11 Essential Social Media Marketing Tips for Business
Just 15 short years ago only around 5% of Americans used Social Media; however, research shows that today the number has ballooned to 70%.
Many marketers and businesses took notice, and Social Media has since revolutionized the way we do marketing. In fact, the benefits of a strong Social Media Marketing strategy are hard to argue with:
- Improved brand awareness
- Grow a larger audience
- Connect better with that audience
- Increased traffic to your website.
- Generate leads more effectively and efficiently
- Make more sales and profit
Make no mistake – social media advertising and marketing needs to be a vital part of your overall marketing mix. Just consider some of these mind-boggling social media stats:
- Overall, about 54% of the world’s population has a social media account. That’s 4.2 BILLION users across the globe..
- Broken down, that number is approximately 90.4% of Millennials, 77.5% of Generation X, and 48.2% of Baby Boomers use social media in some form (Source).
That’s a massive potential target audience! Not participating in social media marketing, or simply taking a halfhearted approach, is nothing short of an incomplete marketing strategy.
If you’re ready for effective social media marketing tips for business, then read on! We’re about to take a deep dive into the latest cutting-edge social media management and marketing tactics around!
Here are some key ideas to keep in mind when creating a social media strategy for your business:
1. Commit Resources To Build And Grow Your Social Media Presence
Nothing is going to have significant progress in your business until you commit the resources to it. It’s the same with social media.
First, decide on which networks you want to have a presence in. It’s best to choose the social media platforms where your target audience is at.
Then create a content calendar and commit to it. What types of content are you going to post on each social media channel? How often are you going to publish new posts?
Consistency is key for any social media strategy. By showing up in the news feed, regularly you’ll build relationships with them over time. More leads are converted to customers. And you retain more satisfied customers.
Make sure you allocate the necessary resources for your social media strategy. Dedicate someone in your team to manage it. If your team is overworked, you can consider outsourcing it to an agency.
2. Your Strategy Must Align With Your Larger Marketing Goals
Social Media is a traffic channel. Thus, your social media goals must align with your overall marketing goals. This may include paid social media plan for e.g., Facebook ads.
One common goal is to drive traffic to your website and generate new leads. Set data analytics in place to measure how much traffic is going from your posts to your website. And how many of those traffic turns into leads.
To maximize your results, you want to distribute high-quality content on social media and drive traffic to your site.
3. Listen on Social More Than You Ask for Sales
Listening is important to show that you care about what the consumer is saying. Social media marketing is no different in that regard.
Reply to the comments on your posts. Read what they’re posting on their own profile. You’ll get an abundance of ideas on how you can serve them better.
Another aspect of social listening is to monitor topics and trends posted by your competitors, particularly the largest companies in your sector. Consider observing other businesses that are not necessarily competitors, but which can offer creative new ideas that may be relevant for your business to consider. Stay on top of trends, conversations and developments in order continue to improve your marketing, grow your market share, and strengthen your leadership voice in your sector.
4. Measure Impact And Make Data-driven Improvements
By now, you should have a good understanding of what makes an excellent social media strategy. But it’s crucial to measure data and adapt your plan along the way.
Your team and your agency can tell you what has worked in the past. But nothing beats having actual data on your own campaign. Without regular analysis, you’ll never know which campaign brings in the results and which are a waste of time and resources.
Ideally, you want to analyze the data weekly. Make small tweaks to optimize your strategy rather than massive changes several months down the road. It helps you get the most out of your running campaigns and is time-efficient.
You also want to find out which are your top-performing content. Since your audience likes it, you might consider running some ads to distribute your best content in front of more people.
5. The Role of Chatbots in Social Media
One challenge that faces many businesses today is providing top-quality customer service during non-standard business hours. This challenge has only become more obvious and overt with globalization, the internet, and social media. In fact, in today’s digital age, many people expect immediate customer service because, as a business with an online presence, you should be “available” 24/7
Artificial Intelligence has come to the rescue! Now, all a potential customer needs to do is visit your website or Facebook Page, and your chatbot is there is answer any questions! Not only does a chatbot sit there doing unpaid labour, but they also get better at what they do the more they interact with people. This kind of personalization has always been impossible – until now.
Chatbots offer a variety of features for your customers that they find useful. They are available round the clock, they always remain unemotional and offer bias-free solutions, they are efficiently able to personalize the customer experience.
Businesses like Spotify use chatbots to make music recommendations, Whole Foods uses a Facebook Messenger chatbot to help customers search for store goods, and Sephora’s ‘bot offers makeup tutorials.
Get Personalized Social Media Strategy Now!
6. Regularly Mine Twitter for New Followers
On today’s cluttered internet, you must create content that not only informs, but ignites and engages your audience’s imagination. That said, if you’re new to content marketing, you’ll want to spend some time building your audience first.
If you’ve been active of Twitter for a while you may start to notice people placing you on public Twitter lists. Usually, these lists are categorized by a special interest, topic, or geographic location.
