Right, so not a soul nowadays doesn’t know about social media marketing. But not everyone is aware of its potential and how it significantly improves your business and brand. Simply put, not everyone is aware that social media is a very effective marketing tool.

So that’s why in this chapter, we’re going to lay it all out for you. Okay, for starters, social media marketing is the process of using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, and etc as channels to market your business. So why bother using social media as marketing channels? Well, you can think of it as building a bridge that will close the gap between your brand or business and your customers/clients. Simply put, they help build relationships and market your products or services. A great way to connect with potential customers and increase your brand awareness. 

So, in this chapter, you will be exploring social media marketing and all there’s to know about it. So are you ready to dive and get started? Let’s go!

Make Your Presence Known on Social Media

With the number of people, aliens, cats, and dogs on social media nowadays, you will need to have some serious social media presence if you want to run a business profile on social media. Competing on social media is like fighting hundreds of people over that one pair of limited edition shoes left on the shelf during a mega sale.

There are so many well-established business and brand profiles you have to compete against to reach and gain the attention of your target audience on social media. So you’ll need to work on some strategies and strive to become a high-quality brand and business. 

This will require you to use your online business profile to engage with your customers. This will increase user engagement and revenue. So don’t be shy and be more proactive and reactive with activities happening on your page. Though, make sure not to go overboard because it might be perceived by your audience as forced or “try hard” according to the Millenials. This for sure will have a negative impact such as you not being genuine and cringing. 

And the benefits you gain are totally worth it. What are the benefits?

1. Increase Brand Awareness

Increased brand awareness means people are more aware of your business and the products or services you have to offer, gain their trust and are more likely to make a purchase and convert into your customers. According to 91% of marketers, social media marketing greatly increased their brand awareness. 

2. Increase Inbound Traffic

By using social media marketing, you will have another source of traffic and reach a larger pool of customers, and not limited to your usual ones. Your business will be discovered and accessed by a wider variety of customers. For example, boomers or baby boomers will search for your business on Facebook using particular keywords. While millennials use hashtags when they search for your business on Instagram.

3. Improve Search Engine Ranking

According to Social Media Examiner, more than 58% of marketers who have been using social media for more than a year see improvements in their search engine rankings. In addition to that, once your business has a better social media presence, it will be noticed by influencers that are interested in your products or services. They will write or produce video reviews about your business, mentioning and linking back to your business which will directly increase your search engine ranking. 

4. Higher Conversion Rate

Over 51% of marketers stated and claimed that spending time interacting and building relationships with the audience on their social media page resulted in positive results in sales. So, the better impression you left on your audience, the more likely they will purchase your products or services again. Also, studies have shown that social media has a 100% lead-to-close rate in comparison to outbound marketing.

5. Better Customer Satisfaction And Service

Social media is the platform for people to discover, socialise, and network. When you leverage these for business, you will create a brand voice and humanise your business. When the audience inquires about services or products, and you respond with a personalised message or comment, instead of an automated reply. It will make them feel acknowledged and that you really care about them and their inquiries. 

3 Key Elements in Social Media

However, before getting deeper into social marketing, you should know about the 3 key elements in social media marketing: content, platform, and audience. 

1. Content

Content is pretty much the cornerstone of your business’s social media marketing. You will need to produce high-quality, relevant, and engaging content so that people will be more likely to engage it, and share it with their friends or family. Though the most important thing to note is that the content must make sense and be relevant to your target audience. For example, If your business is all about athletic wear, then you wouldn’t want to create and post content about male or female supplements. Unless, of course, you are branching out. 

2. Platform

Choosing the right platform is the key to reaching your target audience. For example, if your business is product-based such as foods and beverages or maybe fashion, then you will want to choose Instagram or Twitter. Because these two platforms utilise visual media such as pictures, GIFs, and videos. So people will get to see and get a better view of your products. However, if your business provides services, then you will want to choose platforms such as Linkedin, Facebook, or Fiverr; where you can connect with people or even small agencies looking to hire services that can provide solutions to them. 

3. Audience

Lastly, you need to choose the audience that shares the same interests as your business and you need to know and understand what kind of content they will be looking for. Once you nail these down, you can start creating content that is both appealing and relatable to your audience. You will be able to gain and pique their interest, then this will lead a visit to your page, and provided you have the answers or solutions they’re looking for, they will convert to customers.

Top Social Media Platforms

As we’ve mentioned before, social media is great for building relationships and connecting with your potential customers. On social media, you can contact, engage and connect with your customers or potential customers directly. This will provide them with a personalised online shopping experience.

