A strong social media presence is essential for reaching key goals of increasing brand awareness, generating leads, and improving customer service. While brands are using similar tactics to develop their online reputation, marketers have to make a difference by exploring new methods and by creating innovative social media strategies.

We chatted with Norman Yeo, Social Media Advisor, Marketing Strategist and General Manager at Tangy Lab Group, who shares tips and guidelines for running outstanding social media campaigns.

Hi Norman! You have founded Tangy Lab Group in 2015 – how have you decided to start your own business and to focus your activities mainly on social media marketing and lead generation?

Even when I was in university, I was really interested in running my own business one and because of that, I have started a few ventures and also a joint organization that allows me to have the flexibility of an entrepreneur while learning from them.

So the last organization that I joined before start Tangy Lab Group was actually a digital marketing company. That is where I found out that many businesses out there are struggling with marketing, and that sparked my interest towards helping others with their marketing too.

Eventually, things didn’t work out for my previous company and me. That is when I started Tangy Lab Group, a digital marketing agency in Singapore, in 2015 and within 3 months we were net positive and by the second year, we had grown the business to a 6-digit business with an initial capital injection of less than SGD 5,000.

Many businesses are developing strategies to increase their brand awareness on social media. What are your top 3 tips for differentiating a brand from competitors?

The first thing a company needs to understand is that there are two major type of marketing efforts, and we can divide them into two broad categories: branding efforts focused on long-term benefits, and direct response efforts focused on shorter-term benefits. Depending on the company’s current strength and resources, it is highly essential for them to choose the right campaign for themselves.

Secondly, for any company to leave a mark on the market, they have to be able to provide high perceived value and also communicate that value outwards. This is achieved through a deep understanding of your potential customers, to really understand what motivates and influences your customer’s buying decision. Shaping your offer and message from there is what will impact and differentiate your business vastly.

Lastly, we live in an environment that is well connected with the massive amount of information available. It is very easy today to see what your competition is doing – and vice versa, it’s very easy for them to see what you’re doing. Thus, in this age, it’s not just about achieving the most creative campaign but also about moving with speed and implementation, to find a niche positioning and to claim it early on in the game.

Why do you consider it crucial for brands to personalize messages and the content they share on social media?

One of the biggest mistakes companies make when they start on social is focusing on engagement for the sake of engagement. Engagement is an important metric but beyond that is also ensuring that the values of the brand are conveyed through the content.

The objective of content marketing is essentially to build authority and expert positioning within the market while building a bond with the audience. If the page does not present the content as original, all it really does is build engagement without focusing on the business agenda.

The long-term goals of an effective content strategy are organic enquiries and cheaper costs of advertising for the same results.

Do you think that employees can drive engagement on social media by sharing content and news related to the company? Can you explain why?

At the end of the day, the role of a digital marketer is to publish content that is relevant and important to the audience. The ability to do that naturally defines the value they have in an organization.

Forcing employees to share content is probably not going to do much, but if the employee is motivated to share because the content is relevant, it will make a difference in the long run – this is content that the audience will probably want to consume too.

young employees using smartphones for social media

Which social media platforms do you think are underused by businesses nowadays?

For a business, every platform they are exposed to also means more budgeting, time and effort. I personally believe that it will be best for them to ensure that the basics on the mainstream platform are done right first.

Above that, the rule of thumb for any marketing campaign is to go to where the customers are. So regardless of what I have suggested here, it will still depend on whether your customer is in the game or not.

With the current proliferation of social media platforms, one of the platforms which I feel is standing out but is underused is Snapchat. With more than a 150 million users and growing, Snapchat has hooked the hearts of the younger generations with their fun and engaging features.

For companies looking to move around in an uncluttered environment, Snapchat will be ideal.

What are the top KPIs you would recommend for measuring the success of a social media campaign?

On social, there are both branding activations and direct response activations. The direct response activation (performance marketing) is the easier one to determine a fixed KPI and also ROI.

Direct response basically measures desired activities like redemptions, leads or even sales. Thus, it is an activity that is easy to tie back to ROI. On a deeper level, marketers will be measuring metrics like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate or even cost per click to determine the effectiveness of the campaign.

Branding campaigns, like content marketing on social, are a little more difficult to quantify ROI through, despite their effectiveness in helping companies grow.

The common metrics involved in measuring will usually consist of impressions, reach, engagement, social mentions, enquiries on page and website traffic.

How do you think social media marketing is going to evolve over the next two years?

At the end of the day, social media is a business rather than a non-profit. With that lies an inherent question: what is the value they are providing and how do they monetize? And with this in mind, it is only be natural that as a site begins to gain massive traction, they explore means to limit the organic reach of business and encourage paid reach.

The way I view social is that as time goes by, the importance of understanding paid reach is important to tie hand in hand with the understanding of how to create engaging content that people will share. Effective content will still be massively beneficial for organizations but they cannot purely depend on organic reach over time.

Norman Yeois the Founder of Tangy Lab Group Pte Ltd, a Digital Marketing in Singapore, with the key agenda of growing business in 3 different ways. We help companies establish their brand through content marketing, develop a direct response strategy to get them leads or sales, and we teach businesses how they can build their own businesses through a 3-day lead generation course. Find out more at tangylab.com.

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