For example, Asset Digital Communications might be added to lists for “marketing experts,” “community managers,” or “social media agencies in Toronto.” Find a relevant person to follow, and then dig into their personal lists. This is a great place to find interesting people who might give you a follow-back.
Another way to find new followers through Twitter is through apps. One such app is Twellow. A useful and free site, Twellow is sort of like the yellow pages for Twitter, and it can be used to find and follow targeted users for every category, industry, and interest you can imagine.
Lastly, you might also try specialized Twitter search prompts. You can unlock the secret power of Twitter’s basic search function by learning just a few of these specialized prompts. As one of the most powerful market research tools available, you’ll want to complete Twitter’s free tutorial.
7. Set Up Listening Feeds for Social Media
Another powerful way to thrive in the ever-evolving world of social media marketing is to use your social networks more as search engines than just soapboxes to shout your brand message from. This is another area where Twitter seems to excel, allowing you to find people who are talking about your brand or industry, or even find direct leads.
As an example, as a social strategy agency, we have saved searches on Twitter for “social media marketing agency,” and we can monitor that feed – in real-time – to see who is looking for an agency to help them. We can then reach out and offer our services.
Gathering intel and setting up listening feeds is incredibly easy and can be done for any product, service, or industry – it may just take a little creativity and critical thinking to land on the best search terms used by your ideal customers.
8. Share Compelling Visuals on Social Platforms
If people have come to expect one thing from social media posts, no matter the type of content, it’s that they include some sort of visual component.
That means the images and videos you share on social drive real-world consumer action. In fact, more than half of Millennials and Gen Z internet users said their most recent fashion purchases were made based on images they saw on social media.
Platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat are “visual-first” platforms. If your content isn’t eye-catching, your audience will just keep scrolling by. But that doesn’t mean you should neglect your visuals on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Twitter themselves have said, “The single simplest thing you can do to get more attention to your Tweets is to as an image or GIF” – something we’ll discuss more of in a moment.
Basically any brand can benefit from great imagery, but some industries (service providers in particular) may find it challenging. Try showcasing your company culture with images and video from inside your office. Depending on what service you provide, you might also benefit from images of your customers, highlighting how they use and like your service.
9. Use GIPHY in Your Social Content Plan
GIPHY is a powerful tool for anyone who uses social media, businesses in particular. Not only does this massive library of .gif files offer you an essentially endless supply of engaging and interesting visuals, it also allows you to create them.
As a low-risk, high-reward exercise, try creating a few GIFs related to your brand and industry, and add them to GIPHY’s library. Lightning may strike in the form of users snatching your GIFs for themselves and sharing them with their own followers – potentially exploding your brand’s recognition and awareness.
And if no one uses them? Well, you’ve still got some high-quality, engaging visuals you can use for your own social media communities.
10. Analyze Past Content to Improve Future Content on Social
Most businesses and social media marketing services analyze the impact of their social media after the posts are published. But now there are new tools available that can analyze data before it’s posted.
Buzzsumo allows you to leverage the data behind what has already been successful for you in terms of social sharing. To begin, you simply enter a keyword that is part of your social media content strategy. Buzzsumo will then provide you with a list of the top-performing content according to your keyword, in terms of social shares.
Because some types of content are better suited to some social networks than others, you can then curate content by social network. With this valuable data in hand, you can improve the effectiveness of your content curation by publishing the content with the best chance of success for each platform.
What’s more, you can also filter content by type – ideal if you’re looking for videos or infographics – or by time period – which helps you discover the most popular content over the last 24 hours.
11. Court Influencers on Social Media
Did you know that almost 50% of buyers look for influencer reviews before they buy a product? (Source) That’s the kind of clout influencer marketing wields. Consumers trust the recommendations of these influencers, so you need to know who they are.
- Network: Find and reach out to those personalities with large followings to amplify your brand message.
- Make an offer: You’re probably going to be asked, “What’s in it for me?” Be ready with an answer. Perhaps they can join you at a trade show or promote themselves through one of your events or webinars. In order to build a relationship, it’s important to show how you bring value to them.
- Monitor: Keep an eye on what your influencer posts about your brand and be certain it matches the image you’re trying to convey.
One last tip when it comes to Influencers: if you want to increase your reach when collaborating with influencers, use Instagram Stories. Voted the 2nd most popular format for influencer marketing, Stories reach 500 million users every day.
It’s Never Too Late!
Success in social media marketing can be a challenge for any business. It’s all too easy to take a wrong turn and end up with sub-optimal results. It’s also easy to start out excited and raring to go, only to get burned out and lose interest right when your attention is needed most!
The trick is to stick with it, stay up to date on the latest trends, and adapt your strategy on the fly. Jump on board the “Becoming Digirati” our Exclusive Content Series to get up to speed on how to make social media work for your business, and how a social strategy agency can help you do it.
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