However, you will need to reach them first before you can do so. And this can be achieved by running ads. Ads are a great way to reach a larger audience and promote your products and services. But be careful when creating content for your ads. Make sure they’re not crappy, corny, and annoyingly pushy. So, instead, you can create and publish ads that are informative and tell your audience how your product or services can help them.

But then, just which social media platforms should you use? To answer this question, we have listed a few trendy social media platforms for you to check out. 

1. Linkedin

Linkedin is kind of like Facebook’s cousin but more professional and serious. Currently, there are about 774 million active users on Linkedin. You can share your business’s recent milestones, achievements, and recruitment announcements, or connect and scout for potential clients for your business. 

The Linkedin audiences are made of Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials seeking to hire, connect or discover new opportunities. This makes Linkedin the perfect platform for the business-to-business (B2B) industry. You can run ads and share informative content, such as how your business can provide solutions or what type of services your business provides.

2. Pinterest

Pinterest is the social media platform where people share their pictures and visual arts with others and sort of visual storyboards for people to inspire them for everything from crafts to home decor. There are about 444 million active users currently. Pinterest is primarily frequented by Millennials, Gen Z, Gen X, and Baby Boomers. Especially if they are more of a visual person.

So if your business is in the business-to-customer (B2C) industry, you can use Pinterest to visually advertise your products by sharing pictures of your products for potential customers to discover.

Oh, another perk for using Pinterest as the platform to promote your business is that Pinterest offers free sign-up for a business account. Yeap, you get to create your own Pinterest business account for free and gain access to a special content format and a few other neat benefits. In addition to that, on Pinterest, you get to build a community that shares the same interest and passion as your business. So not only do you get to reach a larger audience but also build a community that is interested in your products. 

3. Twitter

Ah, yes, the famous bluebird social media platform Twitter. If your business involves both business-to-business and business-to-customer industries, then Twitter will work well as a public relations tool for your business. On Twitter, you can share threads about your latest products, interact with your audience and build relationships. There are 211 million daily active users and the Twitter audience is primarily the Millennials. 

In addition to the general threads, Twitter also has a community-building tool called Twitter Communities, where you can create, generate, share and discuss. So this means you build a community where you can share updates, promote and discuss how your products or services can be beneficial or provide solutions. Your business will have a stable and fixed customers/client pool to help sustain your business. 

4. Youtube

Youtube is a great social media platform to share educational and informative videos such as tutorials, guides, run ads, and discussions because it has a high amount of active users and a good variety of audience demographic. Currently, there are 315 million active users on it, and the audience consists of all ages and genders, not limited to just Millennials. This makes it a great platform for business-to-business and business-to-customer businesses to increase their brand awareness and gain more exposure.

 Also, once you have accumulated a certain amount of followers and views, you will be qualified to monetize your video. In other words, you get to make money from the videos you posted. 

This of course will take some time to yield results, but when it does it is pretty much killing two birds with one stone. 

5. Tiktok

Tiktok is one of the most recent, hottest, and trendy social media platforms. It currently has around 1 million active users and the audience is primarily made of Genz and Millenials. On Tiktok, you can produce short videos, share them and engage the community. Making it a great platform for business-to-business or business-to-customers because you can build up followers and then create a community where you can share and promote your products or services.

6. 小红书 (Xiaohongshu)

Also known as Little Red Book is a social media and e-commerce platform in China. Currently, it has over 300 million registered users and 85 million active users. As for its audience; mostly Gen Z and Millennials. It is sort of like Instagram, so this will work in your favour if you are in the business-to-customer industry and want to market your product to the Chinese market. You can create and share content, engage with users and run ads. 

7. Instagram

Instagram is currently one of the most popular social media platforms among Millennials and has about 1 billion active users monthly. Instagram is all about compelling and attractive visual content, so if you are a business-to-customer type of business that sells products, then Instagram is the platform for you. 

8. Facebook

Facebook is also one of the most well-known and widely used social media platforms. Its audience is evenly spread between Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials. It also has a high volume of active users which is 1.9 billion users worldwide. If Instagram is all about compelling and stunning visual content, Facebook on the other hand is all about storytelling using media (videos, photos) and texts. So if your business is in the business-to-customer industry and sells products or provides services that target a variety of demographics, then Facebook is the platform you should focus on. 

How to Create Social Media Strategy

Okay, now that you know which platforms to use, the next step is to create a winning and effective social media strategy. Don’t worry about it, we’re going to share it with you. 

