This week’s article primarily focuses on two segments from our episodes featuring Nandula Gamage and Eric Heinrichs. Social media marketing is one of the most powerful tools of modern day businesses. Gen Z and millennials don’t read billboards or watch advertisements anymore. They swipe right and left and swipe up if interested.
Businesses are now more focused on curating short videos and/or posters for their social media pages in order to gain the attention of potential customers. It may sound like a trivial task but in reality, this is the most difficult of them all. Marketers are expected to make people fall in love with the product in 15 words or less or during some instances, with just a design. These were the highlights of Nandula’s and Eric’s conversations. They emphasised on how the algorithm works and the content which needs to be posted on different apps.
The key to making it using digital marketing is to post content that is true to yourself and brand. Digital marketing isn’t just about posting and elaborating what your brand is and its use to the world, it’s more about spreading the word, boosting engagement of your social media pages and always interacting with the people. Today’s technology has made everything so easy for everyone in terms of reaching customers anywhere in the world to analytic tools in built for you to see how productive your latest marketing strategy has been, but in order for those to happen, you must first begin with knowing who your customers are and what you need in order for them to notice you. In Nandula Gamage’s episode, they noticed that many businesses fail to capture the essence of digital marketing by strategising and planning what their goals are for the next quarter. Eric Heinrichs too mentioned the importance of authenticity in apps such as TikTok as that is what impresses people. It was quite ironic as Instagram was founded with the motive of “instantly sharing pictures” and yet is the platform used for perfectly curated posts. At present, TikTok is one of the most widely used apps in the world and is used by many individuals across the globe for videos as short as 15 to 60 seconds.
One thing Eric noticed is that TikTok isn’t the best app for advertising as people are just looking to swipe and move on in contrast to Instagram posts where perfect designs and elaborate explanations on offers and rewards etc are available . Creating content that suits your targeted demographic which will further enhance the engagement with your followers is a quintessential part of social media marketing. Many businesses today use strategies such as collaborating with influencers and hosting giveaways and offers for every trending topic that comes our way. As much as these methods can be effective, the inevitable truth is that this too shall pass. Therefore, it is upto the genius marketers to come up with some new ways of catching the eye of potential customers and even retaining the ones they already have.
Social media marketing isn’t always about just a few posts and videos on your business’ page, rather it is an art which needs to be put out there in such a way that people would love to swipe up and learn more. Nandula’s and Eric’s episodes gave us insightful information about the keys to strategising and making your way to the digital marketing world. Again, trends change. So learning to keep up is what you need to master first.
Transcribed by Amani Najumudeen
Watch the segments in its entirety here; https://youtu.be/B55ATgmUttI
Listen/Watch the episodes on YouTube, Spotify, Google and Apple Podcast and don’t forget to subscribe!
