Did you know that 83% of the Singaporeans use social media, and Facebook is the top social media platform in the world?
It is inevitable that businesses will not utilise social media to reach their target audience to potentially convert them from a lead to become a user of the brand’s product or services.
Social media is an essential component of your digital marketing strategy and here is why I said so.
1. Get them to “do”
Based on the See-Think-Do-Care business framework, social media allow users to be exposed to the “see” stage for brand awareness through the content that is shared over at social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Interesting and engaging content such as images, videos, articles etc. are often shared from one individual to another. By creating more exposure for the business/brand through social media, it increases the brand awareness.
Ultimately, the end goal is to drive the target market to become your customer and for them to “care” about the business/brand through social media.
2. Reach your audience based on insights
Social media platform like Facebook allows the business/brand to gain audience insight to help target the audience you want based on location, age and gender, education level, relationship status, life events, and many thousands of unique interests and behaviours.
It allows the business/brand to actually create content and digital ads, such as Facebook advertising to arouse their interest and be engaged with the ad.
To engage users through social media is one of the methods to integrate into an effective digital marketing strategy.
3. Building a long term relationship
Social media is the platform for consumers to interact and express their opinions about the brand. A good example is Glossier, which they illustrate how they connect with customers using social media to build a community using social media type such as such as Instagram and Facebook to build a community based on real people, not just influencers.
When a business/brand is able to relate, listen and engage their followers through a community, it portrays an image that they know what the customers’ needs and wants are, and that is what marketing is all about!
P.S: I highly recommend you to check out how Glossier uses social media to build a cult following!
In conclusion, social media is a fantastic tool when great content is created to share with the users to engage them with the brand.
Do you agree with what I have said? Feel free to share your opinions with me by leaving a comment. Sharing is caring 🤘
Signing off,
Vivian.K
Vivian.K Digital Zone 
could you recommend the best platform to build a business?
LikeLike
Hi Damon, thanks for reading! May I ask if you’re talking about the best platform for social media? If yes, I don’t think that there is the “best” platform to build a business.
The platform which brands use ultimately must take into consideration the target audience which the brand is targeting as stated in the “Andreas M. Kaplan *, Michael Haenlein” article.
In my opinion, when we are talking about Digital Marketing Strategy as a whole for brand/business, it compromises of different elements to make it successful. An excellent article which I like is this: http://digitalverge.net/digital-marketing/digital-marketing-components/
From there you can conclude that exposure to different touchpoint/platform is critical for a business. An example I can give is, a user sees a video posted on Facebook which draws his/her attention > goes to the website > subscribe to the brand’s newsletter > Receive a $10 discount code > Make the 1st online purchase and receive customer details (email etc.) > Brand will try to re-engage the customers through email marketing to garner repeated purchase.
Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions. Cheers!
LikeLike
I agree with you that companies can use social media to help strengthen their relationship with customers, however, do you think that a company can use any random social media to help achieve that purpose or do you think the type of social media used depending on the service the company provide matters?
LikeLike
Very informative! Thank you for sharing! If I were to start up a company which platform will u recommend?😊
LikeLike
Hey Stanley! Good question asked, let me gladly explain it to you.To answer your questions, let me break down in details for you.
> Company cannot randomly use any social media to achieve the purpose of strengthening their relationship with customers.
The brand must take into consideration which platform they can find their target audience. A very interesting stats which is based in Singapore can be seen here: https://www.equinetacademy.com/15-key-social-media-statistics-for-singapore-digital-marketers-with-analysis-equinet-academy/
From the article, you can tell that Facebook is one of the top social media platforms in Singapore and the rest of the world. Starting with Facebook is a good one to start with if you were to ask me. However, as I have shared with Damon earlier, a successful digital marketing strategy allows consumers to have many touch points with the brand to build a long-term relationship with them.
> The type of social media used need not necessarily have to be dependent on the type of service provided. When the brand is aware of the type of consumers they want to target using social media, it is essential for the brand to ensure that the content that is generated is creative and engaging enough for them to like, share or comment on it.
note: Content could come in the form of an image, video, article, poll, infographics etc.
Another thing to note is that the content must deliver one message across all the different social media platform in other to strengthen brand recall of the campaign/message that you want to deliver.
Feel free to let me know if you need any clarifications! Thank you.
LikeLike
Ahaa, its fastidious conversation regarding this piece of writing here at this web site,
I have read all that, so at this time me also commenting here.
It’s appropriate time to make some plans for the future and it is time
to be happy. I’ve read this post and if I
could I desire to suggest you some interesting things or suggestions.
Perhaps you can write next articles referring to this article.
I wish to read even more things about it! It’s very effortless to
find out any matter on web as compared to textbooks, as I found this post
at this web page. http://dell.com
LikeLike
The cellphone industry though is advancing with a breakneck
speed. The reputable review sites have tested all the casinos offering mobile games for
fairness and excellent customer service and provides visitors making
use of their top recommendations. Presently mobile poker games could be conveniently played even though you happen to
be out and about. https://www.woocasite.com/obamacasino
LikeLike
The cellphone industry though is advancing with a breakneck
speed. The reputable review sites have tested all the casinos offering
mobile games for fairness and excellent customer
service and provides visitors making use of their top
recommendations. Presently mobile poker games could be
conveniently played even though you happen to be out and about. https://www.woocasite.com/obamacasino
LikeLike
Hey Vivian,
Your title caught my attention! As a fellow marketer, i understand your viewpoint on why brands cannot escape from social media. There has been an increase of social media users today, from Facebook to Instagram to Youtube and many others. Digital Marketing has become a more popular choice for marketers as we are able to reach our target audience easily.
