With thanks to SPC Marine Marketing
With Statista counting 4.59 billion social-media users worldwide in 2022, equating to 86.6% of all 5.3 billion internet users globally, your business can't afford not to be active across LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. That might sound obvious, but you would be surprised by how many businesses either don't use social media at all or post so irregularly that they may as well not bother.
Using social media as a business-marketing tool is nothing new, but many small-to-medium enterprises still aren’t adopting best practices, or using the reach and influence of the many platforms to their full advantage; yachting and marine businesses included.
Social media is a great way to raise awareness of your business or brand and its innovative products, quality services, and outstanding customer care. It provides a space to talk about your latest news and developments; to connect and learn from your followers; and to have fun, of course. Social media is a great way to target yachties and yacht crew on the move and get your name out there.
Although it’s a long-term strategy to build a social media following, it’s worthwhile to form a loyal fan base that is interested in hearing about your business and what it has to say. This engagement is crucial to building a larger following, and more importantly, to providing a source of traffic that isn’t reliant on traffic from 'organic' search via search engines.
Social media offers a great way for ‘fans’ and potential leads to connect to your business and relate to your employees, who are working behind the scenes. Likewise, it’s a great way for businesses to be able to learn more about their followers and the type of content that they enjoy and engage with.
Personality wins the day on social media in 2023; the more characterful and expressive you are on each channel, the more likely your brand will resonate with users.
Although everyone has their own favourite social platforms (and theories about which are the most relevant or effective), we find that LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube are among the most powerful for marine businesses, generally following the rule of quality over quantity: You'll want to target platforms which fit with your market's demographic to encourage sharing and engagement, rather than finding your following is made up of inactive bystanders. In truth, we've noticed shifts over the past five years that have dictated what platforms we use, the frequency with which we post, and what subject matters we cover. This underlines the importance of monitoring the effectiveness of your content over time and ascertaining whether your efforts are yielding traffic and engagement. If they aren't, it's time to do something different.
With around 134.5 million users actively using the platform each day, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network. It offers the ideal place to share industry news and updates, and to start discussions with your industry peers.
Heidi Frith, founder of SPC Marine Marketing said, "Linkedin is essential for businesses who wish to establish themselves as a leader in their field and build their brand. For those wishing to sell their products and services business to business (B2B), it's vital to have a presence. Companies offering professional tools and training to enhance people's careers, such as training courses will almost certainly find their target audience here."
Every social media user loves an image, and Instagram is a great way to share the sights you see as you see them, keeping your followers up to date on where you are and what you’re doing. Luckily, marine settings provide some great opportunities for spectacular photography, capturing the hearts, minds, and imaginations of followers.
Posting to the feed is a great way of showcasing the most spectacular or noteworthy activity conducted by your business, while Stories and Reels allow you to engage with users at the exact moment something is happening. This is ideal for situations that you want to document live or near-live (boat shows, product launches, etc.).
Instagram requires great content, which in turn generates great engagement. It’s therefore a great way to build relationships with yacht crew through shared experiences and aspiring shore-side individuals alike.
With 450 million monthly active users as of 2022, X (formerly Twitter) is still a big player in the social world. It isn't quite soaring in the way it was a few years ago, not helped by Elon Musk's takeover of the business and subsequent decision-making in terms of functionality, but it hasn't died a death in the way some predicted. Regardless of the changes implemented in recent months, X still allows you to network and interact with your industry; to provide personal customer support; to share content; to promote events and competitions; and to raise brand awareness. Our advice is to make the right friends, build relevant relationships, and keep it fun and interesting.
Launched in 2004, Facebook is still one of the most popular social media platforms in terms of active accounts, with 3 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2023. It's not the go-to platform for teenagers and those in their early 20s, but it's still regularly used by those born before the turn of the millennium. Statista reports that the 23-34-year-old demographic makes up Facebook's largest audience in the USA, and it's a similar story elsewhere around the world. A lot of yacht crew fall into this age bracket, meaning Facebook is still a key platform for businesses that target this audience.
Besides offering an interactive place to connect and share business news and content, Facebook also has a wealth of different apps and connectivity features that make it easy to link to your brand’s other social media channels, saving precious time. The more you post, the more you will appear on your fan’s timelines meaning that your brand is constantly on their mind: It’s almost like an instant, interactive business newsletter.
