Social Media Marketing 101: Strategies You Can’t Afford to Omit
Social media marketing success shouldn’t be a hit or miss. There’s a formula behind it, and if you do the right things, your brand will see the sort of engagement that drives traffic and profit. Without a solid plan, you can end up wasting a lot of time with your marketing efforts. Knowing the fundamentals of social media marketing for business will ensure you don’t waste time on social networks using the wrong strategies.
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Spend More Time Where Your Audience Is
There are a lot of social media platforms out there, and you don’t want to stretch yourself too thin by trying to be everywhere at once. Your brand’s target audience isn’t going to be everywhere at once either, so you want to find out where they are and spend most of your time there. If your target audience is middle-aged moms, you might use Pinterest and Facebook as your main platforms. If you’re trying to reach a younger audience, go for Twitter and Instagram. If you’re in the B2B industry, you want to build some clout on LinkedIn. Knowing your audience will help you determine which platforms will give you the biggest return on your time.
Be Authentic
Social media marketing for business can sometimes come off as superficial, but the most successful brands are authentic and transparent online. Real users who are your potential buyers or clients don’t want to read the ad copy. They want to feel like they’re behind the scenes of your business when they look at your social media posts. Out of all the places you should be marketing online, social media is the No. 1 place to show genuine personality and break the ice with your audience. Social media is, after all, social.
Maintain a Consistent Brand with Visual Appeal
Besides authenticity, what makes social media “tick” is the visual appeal. Without images that stand out, it’s hard to get noticed or be remembered among the crowd of other social media accounts. In addition to using images, videos and infographics in your posts, you want to have a logo that represents your brand’s message and makes your business recognizable across different social media platforms. With the technology available today, you don’t need to hire a graphic designer or even know how to design a logo. Tools such as FlashMarks help you build your own appealing logo, giving you all the file sizes you need for various social networks.
Schedule Your Content
Using a social media content scheduler like Hootsuite or Buffer allows you to automate your posts, re-post old content that performed well and track engagement analytics. This not only saves time but also gives you a place to plan out your content more strategically all in one place. You can use analytics tools to find out when your audience is most engaged on social networks and schedule the majority of your posts to publish at those times.
Stay Engaged
If you ever feel like you’re too “salesy” or that you’re just selfishly trying to draw attention to your business on social media, engagement with your audience is your chance to balance that out. When you combine self-promotion with gratitude for your audience and genuine interest in their wants and needs, you form a great relationship with potential customers that makes social media well worth your time. Be sure to answer people’s questions, respond to comments and thank users for their engagement as often as possible.
Stepping Up Your Game
Whether you’re new to a social media marketing or your brand is already established, remembering these fundamental practices will help you stay on track with growing your following and boosting engagement. Analytics tools can also help reduce the trial and error time it takes to get into your groove on social media by tracking what works and what doesn’t.
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