There is no formula when it comes to succeeding at social media marketing. Everyone has their own social media strategy that works. If you are struggling to come up with your own, consider these social media strategy ideas. They will give you the push you need to come up with a winning one for your business.
1. Know Your Consumer
How well do you know your consumers? Do you have a profile of your ideal customer?
You should know:
• Age range
• Hobbies
• Lifestyles
• Careers
• Income range
If you know all this information about your consumers, you are ahead of the game. If you do not, it is time to do some consumer research.
You can do this with surveys, and by listening to them on social media. Paying attention to the posts they engage with is one of the best ways to learn a lot about your consumers.
2. Spy on Competitors
You can find out a lot about what you should and shouldn’t do by checking in on what your competitors are doing. Pay attention to their posts, the times they publish, and who is engaging with their posts. The more you spy, the more you learn what works and what does not.
3. Create Engaging Content
People use the Internet for information and entertainment. On social media, they usually look for more entertainment than information. You need to publish both to cater to your consumers. Use the information you’ve gathered from your consumer and competitor research to create content that really grabs your social media followers.
4. Don’t Give Up
It may take a few attempts before you hone in on what works best with your followers. It’s worth the work because when you find out what works, you are on your way to doubling and tripling your followers, website traffic, and revenue.
Social media success has lot to do with what you put into it. The more you put in, the more you get out of it.
5. Design Unique Images
The reason Pinterest and Instagram are so successful is because people love to publish and share images.
The more attractive images are, the more people will pay attention to them. Play around with a few different types of design to find out what really gets people’s attention.
6. Don’t Be Afraid of Video
Videos are hot on social media right now. People love short videos because they are easy to digest, and provide a few laughs or valuable insights. If you are not a fan of being in front of the camera, hire some actors or create design based videos where your text and images capture prospects attention.
You probably seen the recipe videos on Facebook where it shows hands creating different foods. All you see is what is being poured into a bowl and somewhere on the video it shows how much is being put into it.
People love these videos and sharing them to save the recipes on their timeline. If you can come up with the same idea for your business, think of all the people who will see it when it goes viral. Just remember, it has to be useful and entertaining.
7. Engage with Others
Just posting on social networks isn’t going to help you. You must get out there and meet people. You can do this simply by commenting on other people’s posts. You can reply to your followers’ engagement by thanking them for the comment or share.
You can also reach out to people who are not following you to offer help. The idea of social media services is to be social – always remember that and implement it.
The success of your business has more to do with the time and energy you put into building relationships, and not solely the content you create. The content is the icing on top that furthers engagement.
8. Use Social Media Analytical Tools
You need to track your efforts. You never know if your social media strategy is working if you don’t see any results. Analytical tools are perfect for that because you can log in and see exactly how many followers you’ve gained, how much engagement you’ve received, and more.
Facebook and Twitter have good analytics, but you want to use third party tools to dig deeper into how well you’ve been doing.
9. Track Progress
Once you have the analytical tools needed, track your progress. Some of the tools you’ll use will allow you to do this, but you may always want to have your own using spreadsheets.
It all depends on what works best for you. What matters is that you have your goals identified and you have objectives to help you achieve the goals. You can then see how your efforts are helping you get what you really want from social media.
10. Hire a Team to Help
Social media can be a full time job if you do it right. You may want to consider hiring a team of social media company to help you implement your strategy. This will give you enough time to grow your business or deal with the influx of customers that will eventually come from better marketing online.
11. Promote Social Media Offline
You cannot go far these days without seeing businesses advertising their presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. However, just because you are marketing online doesn’t mean you need to stop there.
Bringing your social media presence offline will help you bring your customers closer to you. Even though your customers may not be able to connect with you every day in your office, they can online.
This makes them happy and feel more secure about doing business with you again. It also helps them easily recommend your business to their friends, family, and acquaintances online when they can link to your business on social media.
