How to Maximize Your Social Media Strategy

Social media can be a very powerful driver of traffic to your web site. It can also be a major investment that doesn’t justify the salaries of the staff involved. How do you maximize the effectiveness of your program and convert fans into leads that convert to additional sales?

NOTE: A technical issue – social media sites are not built as a vehicle for marketing. Making fake profiles for marketing purposes is against most Terms of Service. One of the ways that they catch “social spammers” is by capturing their IP address. Most company networks typically use a single IP for the entire system. If 20 people using the same IP address suddenly become active, their software will suspend or delete these users. A few suggestions to counter this issue is to utilize a number of different IPs, usually through a proxy, or to connect from mobile phones, or from different locations.

Facebook

Facebook is the single largest social media site in the world and had the highest potential for growth. While growth in the U.S. and Europe have much plateaued, there is still significant growth in Asia. In order to maximize your results, search for SEO keywords, and identify similar pages and special interest groups. These groups can be utilized to link back to your web site and other social media pages. Even if you have an established Facebook Business Page, all “public writers”, i.e., any personalities that you use online, such as spokespersons, story-line characters, etc., should have professional profiles and Fan Pages as well. All staff should be fans and actively participate on your company’s corporate and fan pages. Writers should post links to their latest stories.

Global Users (Source: Zephoria Digital Marketing):

1. Worldwide, there are over 2.27 billion monthly active users (MAU) on Facebook for Q3 2018.
2. There are 1.15 billion mobile daily active users (Mobile DAU) for December 2016, an increase of 23 percent year-over-year.
3. Mobile advertising revenue, according to Facebook, represented approximately 91 percent of advertising revenue for Q2 2018 up from 87 percent in Q2 2017.
4. 1.49 billion people on average log onto Facebook daily and are considered daily active users (Facebook DAU) for September 2018, which represents a 9 percent increase year over year.
5. There are 1.74 billion mobile active users (Mobile Facebook MAU) for December 2016 which is an increase of 21% year-over-year.
6. On average, the Like and Share Buttons are viewed across almost 10 million websites daily.
7. Age 25 to 34, at 29.7% of users, is the most common age demographic.
8. Five new profiles are created every second.
9. Facebook users are 76% female and 66% male.
10. Highest traffic occurs mid-week between 1 to 3 pm. On another note, a Facebook post at 7pm will result in more clicks on average than posting at 8pm. Go figure. How this can help you: You have the potential to reach more consumers and drive higher traffic to your site during peak usage times, but people may be more likely to be more engaged in the evenings. This statistic may be a factor when you are planning social communication scheduling.

Compare That to Myanmar:

• Facebook Subscribers (Source: Global Stats Statcounter): 16,000,000 (29.7% penetration)
• Gender: 37% female/63% male
• Age: 53% ages 18 – 24/25% ages 25 – 34

Highest Number of Local Fans in Myanmar on Facebook Pages in Myanmar (Source: SocialBakers):

1. 7Day News Journal: 15,445,403
2. Eleven Media Group: 12,924,233
3. BBC Burmese: 10,122,801
4. Mizzima – News in Burmese: 9,238,765
5. The Irrawaddy – Burmese Edition: 9,183,085
6. VOA Burmese News: 8,891,191
7. MRTV-4: 8,098,777
8. Myanmarload.com: 7,877,552
9. Telenor Myanmar: 7,748,092
10. MPT: 7,633,436

DO:

• Enhance your Company Corporate Page. Update your cover art. Explore different options for your profile image. Review your “About” page. Is it comprehensive? Are all of your contact details available?
• Develop promotions and giveaways that can be downloaded for user pages, such as widgets, badges, etc.
• Use polls, games, etc. that link back to your web site (preferably to a targeted landing page that amplifies the interaction while pointing to other parts of your site for demos, downloads, product information and sales).
• Respond to any comments on your wall as soon as humanly possible.
• Post at least one status message daily or three posts a week minimum.
• Create and promote events, both on and off-line.
• Ask for reviews.
• Posts photos of events. Have a photo album with an insider’s view of your company. It may be of office parties, people having lunch together, dressing up for special occasions, etc. Keep updating this. If you have a CSR program where employees go as a group to clean up streets or work with stray animals, posts those photos, too.
• Post video interviews with people in each department. For example, have one of your HR people give five tips for preparing for a job interview. Have your software development lead talk about the types of projects they work on, what software they use, database, etc. and the types of people they look for to join the team. You can also have the strategic head discuss their views for what the industry will look like in five years. These videos don’t need to be very long; 30 seconds to three minutes is plenty. You can also do quick videos like, “Describe working at our company in one word.” Interview a person on their first day on the job. Since 68% of videos are watched without the sound on, use beautiful readable typography to create nicely done subtitling. Be sure to use consistent, branded title cards and credits with the last one a call to action such as visit our web site, call, or email today (with the details, of course!).
• Post all of your videos on YouTube and transcribe each one, then use the embed link on Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the top most visited professional social network site in the world. It is the best platform to raise questions on your industry, recruit staff, talk about industry issues, etc.

