Social media monetization and video marketing work hand in hand. An OTT channel can complement your social media monetization strategy with these steps.
How can you monetize your social media?
Every brand should have a presence on social media. With an estimated 3.6 billion people using social media worldwide, your target market is already out there.
The great thing about social media is that it’s constantly changing and growing. Whether you’ve been at it for years or are just getting started, there’s always more to learn. Every day there are new trends, engagement tactics, and entire platforms to discover. So how can you take advantage of this ever-changing landscape to make money for your business?
The answer can be complicated, but it starts with monetizing social media.
What is social media monetization?
Social media monetization is how you generate revenue from your audience on social media. This can be done through content creation, advertising, on the social channels themselves, or later in the buying process when your audience becomes paying customers.
Social media monetization strategies can be more than sponsored posts and affiliate links. While these are definitely good ways to monetize your content, there are also ways to think outside the box. If you’re going to invest time and creative resources into creating great content for social media, make sure you’re getting the most out of your posts.
Here are 4 ways to monetize your content on social media:
4 Ways to Monetize Your Social Media
1. Video marketing
For social media monetization, videos are the best way to get your followers to interact with your product or service. According to Social Media Today, video marketing is still the best type of digital content because it drives more views and more interaction than any other content type. And this is true across all social media platforms.
- Tweets with video are viewed 10 times more often than those without.
- LinkedIn users are 20 times more likely to share video with their followers than any other type of post.
- Pinterest users are 2.6 times more likely to make a purchase after seeing a brand video.
- Videos generate more engagement than any other content type on Instagram.
Whether you’re a growing business, an established brand already experimenting with video, or a content creator, it’s time to take your marketing strategy to the next level with impactful social video. With video, you can generate revenue and earn ROI for the content you’ve invested time in developing.
2. Direct sale
A direct CTA on social media is a way to drive visitors directly to your website. For B2C brands, selling your product on social media is a little easier thanks to Instagram Stores and Facebook Business Pages. If you pay to promote your posts, you can get your content to the right people at the right time.
B2B brands thinking about monetising social media need to think about the steps a potential buyer has to go through before they become a qualified lead. We’ll talk more about this later.
It can be difficult to find the balance between interesting content and selling your product. Nearly 3 in 4 users (74%) think there is too much advertising on social media. And yet, marketers expect social media spend to increase 89% by 2022. This increase is partly due to the need to cut through all the brand noise.
Remember, you should only make direct sales offers if your content has value independent of that offer. You can create outstanding content with videos that inform, entertain and educate.
3. Lead generation
Maybe your posts on social media link to a blog that requires an email form. Suddenly, that follower is a marketing qualified lead or an MQL on their way into the sales funnel. If you can not close a sale directly through your social platform, set up your followers to be incentivised to buy in the future.
Think of every follower as a potential customer. Leads do not come from doing nothing. Your content strategy needs to be well crafted to appeal to potential buyers and encourage them to take action.
Social media content developed with the sales process in mind is the first step. Promoting webinars, virtual events, live streams and free resources that drive followers to your website or landing pages is a good first step. The key is to provide value to your potential customers.
The first step to monetising your Facebook page has nothing to do with Facebook at all. Since a large part of Facebook traffic comes from mobile devices, it is extremely important that your website is also optimised for mobile devices. This way, visitors coming from the Facebook app will not encounter friction in the buying experience.
4. Sponsorships
Sponsorships are a tried and tested method of monetising social media that have been around for a long time. In a good sponsorship deal, the sponsor reaches their target audience through genuine support and the creator gets paid in return. Today, there are many variations of this relationship, such as the content creator receiving a discount on a brand’s products or an all-expense paid trip.
In most sponsored content, the creator leaves a paragraph promoting the brand or places an advertisement during their content. Often a link to the brand’s website is also required.
Sponsorship is ideal for influencers with a specific target audience. For brands, sponsorship becomes a little more complicated. If a brand is already reaching its target audience, why waste time promoting a competitor?
This is where influencer marketing comes in. Many companies have a marketing budget specifically allocated to influencer marketing – because it works. Influencer marketing campaigns bring in $6.50 for every dollar spent, but you need to research influencers in your industry who have access to your target audience.
There is no magic follower count that will turn your audience into paying customers. With influencers, a large follower count can help you get more from brand deals and sponsored posts, but if your 1 million followers do not convert into customers, you can not count on their recurring revenue.
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