SOCIAL MEDIA & APPS social media so important?


ut how can you do this as a retailer? Our team of experts, from influencer specialists ave the answers you need.


Morteza Maleki Raee, CEO and Founder of social media magazine and channel House of Influence:


https://www.wearehoi.com/


What would your advice be to more traditional businesses that are unsure about the value of working with influencers?


The expanding opportunities in the world of influencer marketing are quite remarkable. The two main drivers of these new opportunities are a) advancement in technology; allowing more flexibility for brands to relate to and reach their audience and b) access to technology; allowing for new, younger as well as older, audiences who were previously harder to reach, to now be engaged in a dialogue with brands.


It’s important to also consider cultural and behavioural shifts. As social media becomes more and more widely used amongst a growing spectrum of demographics, the social media leaders who we subscribe to begin to replace the roles of the celebrities and icons we once admired. We now look to these new digital celebrities and social media ‘icons’ for reviews, news, recommendations and inspiration. Research from the Digital Marketing Institute revealed 70% of teens now trust influencers more than traditional celebrities.


With all this in mind, I would say a good starting point would be a non-financial collaboration of ‘product or service for posts.’ Look into social media leaders in your business sector, look into their content, look at the topics they discuss and look at how authentic their content feels. If you feel there is a match in their audience and yours, reach out and invite them to collaborate with your brand on the basis of free product(s)/service(s) in exchange for them to cover their experience within their daily social media stories. As and when this relationship develops, you may then consider committing a budget for a paid-for post partnership.


How can businesses use this time before shops are allowed to reopen to their advantage, with the help of social media?


It’s a very interesting time for influencer marketing. Brands and marketeers have always found it challenging to reach their audience within their homes. As we become more and more numb to TV ads, digital pop-ups and direct mail sneaking in through our letterboxes on a one-way ticket


direct to our bins, brands rely more and more on third-party endorsements to engage their customers.


The lockdown has indirectly created a need for influencers to innovate and get creative with content within their homes. This wave of ‘home inspirations’ and ‘in- home driven’ content from influencers has opened lots of new opportunities for brands to, not only collaborate on these in-home contents pieces and re-engage their target audience, but to also re-direct the ‘sleeping budgets’ no longer being used in their outdoor and event campaigns.


How can businesses improve their social media strategy?


Feed Your Purpose: Like with most things in life, social media marketing works best when it has a clear purpose. A lot of brands are not clear on why they need to be on social media, but they know they should. And so, this generally results in a very unclear message and no strategic purpose. Establish what the role of your brand/business is in your target audience’s feed. Once you know what that is, be brutal in sticking to it. This allows your audience to know what to come to you for, and so they slowly create a space for your content.


Cut to the Chase: Facebook and Instagram make it very easy to create a paid promotion campaign. The most common mistake in creating these campaigns is to link the ad to your home page. The majority of leads fall off at the landing page. To increase the chances of a conversion, set the link directly to the order/conversion page (and build those pages to accommodate such customer journeys.)


King of Collaborations: Brand and influencer collaborations are highly effective and fast-tracked ways to reach new audiences and widen your prospect pool. Once you have established your ‘purpose’ and target audiences, find other (non-conflicting) brands and influencers who share your purpose and your audience demographics. Reach out to them to collaborate on relevant and authentic, value-adding content. Collaboration is ‘King’ in the social media content worlds.


twitter.com/TRetailFloors


Tomorrow’s Retail Floors | 25


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42