Social media is great for connecting with friends, acquaintances and family, and even making new friends, while also proving to be an invaluable tool for your business. Social media can help your brand connect with both existing and potential customers to create relationships and help close sales. To properly leverage social media to grow your business you need a solid strategy. These social media marketing tips can help elevate your game and expand your business.
Have a Plan
Before you can launch a successful social media marketing campaign, you need to decide what you want to achieve. Figure out your goals, and then create a strategy to reach those goals. Increasing followers or closing more sales are both excellent goals, but the steps you take to reach these goals are different.
Clearly define what you want to do, so you know for certain if you reach your goal. For instance, a well-defined goal is deciding to add 500 new followers in the next 6 months. In this example, you’ll know if you reached this goal based on how many followers you have in 6 months time. Keep in mind that you can always adjust your goals, so if you add 500 new followers in two months, you can set a new number to strive for by the 6-month mark. Taking the time to set specific goals enables you to craft an effective plan.
Track Results
A major benefit of having a plan is being able to go back and look and what worked, as well as what didn’t work. When you identify your successes, you can try to replicate these steps. By understanding what falls flat, you know to avoid these missteps in the future. Your plan will never be perfect and is always going to be a work in progress you will continually refine as you go.
Choose the Right Platform
Select the best social media platform for your business. Different demographics gravitate to different social media platforms, so you want to find the platforms your customers frequent. You can have solid posts and high-quality content, but if you’re not reaching your demographic it’s all for nothing. You know who your ideal customers are, you just need to find them on social media.
It’s likely your demographic may be split across different platforms. It may help your brand to maintain an active presence across those platforms. However, it may not be worth your time to post on platforms not popular with your demographic. If your demographic is big on Instagram and Snapchat you probably won’t get much traction on LinkedIn or Facebook. It can be tempting to set up an account on every platform out there to position your brand in front of all possible customers, but this is often ineffective. While the time investment may be minimal, if you are not seeing results on certain social media platforms you are just wasting resources.
Create Quality Content
Posting and sharing high-quality content will position your brand as an expert in your field. This will help customers come to see your brand as a reliable authority. High-quality content can be blog posts, infographics, videos or anything else that provides useful information and value to your customers. This information can explain the products or services your company provides, or educate consumers about your industry. For example, if your company manufacturers bedding, you can write a blog post explaining thread count and share that post across your social media accounts. Quality content establishes your brand as an authority and builds trust.
Include Visual Aids
Words matter a great deal, but images are important when posting on social media. Visual content, like photos, graphics and video are interesting and engaging and will pull people in. The right visual content can help educate and inform followers. For example, an infographic is a great way to break down a complicated process into an easy to understand a concept that helps customers learn about your business or industry. Sharing behind-the-scenes, how-to photos and videos, funny memes and other types of visual content help followers get to know and engage with your brand.
Availability
Social media is ultimately about being social. Everyone understands the reason businesses sign up for social media is to promote their brand. However, it’s important to still make time to connect with your followers. When people follow you, follow them back and share and comment on their posts. When people reach out to you publicly or privately, make sure to reply in a timely manner. Put your customer service skills to work to ensure your followers create a positive association with your brand and understand the value your business provides.
Make Algorithms Work for Your Business
Engaging with followers is good customer service, but it also favorably positions your brand with social media platforms. Each platform is governed by an algorithm unique to that platform. While each algorithm is different, the one common trait is they prioritize interaction. Interacting with followers will lead to more likes and shares. The more likes and shares you receive, the more the algorithms will realize your brand is useful and provides value. When the platforms realize you provide value they will green light your content and place it in front of a wider audience. It takes time and work to make this happen, but through being available and engaging with followers you can reach more people and potentially grow your customer base.
Share Content
Constantly promoting your brand will get boring for anyone who follows your feed. Mix things up and share content from other members of your industry, experts and the media. Share articles, images, videos and more from other sources if you think it will appeal to your followers. Sharing content will create a more varied feed. This practice will also promote other members of your industry and create a sense of community. All the while reinforcing your brand as an authority in the field.
Learn More Social Media Marketing Tips
Putting these tips to work for your brand can help increase the awareness and recognition of your brand. When leveraged properly, social media can do amazing things for your marketing and help substantially grow your business. Want to learn more social media marketing tips? I’m just getting started on this blog, but I have lots more info to share, so check back often. Reach out if you have questions and feel free to share this post if you think it will help out any of your followers!
