what problems they face and what motivates them. It’s unlikely that your brand is going to be a perfect fit for everyone, but for a number of people it will be.

Your job? Identifying these people, understanding them and reaching them.

People often think that growing their following on social media is a marketing objective, but as we mentioned before, it is not. Remember that all of your social media objectives are part of your overall marketing strategy. Maybe your overall marketing objective is to increase brand preference, drive traffic to your website, increase online sales or foot fall in stores and maybe growing your social media following is going to help you achieve these, but it is not an objective in itself.

If you run a social media giveaway with a cash prize you could attract thousands of followers in just a couple of days, but if those followers are only interested in winning a prize then they will not help you achieve any of your marketing objectives. If these people are not part of your target audience then they’re unlikely to ever become a paying customer of your brand.

Building an engaged following on social media and using social media to meet the marketing objectives for your brand is all about finding your niche.

Niche Audience

Everyone loves a good 80/20 rule in business and one of these 80/20 rules states that 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers. The customer lifetime value of these 20% is huge. These are the type of customers who stay loyal to your brand for years, they recommend your brand to their connections, leave reviews of your product/service and are advocates for your brand. These are the people you want to follow you on social media, these are the people who will engage with your content and will help you start your brand community. Focus on finding this niche audience, focus on finding your 20%.

So how do I find my niche on social media?

Niche Hashtags

Hashtags help individuals to find online content that is relevant and valuable to them. If you use hashtags that have been used in millions of posts then your content is going to be lost in the noise immediately. You won’t stay at the top of the explore page long enough for anyone to find you if you just use hashtags like #beauty (440m posts), #travel (553m posts) or #fashion (934m posts). Instead, research your audience and your competitors, see what smaller hashtags they’re using that are sparking engagement and join that conversation by using these hashtags. In this way, the people who really care about the specific type of product or service you offer will be able to find you.

Niche Social Media Influencers

It’s an unofficial fact that our organic social content on Facebook and Instagram only ever reaches roughly 10% of our following. With that in mind, let’s consider the organic reach of a top influencer. Many people will be tempted to collaborate with influencers with a huge following. These influencers can lend your brand significant reach along with perceived credibility. However, if you spend top dollar on an influencer with 1 million followers remember that their organic content will only reach roughly 100,000 of these. If this influencer is universally liked but not an expert in your product then maybe your message won’t even be relevant to the 100,000 individuals who do see it. If you paid to reach this number of people through social media advertising your bill would likely be a lot smaller and you could actually target an audience that you know find your brand relevant. The message here is to choose an influencer who is relevant to your brand and will offer a relevant audience, don’t focus only on number of followers.

If you can leverage niche influencers and hashtags to get your brand in front of people who will find it genuinely valuable then you will be rewarded with online brand engagement and customer loyalty. Avoid trying to mass market your brand on social media. Find your 20% and grow your community from there.