Top Social Media Marketing Tips That You Should Know About
Would you like to know several top social media marketing tips that should be of immense help to your business? Read on to learn more.
Social media: it's not going anywhere anytime soon. In the UK alone, millions of people check their social media accounts every day.
And with everyone tuning it to platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram in ever-increasing numbers, there's no better time than now to devise your business's social media marketing strategy.
Here are our top 6 social media marketing tips.
Learn About Your Audience
You’ll never be able to generate profit if you don’t resonate with your audience.
First, you need to determine who that audience is.
Are you starting a social media strategy to build brand awareness among different age groups? Maybe you’re looking to create buzz around a new product.
Once you decide who you’re trying to reach, you need to understand them by conducting research.
Look carefully at audience demographics. Say you want to reach more people in the UK. Their most-used social media platforms are Facebook and Twitter.
Engaging with your audience will help you learn more about them, too. Conduct surveys to find out about pain points. Ask questions on your blog, respond to comments, and leave messages on other blogs with a similar audience.
Create a Strategy & Be Consistent
Once you know who you’re trying to reach, it’s time to plan your content strategy. Every single upload should be carefully thought out.
An effective content strategy will involve the preparation of posts ahead of time so you can make sure you’re delivering a variety of interesting content.
Your strategy also needs to take into account that different social media platforms require different approaches. For instance, LinkedIn is a professional network that is optimal for B2B sellers, while Facebook is great for more casual, entertaining content.
The most important part of your social media strategy is to be consistent. This becomes especially important once you’ve built up a follower base and they expect posts from you.
Say you spend the first 6 months of your social media strategy uploading posts three times a week. All of these posts have long, well-written captions.
If you suddenly change this to one post a week with a throwaway caption, your followers may react poorly.
Having a strategy in place can give you a realistic idea of how much content you can produce, as well as how to change your strategy over time without losing consumer interest.
Focus on Imagery
Creating stunning visuals should be the priority for your social media feed, especially when it comes to aesthetic-heavy platforms like Instagram.
Even social media like Twitter, which is centred around delivering witty messages in a few hundred characters, will benefit from a stunning image accompanying a post.
Depending on your social media strategy, your imagery will be different. You may take images of people and products, or you may prefer to design infographics. It’s a good idea to mix up your images with graphics, pictures, and videos.
Whichever route you decide, make sure that all of your images build your brand image. You don’t need to be a photographer or a social media marketing expert – you just need to stand by the strategy you’ve created.
Focus on taking pictures that capture real moments. Social media users prefer authentic content over staged advertising.
Most importantly, briefly evaluate your imagery before each upload. Does this picture reflect how you want your brand to be seen? The answer should be yes.
Engage Your Followers
When it comes to the frequency and quality of your posts, you should be consistent. But the content of the posts should change frequently enough to keep your followers engaged.
Variety is one of the greatest assets in social media marketing. Which retail company would you rather follow: one that only posts pictures of clothes from its website or one that posts user-generated content, outfit ideas, questions for thought, and information about trends?
You can even leverage different types of social media posts into calls-to-action for more engagement. Consider the idea of hosting a contest on your social media accounts.
An effective contest will offer customers something they value, like free merchandise from your store or exclusive products.
In return, you ask customers to do some of the heavy lifting for promoting your account. For instance, customers will enter the contest only after they’ve liked and shared your post.
And contests are just one of the many choices you have for engaging followers. You can have live video times each week, a Q and A session in the comments, or a weekly update with entertaining stories.
Minimize Sales Tactics
The baseline of your social media presence should be to connect and educate, not sell. Selling comes much later in the consumer touchpoint process.
Think of how you use social media. You want to be entertained, but you don’t want to be sold to. It’s annoying and offputting to be constantly surrounded by promotions.
Instead, you want to form real connections with a brand. Your followers do, too.
Connections are formed by creating trust. You don’t need to tell people to buy – they’ll want to if they feel that they identify with your brand and its missions.
Post content that teaches your viewers something new, tells them about your backstory or encourages them to look at an idea with a fresh perspective.
Measure & Analyze Results
You won’t know how effective your social media campaign is if you don’t track it. Track your social media campaign’s ROI to determine if your strategy is actually working.
Different platforms have their own metrics, like Linkedin’s clicks and impressions or Instagram’s likes and mentions.
But these platforms’ metrics do have one thing in common: they should be tracked weekly, monthly, and quarterly so that you can stay up-to-date on your strategy. Once you have information, it’ll be much easier for you to say what’s succeeding and what’s going to be changed.
Learn More About the Best Social Media Marketing Tips
Mastering social media doesn't have to be impossible when you use the right strategy. For even more of the best social media marketing tips, reach out to a social media marketing agency.
Schedule a free call with the Jumpstart team to see how we can transform your business.
