It’s impossible to ignore the power of successful social media marketing when statistics show that 7 out of 10 Americans use social media in 2019 compared to only 5% in 2005.
Using social media to improve the performance of your firm may appear like a huge task, and truthfully it is.
However, there are simple steps and tips you can use to ensure you take advantage of social media to have a high success rate.
This article will help you take your social media marketing to the next level, whether you have been using platforms like Twitter or Facebook with no success, or you have not signed up yet.
Let’s get right into it;
1. Come Up with a Social Media Plan for Each Platform
As the adage goes, “Failures don’t plan to fail; they fail to plan.”
Many businesses dive into social media marketing without any strategies.
Before you launch your sites, you should be able to answer questions such as, “What social media platform features match the needs of your target market?” to simple questions like “What are you doing in social media?”
If you are still not in a position to answer the above questions, it’s time to come on board and start over. Start with planning a strategy that your team can refer to.
The plan should consist of mini-plans of every platform.
PS: If you are just getting started, focus on one to three social media platforms at first – many small businesses open up many platforms, and run them with no success.
2. Post Regularly
Establish a social media posting routine and follow it to the letter. Note that different platforms operate differently.
For example, Twitter posts move pretty fast, and you may not be able to cut it by sending once, however, for Facebook and Snapchat, once is fine.
This is why you should schedule your posts. You can also include;
- How often you should post in every social media channel
- The kind of content to publish
- A day to outreach social media influencers
- Your followers are following thousands of other people. If you are not consistent in publishing new content, you may be forgotten.
3. Be Careful With What You Share on Your Pages – Quality over Quantity
It’s tempting to present your brand in multiple social marketing networks to reach a bigger audience.
However, dancing to many weddings at the same time never has any great benefits. High quantity can easily lead to losing quality.
Quantity makes it about numbers and a certain number of posts every day.
Quality content is;
- Entertaining
- Relevant to your target audiences
- Helpful
One trend that has become popular is the “suggest” that suggests the type of content you should share with the audience.
The tool can be helpful, but only when you take time to filter what will favor your audience.
4. Use a Social Management Tool
A single user can comfortably use a phone, but as a business, you will require a tool that will help you be more strategic and efficient.
Some of the benefits that you enjoy by using a social media management tool include;
- Publish content in multiple platforms
- Schedules all posts in advance
- Work together with your team
- See all your social media feeds in one click instead of logging in different feeds independently
- Track and measure results
5. Create Mind-Blowing Pictures
Results have proven that photos are the leading types of social media engagement.
Photos get the most retweets on Twitter and most shares on Facebook.
Instagram and Pinterest are examples of the power of images. The two platforms have been able to get a lot of traction compared to other social media platforms.
You do need graphic designing skills to make good photos for your social media platforms; you can use Picmonkey or Canva to craft your images to wow your audience.
You can also outsource the photo crafting, and it will be money well-spent too.
You will require graphics for;
- Pinterest graphics
- Facebook and Twitter posts
- Infographics
- Instagram images
- Images for your opt-in freebies
- Cover photos for every social media platform
Every business will have different graphics and images for their platforms, but they have to be eye-catching and cohesive.
6. A/B Testing or Split Testing
This is among the major tips that social media marketing professionals use, but small businesses are not aware of it.
A/B involves using different headlines for the same piece, to see which one gets the best response.
Marketers use split testing in sales pages and landing pages, but they can also be used in social media marketing.
Instead of posting a certain piece and forgetting about it, schedule it to be reposted under a different title.
The technique works because people react differently to a post depending on the copy.
Low-quality content or headline in your Pin or Facebook or Tweet may be the reason you are not getting any success because they are not capturing your follower’s attention.
7. Measure & Analyze the Results
Most small firms don’t track their social media ROI, so they are not sure about what is working and what is not.
If you do not want to fall in this category, start measuring your social media results now.
Some of the things you want to measure include;
- Followers. Add up all the followers of each social media platform and compare it with your target number. Followers of an interesting firm should keep increasing.
- Comments/Shares/Likes. What is the level of engagement of your followers with the posts? If you are getting many comments, shares, and likes, you have nothing to worry about. Be sure to note the posts that are getting the most traffic.
- Clicks. This is the moment of truth. Did the clicks on your website or blog increase? Did the audience take the next intended step? Success in social media marketing is determined by the ability to attract more visitors to the sales funnel.
- Downloads. Your month was successful if your audience responded by downloading
8. Pay to Play
Social media has significantly reduced the organic visibility of posts, which explains why most businesses are paying for social media marketing advertising.
