As a business owner, you can no longer afford to ignore the importance of social media. Social media is one of the most powerful tools for promoting your brand and connecting with potential and existing customers in today’s digital world.
However, simply being active on social media is not enough to guarantee success; you need to have a well-thought-out social media strategy that includes specific goals and tactics. Whether that’s to increase engagement on Facebook or gain more Instagram followers, without a plan, it will be difficult to measure your results and know whether your social media efforts are paying off.
Here are some winning tactics for successful social media marketing:
1. Define Your Goals
Before you start using social media for your business, take some time to think about what you want to achieve. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your website? Generate leads? Increase sales?
Once you know what your goals are, you can develop a strategy for achieving them. Without clear goals, it will be difficult to measure your success and determine whether your social media marketing is effective.
2. Know Your Audience
It’s also important to understand your target audience and what they want from you on social media. What kind of content are they looking for? What kind of tone should you use? Which platforms are they most active on?
Take time to see where your target audience hangs out and the type of posts they engage with. Then you can create content that appeals to your target audience and helps you achieve your business goals.
3. Use Visual Content
People are visual creatures, and they’re more likely to engage with content that is easy on the eyes. In fact, articles with images are thought to get 94% more views than those without.
When creating content for social media, be sure to include plenty of high-quality images. You can also use infographics, videos, and other types of visual content to break up text and keep people engaged.
4. Be Consistent
Consistency is vital when it comes to social media marketing. If you’re only posting sporadically, your audience will quickly lose interest. To keep people engaged, you need to be publishing fresh, relevant content on a regular basis.
How often you should post depends on the platform and your audience, but a good rule of thumb is to post at least once per day. You can also use tools like Hootsuite Insights to help you determine the best times to post based on when your audience is most active.
5. Take Advantage of Paid Advertising
Organic reach on social media is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve, especially on platforms like Facebook. If you want to ensure that your target audience sees your content, you need to take advantage of paid advertising.
Paid ads can be highly effective, but they’re also expensive. Before investing in paid advertising, be sure to do your research and create a detailed plan for how you’ll use it to achieve your business goals.
6. Use Social Media Analytics
Finally, don’t forget to track your results and analyze your social media analytics. Data is knowledge, and without it, you really are just guessing as to what’s working for you.
The type of information you should be collecting includes –
- the number of likes and shares your posts receive
- interaction based on the day of the week and the time posted
- click-through rates
- conversion rates
- comparisons of the above across the different social media platforms
7. Become the Expert in Your Industry
The social media platform provides you with the ability to become an expert in your industry. When you post informative and helpful content, people will begin to see you as a trusted authority figure.
People are always looking for valuable information, so they will be more likely to follow you and engage with your content if you can provide it.
8. Look for Opportunities for Collaboration
One of the best ways to grow your social media following is by collaborating with other businesses and influencers in your industry. For example, you could host a Twitter chat, run a contest, or guest blog for another website.
Not only will this help you reach a larger audience, but it will also help you build relationships with other businesses and influencers. These relationships can be extremely valuable down the road.
9. Respond to comments and questions
Make sure you regularly check your social media pages for comments and questions from your audience. If someone takes the time to reach out to you, they deserve a timely response.
Neglecting to respond to comments and questions can damage your reputation and make people less likely to do business with you.
10. Be Human
Last but not least, remember to be human. Social media is all about building relationships, so don’t be afraid to show some personality.
People want to do business with other people, not faceless corporations. So inject some of your own personality into your social media posts and let your audience get to know the real you.
