As a leading social media consulting agency, we’ve witnessed a revolution in the way businesses carry out their sales and marketing. Just look at any business, not matter the size, and notice what marketing tactics they are using. Chances are, they are using social media to their advantage.

With over 2.64 billion people using social media around the world, it’s a business mistake to neglect the power of social media marketing. Many businesses struggle with how to utilize social media to their benefit. The reality is, that social media marketing can feel overwhelming.

To help you better evaluate your own social media marketing strategy, we’ve created this guide. Check out these top social media marketing tips to make sure you’re getting the most out of your marketing strategy.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Before we dive into the tips, let’s cover the basics of what social media marketing is. At its core, social media marketing is a set of strategies to market your products and services through social media. Today, social media marketing is a core part of business growth and vitality.

There are dozens of quality social media platforms that small businesses may use to market their products or services. Here’s a list of the most commonly used, and arguably the best, in the pantheon of social media channels:

• Facebook (2.37 billion monthly active users)
• Twitter (321 million monthly active users)
• Instagram (1 billion monthly active users)
• LinkedIn (303 million monthly active users)
• YouTube (2 billion monthly active users)
• Pinterest (291 million monthly active users)

Mastering social media marketing can result in transformational business growth! Not to mention to boost in sales and profits!

The Benefits of Social Media Marketing

With a mere glance at these statistics, the idea of reaching so many potential new customers can be exciting – maybe a little overwhelming too. However, companies are diving into social this every day, and seeing their businesses grow as a result.

Check out some of the benefits that can flow to your business once you master social media marketing:

1. Increased Brand Awareness

One of the best aspects of social media marketing is how much a campaign can increase your brand awareness. By using social media to promote quality content, your target audience will begin to recognize your brand. This increases your company’s overall visibility.

2. Improved Traffic Drives to More Qualified Leads and Increased Revenue

Social media can help to significantly improve your website and foot traffic, and in turn, generate more sales. The best part is, the more involved you get with social media and your community, the more traffic your company can expect.

3. Drive Traffic to Your Website Organically

Social media is also great for increasing organic traffic by improving SEO. This is incredibly important in the bigger picture of creating an internet presence.

4. Cost-effective Marketing

Marketing can be very expensive for business, especially for start-ups. Media such as print and broadcast, which can reach large numbers of consumers, can be expensive. The benefit of social media marketing is that it is affordable and cost effective. This is particularly helpful as your company takes time to develops the best strategy.

Add in some creative content, and the dividends start to pile up!

5. Reputation Management

Social Media Marketing gives your business a chance to engage and build a reputation with customers and your community. In doing so, your company can become an influence or inspiration, depending upon your community management strategy.

There are endless benefits for small businesses that decide to invoke the power of social media marketing! But to receive these benefits, it’s important to make sure you fully understand how to market on social media. Otherwise, it can be a complete waste of both time and money.

With that in mind, we encourage small businesses to consider hiring a social media marketing agency or community manager.

Top Social Media Marketing Tips

1. Strategize Social Media for Bigger Impact

Perhaps you have been on social media for a while, or maybe you are just getting started. No matter where you are in your social media marketing journey, it’s imperative to have a solid strategy behind your efforts.

Without a social media marketing strategy, you’re shooting in the dark. There is no real intention behind the messages that you are putting out on to your channels, which isn’t an effective use of your time as it doesn’t properly engage your audience.

A social media strategy works to help you plan out everything that you want to achieve on social media. It allows you to set your goals, plan your content, and evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts.

Start by setting realistic and measurable goals. This will help to provide strategic guidance in what your social media content will look like, and serve as a way to measure your successes down the line.

As a part of your strategy development process you should also perform a competitive analysis to see where strengths and weaknesses are for your competitors, and where opportunity may lie. You may be able to solve a problem for your audience that isn’t being met with competitors.

Once you have set up an effective social media marketing strategy and have started to execute on your content, you can use data and analytics to inform whether or not certain elements of your strategy have been successful.

Look to see if you are meeting your goals and what parts of your strategy are or aren’t working.

Vanity metrics can also be observed as they tell a general story on your overall growth with numbers like followers, page views or likes. However, the connection between your social platforms and your website is what’s most important as your website serves as a spot for lead generation and sales.

Look for more specific measurements, like traffic to your website from your social media channels. You will be able to directly see if your audience is further engaging with your business because of your social media and helping you to see results.

2. Pick the Right Platform Based on Your Audience

One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make when attempting social media marketing is picking the wrong platform. With so many to choose from, picking the right one can be utterly frustrating, both in terms of the money and time spent.

When it comes to social, each popular platform is designed for a specific type of person. In other words, like your business has a target audience, each social media platform does as well.

For example, a photography company would excel in social media marketing on Instagram, however, they may not find as much success on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Take the time to think about where your customers are and what social media platform they’re using. From there, focus all your social media marketing attention on that platform!

