Forget about all other digital marketing trends that you have known so far. Social media is the single biggest trend this year!
But the thing is that, unlike traditional social media strategies, this year it’s all about multi-screen shoppers and multi-channel marketing.
Taking these into account, what strategies would you take to put down the best of your social media multi-screen marketing techniques.
Multi-Screen Marketing in Social Media: What is it?
Multi-screen marketing aims to strike customer conversation at the right moment and via the right device. It is unique in the sense that marketers can move their promotions seamlessly across different devices to reach multiple users through multiple channels, all at the same time.
From creating social awareness to customer purchase, social media marketing plays an important role across all phases of a buyer’s journey.
With the worldwide increase in usage of smartphones and other movable devices, social media and mobile both share a unique bond.
This is going to get even stronger now that the latest Statista reports estimate social media to have a total of 4.2 billion users engaged worldwide.
What seemed like a flickering possibility few years back now seems to be the future of digital marketing.
To put multi-screen marketing strategies at the core of your digital marketing efforts, there are some things that you should follow first:
- The behavior of the multi-screen shoppers
- How they can reach and interact with your brand
A research participant has been quoted explaining the behavior and the interaction of multi-device owners who search the internet for information:
If you observe the motivations that drive your customer behavior online, then you will understand how to channelize your marketing strategies.
However, multi-screen users have a behavior that is not seasonal and can be subject to climatic changes anytime.
That is one of the few reasons why social media, despite being an important marketing channel is difficult to prove for most companies.
Speaking of which, there are two modes of multi-screening:
- Sequential Multi-screening
- Simultaneous Multi-screening
In Sequential Multi-screening, users are seen to move from one device to another at different times in order to accomplish a particular task.
Simultaneous Multi-screening on the other hand, is the usage of more than one device at the same time. Simultaneous usage can be both related and unrelated.
Social networking is one of the top activities performed both sequentially and simultaneously between devices.
Quite interestingly, smartphones are one of the most common starting places from where the online interaction saga begins. Therefore, begin your observation by learning how we use cell phones every day.
Multi-channelizing is a crucial aspect of today’s modern social media marketing campaigns and every brand must try to have a presence in them.
But the challenge that remains is that social media is a vast landscape. There is more than one platform out there and each one of them has their own individual unique engagement specialty. So implementing the same social media strategy everywhere will not reap you the exact ROI.
A Facebook post that has got you more than 100 likes will surely not get you the same number of tweets on Twitter. Neither will a Twitter update work the same in a Pinterest pin. To start building a multi-channel social media marketing framework, here is what you need to do first.
#1 – Know Your Social Channels First
Let’s list down some of the popular social media places that we are acquainted with so far –
- Snapchat
- YouTube
Social media moves at a lightning pace, but that does not mean whatever you post will move the same. Your social media ship will sail only when you know how to steer your content across each of these platforms in the best way possible manner.
Learn what’s trending new in each of these sites. For example, GIF is trending high in Facebook right now. So have you thought of a strategy of using GIFs in your brand promotion?
#2 – Analyze to Channelize Behavior Data
Multiple device owners have a context driven behavior. What kind of device they use depends a lot on the time, location, goal, attitude and state of mind.
But the thing is that, social media is central place where users tend to end up every time and this happens both sequentially and simultaneously.
A person traveling in the bus is expected to use either a smart phone device or a tablet to log into his or her social media account. This could be the opportune moment for a music record company to channelize their marketing promotion strategically.
How?
Well, some consider traveling to be impossible without music and hence music for them is regarded to be a traveler’s best companion during mundane moments. They go together like ‘beach sunsets and pina colada’!
So why not stream your music promotion on the social media platforms the right way, to the right person and at the right time?
Listening to music is not the only common thing people do when traveling.
In fact, some of the most common things that many people do when traveling are:
- Taking pictures or selfies and posting them on social networks
- Soliciting tips and advice from friends over social channels
- Searching for information and sharing deals on social networks
- Liking and following travel brands
Here is a picture below that shows the percentage of users engaged on social media when traveling.
An infographic here shows how social media could be one of the biggest inspiration driven verticals to successful business promotion.
Data analysis are for every social media strategy that you take next. In that case, do not forget to invest a portion of your allotted budget in social media analyzing tools and dashboards also.
#3 – Integrating Search and Social Behavior
All of a sudden, social media has become the bewitching combination of new technical possibilities and increasing psychological support.
We have been noticing this for quite some time now; ever since the platforms have begun unveiling nifty new buttons that let users buy anything that catch their attention.
It may have been possible to surpass the PPC ads and all those newsletters blasted through the email marketing tools to gain attention from viewers. But when it comes to buying from social sites, nothing will stop a user from getting swayed away by deals, often marked with a seal of trust by the closest people in the friend list.
Offline promotion of products/service needs to be in tandem with online promotion and there's no way one should ignore the Social Media Channels.
Offline advertisement of a new product should be followed by hosting contests and giveaways on the Social Channel to create an interest among the consumers to go for the products.
It’s now almost taken for granted that once people get to see a new advertisement of a product, the next move they make is into the Social Media to find more information about it.
Marketers need to keep this behavior of the consumers in mind while framing their strategy.
So make the best use of the social media multi-screen marketing right now and give your customers a chance to like, pin, tweet, Instagram and even brag about your services on the social media. It will take to places you have never even thought
#4 – Watch out for Video Explosions
Started by YouTube, accelerated by Vine, and now followed by Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Videos are predicted to become the ‘native advertisement platform of choice’. This high voltage marketing tool is rocking the social media world right now in all shapes and sizes.
Be it the GIFs or the emoticons, are you using it in your social media marketing strategy too?
According to social media trends, video and live streaming have made the experience of reality TV online real. And this is how video interaction will continue in social media channels:
- 80 percent of the global traffic inflow will account from video posts.
- It will take an individual nearly 5 million years to watch all the videos that get shared on the social platform every month.
- Every second, nearly a million minutes of videos get shared.
#5 – Focus More on Compelling Content Curation
Investment in time, effort and budget is regarded as the highest ranked activities among multi-channel marketers in social media. What many of them have noted is that, when it comes to social media awareness and reach, organic searches perform poorer compared to paid searches.
Social media spans across the entire consumer journey, so investing on compelling contents can be your best drive to engage more audiences in social media (even if it is organic).
Speaking of which, storytelling is performing much better than any other communication mediums online (even in social media).
#6 – It’s mobile-app-geddon time
Most social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn… are now also available in mobile apps. The overall growth of mobile apps have been stupendous. Refer graph below.
Businesses would like to integrate them in their social media strategy if they want to give their customers some real life service experience.
You can consider the example of Uber, which recently made headlines for running into a business partnership with Facebook Messenger to allow customers summon a cab without having to leave the comfort of their app.
Here is what users can do when they book a Uber ride direct from Facebook Messenger – they can track the driver’s location status and progress, communicate with him and even pay for their ride.
This kind of integration is being powered by Uber’s API and the company is trying to make the service available worldwide through Strategic Partnership initiative.
Did we miss out anything? Quite sure we have covered all. But if you think there are a few more to add to the list, do share below for I am dying to learn more about multi-screen social media marketing and how to make the best use of it just like you.
Welcome to the new age of digital marketing, where multi-screen shoppers and social media marketing will be what the marketers would be talking of for now.
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