Trends are always changing, something that is especially true when it comes to marketing your business. Social media is always evolving, which can make social media marketing tricky for some businesses. These social media marketing tips will help you get a winning social media strategy for your brand for the remainder of 2018. You will get a full explanation about the top social media strategy that are being used today and why these strategies are successful for businesses of all sizes.
Before you can create your actual strategies, you will need to create social media marketing goals that will offer solutions to your biggest challenges. To adequately do this, you should be sure that the goals are attainable. Attainable goals will make it more likely that you will stay on the planned course to achieve them. This way, you will also be more likely to overcome any challenges that may come up.
The goals should also be simple. The minute that you over complicate the process, things can start to go wrong. Too many objectives can be very overwhelming and will often lead to failure of your strategy. Keep it simple. You may be tempted to focus on all of your different social media accounts, but this could backfire on you. Instead, focus on one social media account at a time to perfect your marketing strategy before moving on to another social media account. Knowing your target audience can be a great way to decide which social media sites you should be focusing your efforts on.
Remember to document these goals. This will increase your chances of succeeding at your goals as well as offering you a way to benchmark just where you currently stand.
But which goals should be your priority? Every business is different, so there isn’t just one answer for everyone.
Consider some of these goals:
If you have a store or restaurant that you are trying to bring customers into, your social media marketing needs to focus on that. Let your followers know that you are having a special flash sale on items or offer a discount for your followers to come into your business. These are highly effective ways to drive your in-person sales.
People trust businesses that they know and the ones that have a positive online reputation. Brand awareness is essential in this goal. Create content that is meaningful while proudly showing followers your brand’s personality. To adequately do this, you should avoid spamming followers or over-promoting yourself as these can turn customers away from your brand.
You can learn a lot about your target audience and your competition through social media. Take a look at what your competition is doing that is so successful. This will help you better understand what works in your industry.
In this world of online marketing, data is something that you really need to monitor. If you don’t have someone parsing your social media data, you may not be utilizing social media to its maximum potential. You should have a knowledgeable team taking a close look at your social media data reports on each of your social media platforms. They should be looking for what posts get the most engagement from customers. The team should look at this data on a daily basis but at a minimum this data should be parsed on a weekly or monthly basis.
Once you get this data, what’s next? This data tells you what is working in engaging your audience. You can quickly see if a particular social marketing campaign is performing well before you spend any more money continuing this campaign. You can get a better grasp on what works on your social media account, so that you can tweak your campaign to focus on elements that are winnig. Time is money, meaning that you only want to put out content that will give you the best return on your investment. Data helps you to understand what content statistically performs the best.
There are social media tools that you can use that will track a wide variety of different data, including what hashtags, messages, and posts are performing well. Tools like Google Analytics can take a look at the posts that have the best conversions and bring in the most traffic. These tools can make the process of gathering data a lot easier for you.
Marketing campaigns won’t be successful if they don’t reach your target audience. For instance, sure a lot of people use Facebook but does your target audience actively use this social media platform? If not, then you have wasted all this time and resources by focusing on Facebook campaigns. The first step is to take a look at the demographics of your customers. Learn about who buys your products and services, then move on from there to see how you can get better social media engagement from them.
After you have discovered your target demographic, use this information and compare it to the popular demographics of the various social media sites. This will help you to identify the best place for you to engage your audience. Ultimately this allows you to better allocate your resources and get the best return on your investment. For instance if your target audience is a younger group (the 18-29 demographic), social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram are your best choices for your social media marketing strategy.
People love videos. The fact that so many people spend as much time as they do on sites like Twitch and YouTube shows you just how beneficial videos can be for your social media marketing strategy. The videos should be high-quality and relevant to your business. It is also important for videos to be mobile-friendly so that anyone can access the videos no matter where they are. Your videos should be short and to the point, engaging your audience within the first 7 seconds of your video. These videos can be created for each of the different platforms, ensuring that you can reach your target audience.
Recording a video and posting it later on your social media can give amazing insight into your business or your products. You should also consider using live streaming, which is an increasingly popular platform for people and businesses. Customers want to work with businesses that engage them and they would much rather watch videos than read content. There are a few different things that you can do with your live videos that will really draw in customers, including:
BONUS TIP: for a better chance to go viral, be sure your video is funny and just a bit outrageous.