3. Study Target Audiences To Understand How They Engage with Content

Before you can see any significant results from you social media marketing, you’ve got to take the time to study your target audiences.

Social media marketing is like having a one-on-one conversation with your customer. To do that, you must have a greater understanding of who your audience is: their likes, dislikes, purchase preferences, hobbies, and more!

Once you understand who you’re trying to reach, you can begin to effectively ‘speak’ to them effectively. When you see engagement starting to happen, you’ll know you’re on the right track.

4. Create a Human Connection

One of the best things about social media is that it allows you to create a connection with your audience that is human to human. The way that you speak to your audience can determine whether or not they choose to engage with you – aka your business.

When creating your content strategy, think about the style or tone of voice that you will use to speak to your audience. Your tone may be more formal in order to get through to a B2B audience, or more casual when marketing a product or service with B2C.

During your strategy development process, you should also create an audience persona. An audience persona can be described as an outline for a typical member in your target audience.

It can help you better specify who it is that you’re talking to and what the best approach to connecting with them will be.

5. Great Branding for Professionalism

Social pages are created at the start of the social media management process, and then are often forgotten about as more of a focus is put on post content. If you have had your social media channels for a while, it may be time for a page update!

Social media pages should look clean and professional. Ensure that all of your branding is taken care of and that you stay consistent in your logos, colours and fonts.

Your social media content is important, but users will judge you from your social pages as well, so be sure to keep them up to date! Make them a part of your ongoing schedule with a refresh on a quarterly or seasonal basis.

6. Create Value-Based Posts to Establish Your Brand

If we were to look at your social media profiles right now, what would we find? Are you posting valuable material, or just promoting products? Chances are, if you are only promoting products, you’re not seeing great results.

With a content marketing strategy, you will want to think about the type of content that you are using on your channels. It’s no longer about selling to your audience, but rather providing value to them in order to gain their trust.

By creating value-based social media posts you are more likely to meet your audience as they go through the stages of the sales funnel.

You can put relevant messages in front of them that meet them in their buying journey, whether they are just becoming aware of your business or are in the process of making the decision of where to purchase from.

When you make those messages valuable, you are providing them with something that they actually want or need, rather than promotional material that can feel annoying or pushy.

Their connection to your business becomes a lot more organic and a lot more effective in delivering results.

7. Stay Active on Social Media 

It’s common to feel like social media is a challenge, especially for B2B businesses, and at times you may just feel like letting your efforts fall by the wayside. However, once you have started, it’s important to stay active on your channels in order to see solid results.

Social media management requires a lot of consistency and is known to take time, just like all good things do.

Don’t let yourself get discouraged if you aren’t seeing results right away. A social presence can be highly effective when executed correctly, which means it’s up to you to keep it up and make ongoing adjustments.

8. Consistency is Key

Just like how staying consistent with social media activity is important, all around consistency is also key!

You might have a good momentum going for getting your social media content out, but don’t forget to stay on top of important elements like your posting schedule.

Your followers will have expectations on when and how they can hear from you and you will want to deliver during times that they are most active. Use data and analytics to see when your audience is most active and use this information to create your social posting schedule.

Staying consistent with posting while your audience is active will provide content at their convenience and help them to further develop their connection to your brand.

9. Understand Analytics for Better Results

If there is only one tip you take away from this, it should be this one. Each social platform provides companies with a wealth of information in their analytics dashboard. Take the time to study the analytics of your marketing campaigns, post results, and followers.

It can be confusing, but over time your understanding of your follower and customer base will blossom. A good understanding of your analytics can ensure you avoid a costly mistake in your marketing strategies.

10. Hire a Social Media Marketer

Social media marketing can be quite hectic for businesses that may not have the skills or time to invest in building a social media presence. One of the best tips that we can suggest to any business is to consider hiring a social media marketing agency to help you started. An agency can help your staff move up the learning curve more quickly, eliminate learning errors, and get faster results for your business.

A Business Essential – Social Media Marketing

Today, social media is proving to not only be a ‘nice to have’ tool, but an essential part of marketing that every business should be taking advantage of.

Big or small, it can help to establish credibility within your industry, get your name out there, and play a significant role in nurturing your audience through the buyers’ journey.

With a solid content strategy to lay out the intentions behind your efforts, and a sense of determination in staying consistent with them, you’re bound to see incredible results. Use the opportunity to reach your audience on a human level and prove your undeniable value!

Maybe it’s time to hit the refresh button, or maybe you’re looking to finally join in on the world of social media marketing. Wherever you are in your journey it’s essential to get the ball rolling and learn how it all works – or hire someone to do it for you.

Take the next step with Asset Digital Communications, Toronto’s Social Media Marketing Agency. Book a free call, and get your social media marketing started today!