On top of that, Digital Marketing is also cost efficient! We are able to curate our content accordingly to our target audience, allowing engagements and be able to connect with them better. Overall, i had a good read as your content is really informative! Looking forward to your next post, cheers ~
LikeLike
Hi Hwe Lee, I’m happy to know that my blog provided you with some insights as to why brands can’t escape using social media, partly because there are so much people using them.
Digital marketing is definitely a more cost-effective strategy as compared to traditional advertising such as out-of-home advertising. However, based on past work experience handling social media accounts, it is very time-consuming and coordination between team is very important.
What I meant is that let’s say if I want to create a video for Facebook, I would need to involve the creative team to plan the video storyboard. Once the idea is finalised, we have to source for video maker and photographer (if needed).
It’s nice to know that my content has helped you in any way =) Thank you so much!
LikeLike
Hi VIvian, interesting content that gave good insight for me.
You gave an example of Glossier and how they make use of social media to create community? Will you be able to give me another example of a local brand which focuses on social media to build their business brand?
LikeLike
Hey MC, thanks for the kind words. A local brand which I can think of that uses social media to build the brand is actually Skin Inc. Skin Inc was founded by Sabrina Tan. From this article, it shares about the digital marketing strategy which they use which includes using social media such as Facebook and Instagram! It also invests in search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimisation (SEO) to attract customers. You may read up more about it over at https://www.dbs.com.sg/sme/businessclass/articles/business-strategy/skincare-customisation-technology 😀
LikeLike
Hey Vivian, couldn’t agree more on the fact that building a strong relationship with consumers is vital. But many businesses are still revenue-oriented and are not working towards community building, don’t you think so?
LikeLike
Hey Andrew, I personally feel that businesses are revenue oriented and that is an undeniable statement. However, I believe brands are thinking about ways on how to build a community, they might not do it over on social media platform like Facebook or Instagram. But, I believe they definitely are working on something, and one way I can think of is actually through personalised email marketing where brands would build relationship based on this.
Another good community example which I could think of is actually Sephora US where they create specific community groups so that consumers can create communication among themselves based on the different topics/interest. https://community.sephora.com/t5/custom/page/page-id/GroupsLandingPage?icid2=community_joingroups_hotspot
LikeLike
Hi Vivian
Thanks for sharing your link with me
After reading your post, I do agree that social media is like a stigma to us Singaporeans, the majority of the times we are always stuck to our phones doing the obvious! However as shared in point 1, how can we as marketers convince business people to adopt a see-think-do-care framework? Ideally, marketers take the majority of the workload in helping the brands expose for their end goals for the business. What are some ways that business, eg management be open to this concept?
LikeLike
Hi Jay, I think that marketers have to let businesses understand the theory behind this See-Think-Do-Care framework.
This framework is particulary useful for marketers to understand that the advertisement first has to be exposed to the target market for them to “see”, and through remarketing efforts, it wants consumers to “think” about the products and services through repeated exposure of the ad. The goal during this stage is actually to make them wonder about the brand and conduct research.
After which is the “do” step where marketers would want the consumers to take action, it could be signing up for a newsletter or through making a purchase.
The last step is actually “care”. This is the critical part where marketers would want consumers to actually leave a review online to share about their thoughts of the product or how the business can use these consumers can help the business to refer their friends.
Based on this short summary of the theory, you can understand how this flow works, and it clearly demostrated how business can gain benefits for it. I believe that all these guidelines are particulary useful for businesses to put themselves in the shoe of the consumers when it comes to marketing a product or services to them. What do you think – do you agree with me? Haha!
LikeLike
Totally agree that social media is a inevitable tool that many businesses should use. Do you have any suggestions as to what are the consideration for marketers when they use social media?
LikeLike
Hey Hanyi, I think a key consideration before any businesses think of which social media to use, we need to consider the presence of the target market.
This is a very good website for you to analyse the different consumer segments in Singapore. https://hashmeta.com/blog/social-media-landscape-in-singapore-2019/
From the link above, an example would be that you’re able to tell that 35% of working professionals aged between 25 to 34 is actually using Facebook. 🙂
LikeLike
Hi Vivian,
Great insight! Am curious would you have any advice should a brand be engaged in any particular social media platform; that’s consider a must? Eg.instagram?
LikeLike
Hi Daniel, thanks for your kind compliment. My advice for you would be to analyse which are the social media platform which the target market uses. This article would potentially be useful for you to take reference – https://hashmeta.com/blog/social-media-landscape-in-singapore-2019/. 🙂
LikeLike
In your opinion, do you think Amway(a legal MLM) can be marketed in an ethical way online Vivi?
LikeLike
Hey Naren, In my opinion, it really depends on how Amway wants to promote their products online. In my opinion, rather than using social media to promote about the ethical issues, they should be focusing on using social media to create relevant content for users that will help them in the purchasing process. 😉 What do you think?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I do think that sounds fair
LikeLike
Interesting! Which platform do u think I should use for a new company?
LikeLike
Hi Mei Ting, I think which platform to use drills down to your target market’s presence. This article would potentially be useful for you to take reference – https://hashmeta.com/blog/social-media-landscape-in-singapore-2019/. 🙂
LikeLike