Once you design and implement a killer product, there are many hurdles you have to jump through as far as getting people to know about it. From a professional marketer’s standpoint, there is nothing like watching the wheels of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram spin for you while you are spending hours truly building your business. Once someone comments on a photo, even likes it, or better yet retweets it and re posts it, fresh users get to see your product, and view it for the first time. When you first begin, your content may be just status updates and pictures of the product around the warehouse and in use, but eventually you can get your social media audience to spread the good word about your wares. Their opinions, good reviews, and spreading the word will help by leaps and bounds, much more so then trying to win over every single person immediately with your content. Here are some pointers on getting your audience to promote your product:
1. Don’t Just tell your audience what you want them to know
One of the best ways to truly use social media as a tool is to get your audience engaged, and not just tweet or post updates about your product. It’s very difficult to master, but many people do it wrong in the beginning. A lot of people that see your posts will enjoy them more if you include them, ask questions, and for their input. Some of the most successful campaigns out there encourage users to show themselves with your brand, and talking to your users in a conversational manner. There are very successful brands that still just toot their own horn/achievements all the time, but going beyond the broadcast about you and engaging them is an art form that is very rewarding.
2. Make sure you are targeting the right social media sites
While it is true that most of your customers are probably on Facebook and Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest absolutely should not be ignored! In essence, just putting up a great photo on either of these two other social media sites literally is getting your audience to promote for you. Especially in the realm of clothing and sportswear, having a social media user repost or pin a photo starts the ball rolling to other users, and quick. Surf, skate, and music companies have also had wide success on Instagram, all the while linking back to Facebook and Twitter feeds simultaneously.
3. Using tones to encourage promotion in a video
Many different strategies for video promotion work these days for YouTube or Vimeo, and they all can get people promoting your product for you in no time. The most common is to encourage users to post videos of themselves using the product, but you can go even deeper into strategy here. Entities like amusement parks and adventure destinations have an advantage here, because they show a collective enthusiasm about being there that can automatically have users promoting the product or brand. If you can put elements in a video that will really have people wondering where you thought up the idea for your product AND wanting to tell everyone about it quickly, you could even have people competing to promote your product!
4. Finding healthy ideas to include
An area these days that will always acquire rabid promotion by users of your product is health benefits. Of course weight loss, better appearance and youthfulness have been staples of marketing for years, but the new raw data can really sell. One stellar way to get users to promote your product for you is by showing results. This can take much research, digital photos, and adding friends. One key bullet point here is when you really formulate what benefit you are offering, and tie in to stats about people using your product, make sure you have some followers! Tweeting, pinning, or posting updates about your key health benefit needs to occur once you have followers in the tens of thousands or more globally.
5. Maximizing images to avoid mistakes
The best result of all in sharing photos happens when someone sees it and gets so curious they want to click your landing page or social media starting point immediately. When this happens, you may have instant revenue, an instant loyal follower, and someone who will promote your product for sure on a regular basis. Don’t make the mistake of having a hyperlink not work, or be so hasty that you show a webpage still under construction.
6. Email marketing as a stepping stone to retain interest
Many will argue that this tactic is futile, but what needs to be realized is that this keeps interest alive after the potential customer has expressed interest and wanted to be contacted again. One time in the current climate that this can really help is the holidays; music brands, guitar strings, and culinary aficionados perk up and listen when it comes to gifts and that season. Also, a quarterly or monthly reminder that you are alive, kicking, touring, speaking, writing, or producing other goods can get a long lost customer back into your path, and ultimately sharing your brand with others across their favorite platforms.