This Valentines Day, catch your perfect match and keep them.

Love is in the air and everyone is eagerly searching for their perfect match, so it's okay for you as a brand to also be looking for your perfect match- someone who will like your posts, someone to chat to all the time and someone to tell the world how much they are in love with your brand. But before venturing out on the quest to finding the one, here are some useful tips to get you started.

The perfect match we’re talking about here is the target market and analytical tools such as Tracx can be used to identify the target market and provide insights as to who your type is, where to find them and what appeals to them. As breath-taking as the thought of your perfect match waltzing into your life seems, you need to be proactive and go out and put yourself out there. What better place than where your target markets are likely to be, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.  In social marketing, it is risky not to have a clearly defined target audience, it's not like the motivational speech of "Shoot for the moon if you miss, you'll land among the stars." It just doesn't work like that, because you'll be shooting into the black expanses of space--where no one exists. Targeted posts make sure that your brand posts fall into the right hands, resulting in improved social metrics such as likes, engagement rate, new followers, more efficient campaigns and generate an increase in ROI. The higher your following the better reach you’ll have and a good reach has the potential to generate more leads.

After you’ve identified and clarified what you want, it’s time to put the next techniques into play. These techniques include constant communication and feedback as well as getting to know their likes and dislikes.  I Remember just how exciting meeting someone new was, I would literally sit with the phone in my hand waiting for his call.  Businesses also need to treat their followers on social media the same way, by using a dedicated community management team. This is a team that makes sure that all posts and comments about your brand are attended to as soon as it happens and gets escalated to the right people to better resolve their queries. Think of them as your very own cupid, always there to inspire love and retain customer loyalty.

Keep in mind that nothing is as impressive as someone who listens attentively and knows what makes you smile, what drives you crazy and anything else in between. Now you need to aspire to be like that because businesses that use social listening tools are better able to improve or develop their products or services, know their target market's topics of interest, reduce customer’s frustrations and maintain brand reputation. Social listening tools can also be used to stay ahead of everyone else and know what's going on in your industry, what your competitors are doing, what your target market finds impressive about those brands and what their flaws are.

Your perfect match obviously ticks all the right boxes not only for your brand but other brands as well. So, it can get a little annoying to see all these brands talking about themselves all the time and your perfect match could simply ignore what you would like to say as a brand and focus more on their friends and family. Don’t have a mini heart attack yet, there’s a way around that. You can use influential people to put in a good word for you, gaining your brand major points. Influencer marketing is not a new concept, maybe you remember it as "Word of Mouth" ring any bells? This type of marketing has the benefit of increasing brand awareness and expanding your reach, another one of your cupids to draw back the bow and let the arrow go straight into your markets heart.

We’ve all been on a couple of first dates and this can get a bit tricky as we would like to make a good impression, in our preparation efforts we ask ourselves what to wear? Where to go?  What to talk about? Problem is many brands fail dismally here because they do not strategically plan their social media content and gaining a market share is more important to them than maintaining one. The best way to make sure that this is the last first date your target audience has with you and not your competitors is to keep them engaged and in doing so, you need to work out what type of content are you going to post? Which platform will generate the most engagement? When is the best time to post? How often should you post?

There is no “one-size-fits-all” answers to these questions, this differs from business to business but this should assist you in answering the above questions and putting together a social media marketing strategy. Same way you would call your significant other every night, your brand needs to also remain consistent and generate posts at least once a day, depending on the type of business you have, the type of social platform and the number of audience you currently have. It can get a little awkward with you and your date just sitting there with nothing else to talk about, which is why you should take initiative and break the ice. But don’t talk about yourself all the time, once in a while share interesting content which has meaning to your target market and they can't wait to share it with everyone else. Your brand can also ask real and thoughtful questions to start a conversation and on the same note, answering any questions your audience has. This is an indicator to your audience that you are paying attention and that you genuinely want to build a solid customer relationship.

Once you've got your target market wrapped around your little finger, all you need to do now is to keep the fire burning, keep that spark alive. From there on your business judgement and intuition will take you the rest of the way and your brand and its audience can live happily ever after.

Xoxo,

DRC