MANILA, Philippines — Advertising plays a big role in growing businesses. Over the years, the marketing landscape in the Philippines has shifted into digital through social media platforms.
Nowadays, businesses heavily rely on online content to introduce products and boost sales. That’s why it’s important to take digital marketing seriously. We recently sat down with one of the seasoned content creators, Vince Golangco, to know more about strengthening one’s social media presence.
Vince is the founder and CEO of the popular blog site and online magazine- wheninmanila.com. Starting his digital career in 2009, Vince was one of the early bloggers to become viral in the Philippines. Now, When In Manila boasts millions of followers and views on their various online accounts.
According to Vince, small businesses should establish some sort of online presence. He sent us his top tips to help you boost your brand online:
Tip No. 1, Just keep posting
The problem with a lot of businesses is that they give up after a week or a month. They feel like their posts don’t get any views and they lose the motivation to keep up with their Instagram or Tiktok accounts. But the important thing is to keep posting, at least one post a day (three posts per day for serious influencers), and eventually, your posts will start gaining more traction. This is because almost everyone is literally online, so anything you might be producing will have an audience online. Even very unique niche items like an anime knitting kit, or a collector’s edition custom-made board game table, will have an audience of people who want that. So, posting online is just your way of reaching out and finding that community of people who will appreciate and love your products. As compared to a mall that might get hundreds or thousands of people per day, the internet gets millions or billions of views per second. Your audience and community are there, now keep posting so that they can find you.
Tip No. 2, Don’t overthink it
The second problem I always see new businesses have is that they overthink what they are going to post. As if they feel like the post on their brand-new Facebook page with 12 followers is going to be seen by millions right away. In the beginning, you really need to go with quantity over quality – not to say that you should post absolutely terrible things, but I mean that you shouldn’t worry too much about each individual post and spend more time just creating more. My basic rule for this is to just create any content that isn’t negative or controversial. As long as you are creating positive content, then that’s already enough to get you started. You’ll start to see which posts do well and which don’t, then you just adjust and create similar content to the ones that did well. Keep posting positive things, and adjust as needed little by little. Don’t overthink each post in the beginning.
Tip No. 3, Don’t post an “ad”
The most common thing I see all businesses do online is that they post advertisements. With our viewing habits, we already see that people don’t like watching commercials. We skip through the commercials when we can, and even pay for subscriptions like Netflix that has no commercials. This is so much harder to understand for small business owners though, as I am telling you to post online to promote yourselves but to not post about yourselves. In the advertising world, this is called a hard sell vs a soft sell, the hard sell being one where you force feed your brand like BUY BRAND X, BUY BRAND X, BUY BRAND X, BRAND X IS AMAZING, BRAND X WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE. Where a soft sell is where you just have your brand in the background and present it in a very subtle way. The best way I usually explain this is that you need to post something that adds value to the viewers. So instead of saying: BRAND X IS THE BEST PHONE FOR YOU – you should have content that says: Here’s advice on how to take care of your phone battery.
Giving advice on taking care of a phone battery is something that adds value or knowledge to the viewer and they are more likely to comment, like, and share the post. With all that, they will surely see your phone brand on the video and will see the account with all the information of your phone that you are actually promoting. Since it was useful or informative for them, they will more likely leave a comment or hit the like button, or maybe even share it with their friends and family. Now, more people will see your post that added value to the viewers and with that, more people will see your brand within that post and the account. You just promoted yourself without promoting yourself.
It may take some time to fully understand these digital marketing pointers since they are much more challenging to put into practice. This may sound like rocket science to business owners who are only trying to remain afloat, but to a professional digital marketer, these are the fundamentals.
As using social media becomes more convenient, so does the opportunity to launch a business online. You may also have the chance to showcase your talents and become a social media content creator. There are simply a few things to keep in mind to expand it, and the most important one is to publish consistently until you find your audience. So, just be optimistic about the content you create; if it is worth sharing, you will undoubtedly improve your social media presence.
For more information, Vince says he is always available to assist small businesses with their digital marketing needs. You may reach him through email at wheninmanila@gmail.com or on his social media accounts: @vincegolangco and @wheninmanila.