More than 60% of small businesses invest in social media marketing. But, not all of them are able to successfully reap the much-raved benefits of it. There could be many reasons, ranging from a lack of planning to not knowing which strategies to implement to failing to measure progress.
Social media is an ever-evolving field, which is becoming competitive and complex with every passing day. You need to keep your eyes on the emerging trends and best practices, so you can apply them to your business.
If your social media marketing efforts are stuck in a rut, now is the perfect time to fine-tune your strategy for the year ahead. Whether you want to begin your social media marketing from scratch or just want to refine your existing strategy, here are some such techniques that can be beneficial for your business.
- Know your focus group
Not everyone is your potential customer. Don’t waste time and money to catch them all. Rather point them towards those who are most likely to engage with your brand and convert. Who are they? Learn about your audience to find out their needs, wants, and desires. Analyse demographics, carry out surveys, interact on forums your target audience uses, be responsive to comments on your social media IDs, and use all the feedback available. Once you know them, you will know how to approach them too.
- Diversify content according to platforms
While an image works better for Instagram, a catchy short sentence is best to tweet on Twitter, and a blended post would definitely work better on Facebook. However, the superiority of visual content is unmistakable. Nonetheless, customise your content according to the platforms since they all have their own dedicated audience. Also, all platforms have different algorithms to filter results, so schedule post timings.
- Paid strategies should be informed by organic traffic
Try to work out a data-driven approach to social advertising. Find out which organic social media traffic is coming to your site. Treat that as a focus group where paid ads can garner further conversion boost. For instance, a blog post might attract more traffic from Twitter, so that’s where you should run ads.
- Going live makes social sense
Live videos are an effective technique to market announcements and product information. In fact, a look at the inner workings of the brand can boost its relatable image among consumers. Keep the logistics perfect, promote the live sessions, interact with your audience and you can win the social media race.
- Don’t overdo the hashtags
Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags but focusing on too many of them will only dilute your content’s impact. Restrict your hashtags to relevance and brand uniqueness, and don’t exceed more than 13 of them. Remember to be social in social media platforms and don’t treat it as an outright marketplace. Avoid excessive promotion, and balance your information with entertaining bits.
- Engagement will win you brownie points.
A successful business or brand doesn’t just promote on social media, it also engages and interacts with their audience base. When a brand responds to mentions of their business, they are essentially demonstrating their priority of customer care. This focus on social networks and target audience can dictate an efficient use of resources.
- Measure and adapt.
Tracking the results of your social media campaigns lets you measure your success, and the components of it. It is important that you find out what is working and where. This will further help you to refine your strategies and you will know which area needs more effort and what can be further improved. And then adapt, make as many drastic changes as required but learn to conform to what the audience wants.
There are plenty of different elements to build a successful and modern social media presence. Set actionable goals that make sense to your business purposes, and use the social media marketing techniques above to stay ahead of the curve.
Granted, it is hard work. But, social media and Facebook marketing works and the benefits are too big to ignore. If you need more inspiration to define your strategies for 2021, reach out to us.