The concept of social media networking remains the same, which means socializing or connecting with people closely and staying in regular touch with each other. However, by utilizing the power of social media to communicate with people and staying in the spotlight, individuals and brands can now monetize their efforts across the social media platforms by gaining ready access to 3.6 billion users that provide a ready market. This is the reason for every brand to embrace social media that provides numerous avenues of revenue generation.
Social media is a highly dynamic space that is constantly changing and growing. So, whether you are a seasoned marketer familiar with the platform for years or an aspiring creator who wants to start up using the platform to earn money, you must catch up with the latest techniques and trends. New engagement tactics, new trends, and even new platform launches like IntrigueMe keep happening every day. You must be ready to adapt to the ever-changing landscape to start earning from the platform but must be aware of how to use the platform to your advantage to earn revenue.
What is social media monetization?
Social media monetization means making your audience pay for your products, services, or creation either directly on the social media channel or by leading them through a buying process later as they turn into paying customers. Businesses and brands mainly use social media for marketing and promotion, while buying happens separately. However, creators can monetize their content by investing time and resources to build a subscriber base against subscriptions or make viewers pay whenever they view the content.
Creating great content for social media by targeting the audience and trying some out-of-the-box thinking can help you monetize social media. Here are some ways of doing it.
Video Marketing
Video content is the highest impacting content for marketing on social media. It is your trusted weapon to cut through the competition to encourage your followers to interact with your content related to the products and services. The human brain is highly receptive to videos as it can process a much larger volume of data at a much faster pace and the presentation is always attractive. Video content is a few notches of any other type of content as it is the best type of digital content capable of driving more views and creating more engagement.
Videos are popular across the entire segment of the social media platform regardless of the channels used. For example, tweets that contain videos enjoy 10 times more viewing than those without videos. In addition, video sharing on LinkedIn is 20 times more than any other type of content, and branded video content on Pinterest increases the chances of purchase by 2.6 times.
From free trials to premium membership
Earning the audience’s trust is vital to get the most from your monetizing efforts on social media. You must lure viewers in the right way by allowing free viewing of your content so that you can convince them about its worth, and they would be ready to pay for it in due course. Some fitness video subscription businesses follow this model.
They might offer a free-7 day trial for their content streamed on some OTT platform, and subsequently, you must pay the subscription to continue enjoying the program. They use some video channels like YouTube for their promotional content that contains links to the free trials followed by giving direct access to the premium products. YouTube follows a similar model that offers exclusive ad-free viewing of videos by subscribing to YouTube Premium.
Direct sales
Moving away from the subscription-based business model, another way to monetize social media is to drive traffic directly to your website that triggers your social media content. Strategically placing CTA in your social media content can do the trick of directing visitors to your website. Selling products on social media is now easy by using Facebook business pages and Instagram Stories, which benefits B2C brands.
To get your content in front of the right people at the appropriate time, you can take to paid promotion of your content. The method of generating business for B2B brands is slightly different. You must accompany buyers through their buying journey and encourage them to stake the next step that turns them into qualified leads.
For direct sales, you must create excellent video content that entertains, educate and inform. Only when the content conveys good value to the audience, it can trigger business.
Lead generation
Generating leads is an important step toward conversions that augur business and bring in revenue. You can use your social media posts for lead generation by linking them to a blog that requires viewers to fill up an email form to provide all information about them. In the process, you gather valuable leads, which you should nurture well by using your soil media skills of engaging with them to drive them closer to conversions.
For generating leads, you must develop a suitable content strategy by considering every lead as a potential customer. Close interaction with the leads who are potential buyers will encourage them to take some action. With the goal of lead generation, the content must encourage viewers to embark on a buying journey.
Sponsorships
Creators have been using the sponsorship route for ages to monetize their social media ventures. Sponsorship deals consist of an arrangement in which the sponsor’s genuine endorsement upholds the product to viewers, and in exchange, the content creator gets paid for it, almost similar to influencer marketing. There are different variations in the relationship between the content creator and sponsor, which might not always involve payment. Instead, brands offer good discounts on products or even arrange for a free holiday trip.
Influencers who have an impressive following are the best sponsors. Typically, for sponsored content, the creator leaves a section for advertising the sponsor or brand promotion.
Social media monetization has its share of challenges as you must abide by the network rules that can often seem to be limiting your efforts.
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