1. Research Your Buyer Personas and Audience

No matter the industry, research is the key to success. So you will need to spend some time digging around the Internet, on forums, and on social media platforms to check what’s trending in your industry. Such as what are the currently popular hashtags, trending topics, and current interests with your target audience.

Because if you don’t know your target audience’s interests, what kind of content material they enjoy viewing or reading, and which companies or brands appeal to them the most, your marketing won’t work. 

And you not only need to understand but also segment them. What does that mean? It means you need to identify different groups of people in your target audience and their needs or interests. This way you will be able to create more targeted content that is relevant and engaging according to each group’s interest and this will result in higher conversion rates.

2. Identify and Determine Which Social Media Platforms You Will Market On

You need to know which social media platforms your business can benefit the most from. Because each social media platform offers different marketing tools and leverage. So you need to pick social media platforms that match your purposes. For example, some may be more suitable to increase brand awareness, while others are maybe more suitable for increasing traffic and revenue.

Another reason to do this is to know which social media platforms your target audience frequented the most. For example, if your target audience is fashion-conscious Millennials, then you will want to focus your marketing on Instagram. This is because Millennials cover the largest portion of users on Instagram and lets you showcase your products in a visually appealing way to them. 

3. Know Your Competitors

Next is to do competitor analysis. Take a little peek at what your competitors are doing currently, both well and not so well. This way, you should be able to get an idea of what to expect in the industry you are in, which will help you create social media content. 

You might also be able to glean some information and opportunities. Such as, one of your competitors is well-established and dominant on Instagram, but not so much on Twitter and Facebook. So you can focus your social media marketing efforts on Twitter and Facebook instead. 

4. Create Engaging and Relevant Content

All that research and analysis will amount to nothing if you don’t produce engaging and relevant content. Especially when your competitors have been posting engaging content. 

So you will need to produce unique, engaging, and relevant content to stand out from your competitors and to give them a solid reason to click on that “Follow” button and interact with your brand. 

No idea what is unique and engaging content? Well, if you have done the previous step, which is to research your target audience and buyer personas, then you should be able to figure out what type of content will be engaging and interesting to your target audience. 

Another way is to take advantage of the features and tools of the social media platform you are using. For example, you can do a live giveaway event on Instagram or Facebook, or create polls so that your audience can interact with your brand. 

Lastly, don’t be afraid to jump into a trend and leverage it to your advantage. So be sure to keep up with the latest trends on social media. 

How To Observe and Analyse Social Media Marketing Impact and Results

Okay, now you have the recipe for a successful social media marketing strategy, but you can’t leave it to its own devices. You have to monitor the impact and results of the content you have created and posted. 

That is why you should not overlook this part because it will determine the success of your social media marketing efforts. To do this, you will need to review and manage your social media metrics.

So, what are the metrics you need to review and manage? 

#1 Reach

Reach refers to the number of unique users who saw your post on their feed. This helps you identify which type of content is seen and interacted the most with.

#2 Clicks 

By tracking clicks, you will be able to understand what drives your audience’s curiosity or encourages them to make a purchase. 

#3 Engagement

Engagement will provide insight into your audience’s impression, reaction, and interaction with the content you had posted. 

#4 Hashtags 

For this, you will need to experiment with hashtags to figure out which hashtags work best with your business and content. Figuring this out will help focus your content direction. 

#5 Organic and Paid Likes

Identifying this will help with your social media marketing budget. You will be able to know when to invest in paid ads and organic content.

#6 Sentiments

This is to measure audience reception and reaction to your content, brand, and hashtag. Did they find it relatable? Is it offensive to some? You can glean some insights about this from the audience’s reaction and interaction. 

It is undeniable every single one of these processes is time-consuming. But they are well worth it because they will help you determine the best ways to leverage social media to achieve the desired results for your business.

Some of The Goals You Need to Set For Your Social Media Effort.

Hold your horses now. Before you dive right in and execute your campaign, you will need to set some goals to help you keep on track and focus. But of course, it will be different from one business to another. However, we’re going to share with you the overall goals. 

So what are the overall goals?

• Increase brand awareness
• Grow revenue
• Increase traffic to your website or whatever platform your business is on
• Increase clickthrough rate (CTR)
• Increase mentions
• Build a community

But how are you going to do and achieve it? Especially when they aren’t time specific. Remember the SMART Goals from the previous chapter? Time to use that. You should set each of your goals with realistic, and achievable timelines. Besides timelines, your goals also need to be measurable and specific.