LinkedIn receives over 14 million visitors a month on average with 42.9% from US alone. Visitors has been increasing at the rate of 3.75% on a monthly basis between April 2009 and April 2010. Their audience is between 25 to 54 years old, with 35-44 as the largest group on LinkedIn. Over 9 million of its members have a college degree and over 4 million have a post graduate degree or above. An average user views 8.45 pages on LinkedIn and spends over 6 minutes on-site.

Compare That to Myanmar:

LinkedIn Subscribers (Source: LinkedIn): 267,701

DO:

• LinkedIn Company Profile for Your Company: In order to have a brand presence on LinkedIn, you must have a company profile. It gives your company a face and the visitor an overview of what you’re all about without having to visit your website. This will give your online presence an SEO boost as well as bring in curious visitors.
• Network with Thought Leaders and Potential Strategic Partners: LinkedIn groups are one of the best places to network with thought leaders in your industry and listen to what others are thinking and saying about your industry. You’re allowed to join 50 groups on LinkedIn but don’t join all the groups in your industry. Find similar people in groups that are peripherally connected to what you do.
• Do market research and get feedback: Depending on how active the people are in each group, the individuals should be sent links to blogs and articles on your web site.
• Asking questions in your LinkedIn Groups can generate content as well as a community discussion. They can be asked what their take is on a particular subject with a link back to the original article or post.
• Develop a free poll in surveymonkey or another free survey program to allow you to get sample data from your professional network as well as publicity on various issues related to your company and industry.
• Nurturing and Generating Leads: The contacts you gain through LinkedIn will give sometimes give you email addresses as well. They can be sent a canned welcome email on whether they’d like to subscribe to your company newsletters or alerts. Personalizing the email will be seen as a personal invitation to subscribe and not as spam.
• Host a Group on LinkedIn: Make a group for dialog between people who are concerned about issues and concepts related to your company and industry. Invite those individuals who are already in other related groups. Most groups have few members because there is no dialog or activity within the group. The right audience will be already there since they’ve joined other similar groups. Being a part of a larger group with a personal invite also means that they can engage in conversations that they have an interest in already.
• All authors, staff, and board/advisory members of your company should have a profile on LinkedIn. They should accept any invitations that make sense to accept. Enter any recent business cards you receive to invite them to LinkedIn or connect with them and point them towards your group.
• The conversations started at a conference or meetup can continue online through group discussions. The group should also link back to videos of panels.
• Recommending colleagues and partners is a must. Provide 1 recommendation every few days and be honest.
• Update your status at least once a week or tie in your status with Twitter.
• Make at least one introduction/recommendation to those with similar interests. Connecting two people can really be rewarding. I once was following a gent in Myanmar selling solar panel/battery systems for small homes in rural parts of Myanmar and he was frustrated with the quality of the solar panels. He connected with me, since I have worked in green telecom and had used solar panels in our rural telecom solutions. I made introductions for him with my suppliers in India and in China and he was very happy to find better quality at lower prices.
• Industry keywords should be highlighted as one of their interests on LinkedIn. The Linkedin group should also be prominently displayed in their profiles.

Instagram

Instagram is a social networking app made for sharing photos and videos from a smartphone. Similar to Facebook or Twitter, everyone who creates an Instagram account has a profile and a news feed. It’s like a simplified version of Facebook, with an emphasis on mobile use and visual sharing. Just like other social networks, you can interact with other users on Instagram by following them, being followed by them, commenting, liking, tagging and private messaging.

When you post a photo or video on Instagram, it will be displayed on your profile. Other users who follow you will see your posts in their own feed. Likewise, you’ll see posts from other users whom you choose to follow.

There are more than 540,000 users on Instagram in Myanmar. 45% of users are female while 55% are male. 45% of users are between the ages of 18 – 24 and 32% are between the ages of 25 – 34.

Niche Groups

There are several other global sites that make sense building partnerships as they target the same community as you do. For example as a company in the travel and tourism sector, you should be visible on tripadvisor.com, couchsurfing.com, nomadicmatt.com, etc. Find the global sites that match your target consumers and reach out to see what they’re willing to do to promote your efforts in Myanmar. Offer to create custom content about them in exchange for the same. Use comments to leave substantive content about what you offer.

Tie in to other social media more powerfully – use the interaction from other sites as adjunct content – let your readers also be active writers – enable them to upload content to the site. Make your use of SHARE buttons for social media much more prevalent. This makes them more loyal to you as well, and ask them to recommend you to their friends – this has the highest clickthrough rate potential you can get.

Myanmar Social Media Statistics for October, 2018

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Social Media Market Share

• Myanmar Population: 53,855,735
• Internet Users: 18,000,000 (33.4% penetration)

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