Social Media Marketing: Also for local partners*

Facebook, Instagram and Co. are now with us in many areas of life. It is therefore obvious that these platforms no longer only exchange news from friends and acquaintances, but that companies also use the portals to stay in contact with their customers and interested parties and to place advertisements. Social media are close to the customer and offer a way to immerse yourself in private life quickly and easily. Due to the many possibilities to share not only text but also video and image material without investing a lot of budget, social media are a suitable medium to go outside with your own topics. In addition, through comments and sharing functions, the platforms offer an ideal opportunity to enter into dialogue with interested parties and to exchange ideas.

One form of advertising, many goals

Social media can thus be used for a wide variety of content and advertising forms and used in a variety of ways. Popular goals that are pursued here are:

1. Attract attention:

Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram can be used particularly well to draw attention to your own brand and content. Especially those who manage to create viral content will reach a large number of people very quickly and their own awareness will increase.

2. Promote exchange:

The dialog-based communication on social media offers the possibility of direct exchange with customers and interested parties. It is worthwhile to respond to comments, answer questions and integrate content from other companies or people.

3. Generate leads:

The precise and relatively simple targeting on the social media platforms helps to address precisely those people for whom the content and products make the most sense. This prevents unnecessary and costly wastage and allows you to focus on your target group. Through direct forwarding and linking, the people addressed can also be quickly transformed into leads.

Social Media Challenges

In addition to all these advantages and possible uses, the use of social media also harbors challenges. The large number of different platforms in particular requires different usage methods and specifications such as text length, image size or setting options in targeting and advertising. This jungle of specifications and settings can overwhelm users and marketers with less social media experience in particular. In addition, there are time-consuming tasks such as community management (e.g. observing and moderating comments), the generally very fast-paced atmosphere and the requirement to convey a uniform brand image despite the diverse content elements and platforms.

Decentralized social media marketing

The use of social media can pose hurdles, especially in decentralized marketing and in cooperation with a local partner network. It is particularly important to support the partners* and provide them with the necessary resources and materials. In order to guarantee uniform social media marketing despite decentralized responsibility, it helps to use templates that support the brand's corporate design. In addition, software support such as the Local Marketing Platform help to combine many social media platforms in one portal and to reduce the setting options for the partners*. This makes it easy, clear and uniform to publish and advertise.