Social Media Marketing Resources

Of course, you will be needing a few resources to ensure the success of your social media campaign. But don’t worry, because we’ve got you covered. We have listed the resources you need to pull off your social media marketing successfully. Such as social media calendars, social media scheduling tools, social media listening tools, social media research tools, social media sharing tools, and social automation tools. 

So in this section, we will be covering how each of these resources and tools can help make your social media marketing to be successful. 

Social Media Calendar Template

Hubspot Social Media Calendar

This free social media calendar from Hubspot offers you quite a number of features and tools that will make your social media marketing easier and more effective. 

This social media calendar comes in Microsoft Excel format. Oh, you don’t have to worry about setting it all up because Hubspot already did all the heavy lifting. So you can dive right in and organise it to suit your social media marketing needs. 

Hootsuite Social Media Calendar

Hootsuite provides an interactive social media calendar where you can get a visual overview and all of your assets such as visuals, links, or docs in one single place. 

You also can publish, edit and schedule your posts. All these are from one single platform and are available to everyone involved. 

Marketo: How To Build Social Media Calendar

Well, for Marketo, they won’t straight up serve you with a social media calendar, instead they provide a guide on how to build your very own social media calendar.

You can use the guide set outlines for your social media calendar and this will help you get an idea what to post, when to post and who to target. This guide is simple yet effective, you only need to read and fill in a few blanks to help you get the whole picture of what your social media calendar looks like and what content to prioritise.  

Once you have finished reading the guide, you should be able to create your very social media editorial calendar. 

Social Media Scheduling Tool

Of course you won’t be scheduling all the social media content manually. Why make your life harder, when there are tools to make it easy, right?

1. Buffer

First up is Buffer. Buffer originally started out as a scheduling tool for Twitter, but anymore. Now it supports all the major social media platforms such as Google+, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin. 

Buffer offers a few neat features:

• Its Chrome extension lets you add articles and content directly from the web to your Buffer queue or on the go.
• Shorten your links automatically. Yeap, it does that too for you. Oh if you are a Bitly user, you can connect to your accounts.
• Upload custom videos and images. It also can pull directly from the article you shared.
• Track your content performance by accessing complex analytics.
• Schedule your content.
• You can reply to posts from inside Buffer. Cool.
• Add or remove team members.

Buffer helps you to schedule and populate your social media feed with relevant and engaging content without having to spend hours logged in. 

2. Meet Edgar

If you’re looking for a content manager to help populate your social media channels, then Meet Edgar. 

Meet Edgar will work through your Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin profiles via web plugin. This means your social media platforms are constantly updated and populated with content and you can check it using your mobile devices. 

It features category-based scheduling tools and schedule content resharing, this will let you mix it up, so the audience won’t be bored. Oh, it also has an auto-refill  queue feature, this means you won’t run out of posts. 

Meet Edgar also lets you monitor traffic, boost engagement and optimise ROI of your digital assets.

Put it simply, Meet Edgar is your automated content manager that works around the clock without having to worry about being reported for abuse. 

3. Hootsuite

Everyone knows that social media is super chaotic and always on the move, from one trend to another. So it can be awfully stressful and dizzying for many. 

This is where Hootsuite comes hooting in and saves you from all those bad feelings. And this rescue is free of charge. 

Yeap, you can sign up for free and gain access to a few neat social media tools that will help manage your social media content and scheduling. If it’s a collaborative job with a few other team members, you can share it with them and they will access comments and mentions that have been made. In addition to that, you can assign tasks, plot social media calendars and schedule updates and posts.

And if you fancy yourself as an expert social media marketer, then you can take advantage of its tools. Hootsuite tools are integrated with Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Youtube which will give an in-depth breakdown of your analytics. But did you know that you can even integrate Hootsuite with community-based platforms like Reddit, Tumblr and Storify. This will provide you with even more significant feedback and customer data. 

4. Sproutsocial

Social media never stays the same, not even for a day. It is constantly changing and evolving. So it can be crazy hard to keep up with.

That is if you do it manually, but it’s a different story if you use a social media tool like Sproutsocial. It helps you to stay at the top of trends and keep an eye on what’s the trend used by your competitors. In addition to that, you can track internal data such as reply time, total number of replies and sentiment. 

And the best perk is that you are keen to expand and grow your knowledge, Sproutsocial has the resources for you to do so.  

5. Agorapulse

Agorapulse doesn’t only assist you to publish and schedule posts, but it is also a social listening tool that will help you find the latest trends and mentions of your brand name or services. To put simply, it will eavesdrop on the latest information and share it with you. 