It may be to promote a tweet or boost a post.
If you want to accelerate your marketing efforts in social media and have a little budget, this may be the way to go.
Besides the costs are not as high as in media buying or Google AdWords.
Additionally, you have targeting options like the user’s demographics and interests.
For example, you can pay facebook advertisers to improve your facebook visibility.
9. Interact with your Audience
Connect with your audience is a game changer in social media marketing.
Stop being the firm that only shares links all day.
Find ways to increase interactions and understand your audience.
Respond. Social media is two-way traffic. Respond to new followers, answer any queries, and address arising matters timely, like and comment on other posts.
- Tag. Adding a personal touch on social media makes it very powerful. You can do this by tagging interested individuals on a post they may have shown interest in when posting.
- Use hashtags. Find valuable hashtags to save your followers from all the social media noise.
- Decide on a list of hashtags to use in your business in advance. They make your content in social media more visible.
- Link. For successful social media marketing, you have to encourage your audience to take action. Link your posts to other calls-to-action (CTA), website or blogs; otherwise, users do not know what you require of them.
10. Watch Your Competitors
Is one of your competitors getting great responses in social media? You should start observing what they are doing to get the retweets, shares, comments, and likes that you are not doing.
Look out to see;
- Who they follow
- How often they post
- The content they post
- Who’s following them?
- Their time for posting during the day
- Their most popular posts
Your customers want you to be unique and different so you can’t exactly mimic everything about your competitors.
However, you can incorporate some of the things they are doing to win. For instance, you can copy the time of the day they post.
Also, if you observe, they are using multiple images in their popular posts, start creating images of your own.
11. Give Your Viewers a Reason to Follow You
Why people should follow your company instead of others is a question you should constantly ask yourself.
A winning social media platform is one that is nurtured every day. Throwing a blog or a picture, there won’t make you successful. You have to pay attention to the customer needs and base your posts on that.
Here are some pointers on how to improve;
- Write content. When sharing blogs, webinars, always have the reader in mind.
- Curate content. Sharing content from other publishers that are related to the industry and the needs of the audience is another way of filling the calendar. Sale-y(promotional) content is a big turn off for the audience.
Listen. These are tools that allow a firm to listen to their audience and competitors that give them an idea on what they should be posting.
12. Build Strategic Partnerships or Alliances
As much you may be following all the named tips, you may still not be getting a good response.
The brutal truth is, people are likely to follow a company with 50000 followers and many comments than that of a company with 13 followers.
This is however not personal. How can they follow a brand they are not aware of?
You can use other influencers and companies with big followings to boost yours. This can be in the form of a paid shout out or partnership.
This will help establish the “Know, Like, Trust” philosophy. This is because established firms have loyal customers that trust them and are loyal to them.
Building relationships with big firms is vital for any upcoming business.
PS: Be careful before using these services and NEVER buy fake followers.
13. Use of Keywords in Your Posts
It may come as a surprise to you that you need to use keywords in your social media posts. However, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter have search options that work similarly to search engines.
This increases your chance of attracting followers when they are searching for specific keywords.
See that you use common hashtags in your posts and relevant keywords.
14.Don’t Be Afraid to Sell
Sounding too promotional can be a turn off to buyers. However, you cannot be too conservative in your posts as well.
Sharing your link in a tweet once in a while is not harmful.
Promotional language is discouraged because most firms go overboard.
Keep most of your content non-promotional. For example, out of your ten tweets, at least seven should not be sale-y. This creates a balance which is a win-win for everyone.
15.Employ a Qualified Manager
It takes unique abilities to be a social media manager. Most firms give the role to individuals who have the lower per/hour rate or lightest schedule.
Here is why you need to employ a qualified social media manager;
- Strategic thinking. Behind every successful social marketing campaign is a professional manager. Firms should closely discuss long term goals as well as short term goals with their managers. The manager should know how to engage the audience, choose content, and layout posts.
- Organizational skills. Social media campaigns require a step-by-step approach. They require control of calendars and time. Posting “When you think of posting” will not bring a firm much success.
- Branding expertise. As much as they are not the “face” of the firm, they are the “voice” of the company. It is vital that a manager knows everything there is to know about the brand, have great grammar and spelling skills, and professionalism in all aspects.
Wrapping Up
Technology is changing the world, especially in the world of social media marketing.
Thousands if not millions of people spend a substantial part of their time flipping through their phones.
You should, therefore, take advantage of their social media presence and market your products and services through the platforms.
The process can be hard, but the results are worth grinding for.
Use the above tactics to tune your social media marketing strategy until you come up with a winning strategy.