The new(ish) kid on the block, TikTok is the go-to social media platform for young people. It is famed for its built-in recording and editing capabilities that make it easy for content creators to swiftly post video content on the platform. When it is done successfully, posts can very quickly go viral.
It's an interesting proposition for marine businesses. For the same reason as Instagram, TikTok is a great platform to showcase the luxurious superyachts and spectacular scenery we're often surrounded by. However, there's an even bigger emphasis on personality and authenticity on TikTok, so that needs to shine through on each and every video that gets posted otherwise it will likely fail.
It's not necessarily the platform most of your target audience will be most active on so it's not as critical to use as some of the other platforms, but it's definitely one to explore.
The marketing and branding benefits of using YouTube to promote your marine business are instantly recognisable: it’s a great place to share HD videos of the industry, your product, and brand. You can talk customers through new tips and tricks; share user videos; put a face to your name; and, linked to Google, it has great SEO benefits.
Content shared on YouTube usually ranks quicker and easier than on other platforms, so you may notice an increase in traffic to your business website and linked social media channels.
Moreover, enhancing your videos with captions and subtitles can increase their visibility and accessibility. Utilising tools like VEED, which includes an auto subtitle generator online and video caption generator, can make this process seamless and efficient. Not only does VEED help with accessibility, but it can also aid in improving SEO by adding relevant keywords to your video captions. Remember, viewers watch videos in busy or noise-sensitive environments; subtitles can ensure they don't miss out on any information. Plus, VEED even offers a tool to add subtitle to video, making the task simpler. These integrated tools can help to transform your video engagement and viewer satisfaction.
Five top tips for social media for businesses
Are your website and social media profiles fully set up and optimised correctly? It’s important to ensure that they all link and provide an easy follow-able path from one another so that they can easily be found by users and search engines alike. Set up widgets that are easily found and followed, and then ensure that your channels are fully complete with a business description. Keep your business details up to date, and keep posting regularly, or at least as closely to your typical posting schedule as possible: tools like Hootsuite or Buffer should help with scheduling.
If your marine business has been trading for a while, you should know a little about your users, clients, and fans. With all the ‘noise’ on social media, it’s important to post content that is relevant and interesting to your followers to make sure they engage and do not unfollow your brand.
Creating successful content is going to be the most time-consuming aspect of your marketing activities and social media management, so make sure you post what counts: Show off what makes your business unique and worth buying into. Also, allow your followers to generate content for you by promoting the best posts that you are tagged in.
Not only can posts be personalised, but your interactions can also be more personal, responding to comments and questions, and hosting face-to-face video question time and tours.
For the social media marketer with a little extra time, it could be worth looking into employee advocacy as part of your marine marketing strategy.
Research from SocialMediaExaminer.com shows that images are worth a million likes, with these typically being the most popular posts that are shared and engaged with the most often. When sharing images, remember as always to use targeted keywords, high-quality images, descriptive text, and the correct sizing for your platform. It’s also a good idea to watermark your images or to give appropriate image credits, and to give permission for sharing where possible.
As a general rule, it’s best to keep your business social channels 80% fun and informative and 20% business and promotional – although this may be slewed to be a little more business on LinkedIn. This way, users will enjoy fun, interesting content and updates most of the time, then it’s likely that for the other 20% they won’t mind hearing a little about who you are and what you do.
1. Competitions and sweepstakes: A great way to kick up a stir gathering new followers and interacting with existing fans.
2. Offers and rewards: Promote offers for discounts on your products and services or offer free gifts and rewards in exchange for likes and follows across your channels, for feedback and testimonials, or for social referrals.
3. Quizzes, polls, and trivia: Offering the ‘fun’ aspect of your channels (especially on Fridays) and increasing engagement and shares.
4. Check-in: If you travel the world with work, check in with your followers along the way. This also works if your business hosts events and parties as you could ask guests to check-in and share their photos and videos via social media using a hashtag that you created especially. This creates a great way to engage with them after the event and to cultivate relationships.
5. Drop-in’s and behind-the-scenes insights: Host a drop-in hour for your clients and fans to meet you to talk to you about your brand, products, or services. Just be aware that this could welcome both good and bad feedback, so be prepared! It could also be used as a way to show followers around the office.
For other marketing insights and tips, visit our marine-marketing guides. For assistance in managing your business's social media presence, contact us today and learn more about our specialist marketing services.
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