Agorapulse offers easy message management, content planning and scheduling, and provides insights on your competitors so that you can adjust your social media marketing to be more effective in advertising your products or services. 

Agorapulse helps you to create a more accurate social media marketing plan because it provides you with feedback from customers. This is done via its tracking ability.

Social Media Listening Tool

Okay, so just how can you get better insights on trends and whatever else that is going in the social media scene? 

By using social media listening tools. These tools will provide you with news, feedback and the latest trends so that you can plan your content accordingly and attract your target audience interest. 

So without further ado, let us check out some of the best social media listening tools on the market right now. 

1. Mention

Introducing, Mention, a very comprehensive listening tool that lets you monitor the mention of brands, products, services or competitors in real time. 

Mention will make it easy for you to stay on top of conversations going on the social media, because it lets you be involved with the conversation from inside Mention and you can find influencers for influencer marketing and analyse your competitors. Nifty tricks, right?

2. Brand24

Brand24 is a social media tool that will help you to track the mentions of your products, services or business online. But it is also known as a media monitoring tool. You can use Brand24 to analyse your customers’ reactions by monitoring their online conversations. 

Brand24 offers automatic analysis for sentiment and negative comments or reactions. This will help you to adjust the content towards a more positive and favourable direction, which will build your business good reputation online.

You will be in touch and up close with your customers using its tracking feature. This will let you take quick action to any queries made by your customers.

Band24 will automatically provide reports for you in the form of PDF or Excel. You will also have the ability to track KPIs and engagement. This way you will be able to adjust the social media content accordingly. 

Social Media Research Tool

So eavesdropping on your competitors and customers is all well and good, but you still have to do some research on the information that you gathered so that you leverage them for your social media marketing efforts. 

That is why we are going to share with you about the best social media research tool. 

BuzzSumo

No, it’s not a sumo athlete. It is an all-in-one content marketing tool that you can use to assist your social media marketing efforts. 

BuzzSumo is a research tool that tells how your content is performing and who’s been talking about it. 

It will also help you to research trending keywords and topics online. And it also helps you to find interesting posts to share or search content ideas based on what’s been performing well. 

If you are feeling insecure about what your content is performing, you can enter your own domain to see which content has been shared and talked about the most. Or, if you are feeling super competitive, enter your competitor’s domain to see what’s up with them. This will give ideas to adjust your content so that they can perform better than your competitors. 

Social Sharing Tools

So, your content is all set and scheduled, but just how can you increase the shares? We’re going to cover that in this section; social sharing tools.

1. Sumo

Sumo offers myriads of social media marketing tools for you to use, but one of the main stars in Sumo is its social media share features. It makes it easy for visitors to share your content to social media and helps you keep track of the number of shares. 

2. Bitly

Bitly not only shortens those horrendously long URLs for you, but it also helps you to keep track  of who clicked on what, where and when. It is a powerful and effective digital marketing tool that lets track, pinpoint geographical location and view site referrals with the most clicks.

Guess it’s true that amazing things come in small packages. Simple yet powerful and effective. 

3. Linkinbio

Linkbio is a mini web page built into your Instagram or Tiktok accounts. It helps to drive traffic to your website, e-commerce shop or the latest blog you just published from your Instagram or Tiktok accounts. It also creates a seamless experience when people shop for your products via your Instagram or Tiktok. 

Oh, it also connects directly to Shopify and comes with analytics, this means you get to see what’s working.

4. Linktree

Linktree is a freemium social media marketing tool that creates a landing page that hosts multiple links. The reason is to drive traffic to specific pages or areas on your sites. Basically, to raise awareness among the audience that you have other sites as well.

Not only that, Linktree lets you analyse and track engagement, monitor revenue or give insight on what’s converting your audience. 

Social Automation Tool

Well, we don’t have all the time in the world, don’t we? Especially if you are a social media marketer. That is why we will take a look at a couple of social automation tools that will help you to save time. 

1. Zapier

If you want to take business automation to the next level and you have the skills, then Zapier is for you. 

Zapier works by connecting to all of your social media apps, then you set a trigger. For example, you can set receiving leads from Facebook as the trigger and set what action it will trigger, for example sending a notification email to you and your team. 

Not just that, there are few more neat tricks you can use to improve your social media marketing. So check them out!

2. IFTTT

IFTTT is much simpler to use than Zapier but still quite effective and convenient for your social media marketing efforts. 

You can create rules and triggers; for example, if there are reactions or leads triggered, it will send you a Google notification and it will be added into Google Docs for you to check. 