The biggest benefit of social media for businesses is that this gives them a way to engage with their customers. Consumers like having a fast and easy way to communicate with a company directly. Social media is uniquely positioned for this. As a business, this partially means creating quality content and networking. It also means that you need to engage with your audience. Ignoring your audience will turn them off from your business. Engaging them shows your audience that you care about them. Businesses that care about nurturing relationships with their audience typically have a much stronger online reputation than those that don’t–or at least don’t show it.
Anytime you get a mention on social media or a direct comment on your posts, engage. Social media is a place that is meant for conversations, plus you show that customer care is a top priority for you as a business. An employee (or a few employees if possible) should be delegated to your social media. By doing this, you are ensuring that your business is interacting with your audience and answering any questions or other concerns that they may have. These days, customers expect to receive a response from a business in only a few minutes to a few hours at most. However, most businesses take nearly half a day to reply, if at all. Post at a time when not only people are more likely to see the post but when your team can swiftly respond to any comments. Large companies have a social media team that actively engages with their customers. If you are a small to medium sized business, try to dedicate a staff member to receive notifications when people are engaging with your posts so you can act quickly.
BONUS TIP: use these social media tools to help you get organized.
This was previously touched on earlier, but now you can learn all about this in better detail. You will find that this can be especially useful if you are just starting out in the business or just starting out with a social media marketing strategy. You shouldn’t steal the ideas of your competition, but you can learn a great deal from their successes and failures. Google your competition or find them using your top keywords, which allows you to know who you are actually up against in the industry.
Once you know who your competition is, you can take a look at their social media accounts. Which platforms do they find the most success using? What types of posts are the most successful? There are tools here that takes a look at your competition’s data to give you a better idea of what works. When you take a look at your competition, you also get the benefit of seeing a new approach to your social media marketing.
Content is one constant in online marketing. Your unique content will always be one of the most important aspects of social media marketing strategies. Content needs to be carefully curated to attract new customers as well as keep your current customers interested in your brand. However, you should remember that the quality of your content for your social media posts should be relevant to your business. The content should never be overly promotional, as this can turn customers off from your business. Content needs to have a careful balance of information and promotion. The golden rule of 80/20 works surprisingly well.
Any content that you put out needs to fit into your company’s brand identity. Stick to speaking to your demographic and giving them information that they need and want. Be careful with your use of keywords in your posts because this could hurt your SEO if you cram in too many keywords. The content doesn’t always just refer to the words you post; it also refers to videos and photographs. The quality of your images needs to be flawless. Studies show that people are more likely to purchase products or services from a company if there are pictures and videos. Offer a good mix of each of these aspects for your content in order to promote interests.
Both Facebook and Instagram have “Story” features, which can be excellent for businesses. What this feature does is to showcase the best images or videos (“Stories”) that represent your brand, posting them for a limited period of time on your profile. These can be organized however you want to, appearing right on your bios for anyone to access. The “Story” feature gives businesses the ability to promote whatever content that they want to. You can make sure that this is the content that the customers see first, inspiring them to work with your company.
Your online reputation can make or break your business. It is crucial that you know what is being said about your business online. There are tools that you can use that will alert you when articles are posted that mention your business or that can monitor social media. Knowledge is power here. If people are saying negative things about your business, this gives you the ability to fix the problem. What problems do people have with your business? Be a part of the conversation to see how you can improve your business to make the experience better for your customers.
Potential customers want to know that they can trust a company before they work with them. Having a positive online reputation is the best way to achieve this.
What if a customer is about to leave you a negative review? Normally, there’s really nothing you can do until after the fact by responding and trying to make things right.
What if you could intercept the moment just before the customer is to post such a negative review? Our Reputation Management does exact that and more.
There you have it. By following these 9 social media marketing tips you can grow your business to new heights. Let’s get a strong kick start for this second half of 2018!
Quick recap of the 9 Social Media Marketing Tips to Grow Your Business 2018:
Got a social media marketing tip you’d like to share. Please comment below.
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