Since 2010, I have been a social media consultant. I am just as excited about the possibilities of communicating online as I was a decade ago when I sent my first Tweet.
This is not to say I forgot what it was like when I started this journey. It can be difficult to learn at first, and there are many platforms and tools to choose from.
This article is perfect for anyone new to social media marketing or who doesn’t know how to use it properly. Here are ten tips that I have learned to help you succeed in social media marketing.
Social Media Goals: Set Smart Social Media Goals
It’s not hard to see that setting goals increase your social media success chances. Yet, it amazes me how many businesses don’t give much thought to their social media goals. It isn’t easy to measure the success of your social media marketing without goals. Clear goals will help you move your strategy forward and serve as a guideline for measuring your progress. Your social media goals and objectives should be clearly stated. These goals should align with your business goals.
A goal must be precise, measurable and achievable. It can also be realistic in time. These are sometimes called SMART goals. The most effective and popular way to set goals for your business is through SMART goals.
Do not spread yourself too thin.
Even if you have limited resources, it is important to focus your social media efforts to yield the highest return on your investment. If your audience isn’t on that particular social network, it’s not worth spending time there. It would be best if you didn’t try to be everywhere simultaneously. Each additional platform your business is active on requires additional effort and time to engage with and create targeted content.
To help you select the right social media platform for you, answer the following questions before you join a network.
(i) Can this platform help me reach my marketing goals?
(iii) Does this platform have an active target audience?
(iii). Will this platform is compatible with the content I create?
Get to Know Your Audience
Get to know your audience better. What are their favorite places to be online? Which content is most important to them? What type of information do they want? What information do they prefer to consume? You can get to know your audience and build relationships to create relevant content.
Insider Tip: Creating audience personas is an important part of social media strategy design and understanding the people you reach.
Analyze what’s working for your industry peers and competitors
Industry peers and your competitors are great sources of information. Take a look at what content your competitors are producing. Find out which content is performing best for them in terms of social shares, comments and likes. Think about how you could take the content they’ve created and add your twist.
Make a Social Media Style Guide
A social media style guide can help you maintain consistency across social media platforms. You can create a social media style guide for your team, whether you have one person or multiple people posting to your accounts on social media.
Take Action: This is your style guide.
- The tone and voice of your brand’s social media presence.
- Your writing style — consistency in format, spellings, etc.
- The colors, fonts, and logos that you will use.
- How to use hashtags and Emojis.
Add images to all your posts.
This is something you’ve heard before. However, it’s important to reiterate: images matter a lot. According to research done by Buffer, visual content is 40x more likely than other content to be shared on social media.
All your online posts should include an image, even if they are text-based. You can help your brand’s recognition and establish a strong visual identity by using the same colors, fonts, layouts for all of your images.
Do More Than Just Add to the Online Chatter
Do not just contribute to the online chatter. Before you publish anything, think about whether it passes the re-share test. Why would you click on that information? Why would I want it to be shared with my family and friends? Jonah Berger is the author of Contagious: Why Things Catch on. He says that “before people share content with their friends/family, they evaluate its social media currency.” This means that they will create content that they will share with others because they believe it will value them.
Create a regular posting schedule
Social media marketing requires a commitment. To stay visible to your audience and grow, you must post regularly. Your audience will build trust with you the more you communicate with them. You can set aside one day per month to plan out the upcoming holidays and events that you want to write about. To create your content calendar, use an Excel spreadsheet. You can also do the same with another spreadsheet to create your content calendar for social media posts.
Post When Your Audience is Online
Many guides can be found online if you look for the best posting times. These recommendations can be used as a guide, but it is highly recommended that you test your timings to determine which days and times are most effective for your particular industry.
Do more than “Do Social”. Be social!
We all know people who only want you to comment on their content or tweet them. Be careful not to be one of these people. You shouldn’t be known for only being interested in what you want. It would be best if you were focusing on creating online relationships. If you don’t care enough about your community, people won’t show concern for it.
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