It also has the ability to share the content you have created across platforms, which will improve your SEO strategy as well. And it also has the ability to let you tweet Instagram photos as native photos on Twitter. Meaning you don’t have to go through the hassle of changing the format or size of the photos you want to tweet.

Brands That Are Rocking Social Media Marketing

One of the perks of a successful social media marketing, is that your customers or clients won’t forget about your brand and services/products. You will be able to stay relevant because your brand name is constantly talked about and shared, whether on social media or as a topic of conversation. 

We’re going to take a look at a couple of brands in Malaysia that managed to pull it off and learn from them in this section. 

1. Golden Screen Cinema (GSC)

Two years ago, a major pandemic hit every single country in the world. Malaysia was no exception. There were lockdown restrictions that went on for months, causing businesses and companies to shut down, not just small companies but the big ones as well. 

But some managed to make a comeback and in a very witty manner. Yeap, we’re talking about everyone’s favourite cinema; The Golden Screen Cinema (GSC).

During the pandemic and lockdown restrictions, they had to cease operation momentarily. But on July 1st 2020, they announced that they will reopen. And they did this by using a witty and relatable video meme. The video garnered thousands of “Likes” and “Comments” after it was posted. 

Besides the video meme, GSC also came up with a funny tagline ‘Hello. Cannot’ to lighten the atmosphere surrounding social distancing rule and it also to show that it is they won’t compromise about it. The tagline became so catchy, they started selling t-shirts printed with the tagline.

They marketed their business and services using relatable and engaging social media content. This reminded their target audience that they’re still in business and will operate as usual while implementing new rules and regulations. 

Their social media meme marketing was successful because the content they posted were all relatable and engaging to their target audience. 

2. Domino’s Pizza Malaysia

Another brand used meme to market their business during the pandemic was Domino’s Pizza Malaysia. 

Well,we bet some of you still remember when a certain Malaysia’s female celebrity caused an uproar by travelling all the way from Kuala Lumpur to Nilai just buy carpets as a part of her Eidulfitri’s preparations while the no state crossing restrictions was still in place.

Yeah, Domino’s Pizza took advantage of the uproar by posting a meme content promoting their services while poking fun at said female celebrity. And this meme shot through the roof! It garnered thousands of Likes, Shares and Comments.

They capitalised on a controversy caused by another then delivered in a form of witty meme that is relatable and engaging while also promoting their delivery to their target audience and potential customers.

3. Nando’s Malaysia

Okay that’s enough memes. Next is how Nando’s Malaysia used two parts social media campaign to both prank and rekindle Malaysians festive mood and spirits.

Due to the lockdowns during the pandemic, people across the globe moaned in despair when they’re unable to celebrate their holidays with family and friends. 

This hit us Malaysians hard, because we love our holidays. Especially Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Chinese New Year, Deepavali and Christmas. 

And Nando’s Malaysia knew all that. So they went and launched a two-part social media content that themed around Hari Raya Aidilfitri and Chinese New Year. But they posted the content during September, which didn’t align with the dates the festivities took place. 

They did this intentionally because they want to stir confusion and curiosity. To make it even better, the content was posted on Sabah’s election day, this linked Hari Raya to Hari Pilihan Raya. And it worked like a charm. Many thought Nando made a mistake and this created a whole lot of online buzz. People shared the content on their social media platforms and commented on it. 

After leaving the Malaysians hanging for two days, Nando’s posted a 60-second animation storytelling video where they revealed it was not a mixed up, in fact they did it on purpose to reignite the festive moods and to re-celebrate the two festivities. Nando’s used the opportunity to offer a promotional meal; RM10 off a full platter set for four. They further asked their customers to dress up in their festive clothes for the occasion and to spread the word about it on their social media. The campaign was well received and talked about on social media platforms, and made a surprise delivery to  says.com and NST to celebrate their office and 175th Anniversary respectively.

To Put It Simply…

Social media marketing rocks if it’s done correctly. But to pull it off and do it correctly will require you to leverage on every single resource that we have shared with you in this chapter. 

It will take a lot of effort, research, trials and errors. So don’t go expecting you will see results immediately like in those movies and series about start-up businesses. 

Don’t be afraid to experiment, use new tools and take a new approach to your social media marketing. You won’t find the one that works unless you do so. 

And remember, make use of these social media tools that we have shared with you. They will help you to plan, optimise, track and analyse your social media marketing plan performance to be more effective. Keep at it and you will gradually get better results.