Social Media is definitely the future for the new generation. And it can be clearly seen with the increase in the count of users every day.
Especially for businesses, social media is no less than a blessing. In the past 2 decades, it has risen as one of the primary channels of marketing and doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.
Whether businesses are small or large, everyone wants to be out there on social media. However, it’s not at all a bad choice because almost 70% of the world’s population is on social media, which gives businesses a huge opportunity for growth.
With a plethora of social media platforms, where new networks are joining the game, and already existing are constantly changing their algorithms. There is no shortage of ways for marketing. But, some unwritten rules are obviously there that are worth paying attention to.
So, let’s not waste any time and explore some best practices that can enhance your brand presence and polish your social media marketing efforts.
- Don’t just limit your social media feed up to promotions
Advertising is, no doubt, a significant aspect of promoting a business. Many brands take this very seriously and flood their social media feed with promotional content.
But current trends dynamics are something different. Nowadays, people love to engage with brands that have a more diverse, informative, and well-disposed feed.
If you want an abundance of loyal customers, then the sole purpose of your social media feed should be listening to the clients, and understanding their concerns. Use that knowledge to improve your products/services, and then sales will follow naturally.
- Do share your brand story
Social media provides a good platform where you can create deeper relationships with your customers by connecting with them. For that, you need to make your social media feed a great experience for visitors.
People often tend to like a brand that has a compelling startup story apart from great products. Therefore, share more about your brand story than your product specifications. Let the visitors know,
- What inspired you to start a business?
- Welfare or a social cause your brand advocates
- How you have gained success?
And all other information that can entice them.
Also, sharing informative blogs and articles regarding your niche would be a great strategy.
- Don’t use irrelevant platforms
Many people make mistakes in choosing the right platform for promoting their business. So before proceeding further, you should first understand that not all social media platforms serve the same purpose.
For example, if you have a jewellery business, then Instagram would be the right platform for marketing as compared to LinkedIn.
Hence, to get a better outcome of your efforts, choose the appropriate sites where your targeted audience visits the most and the ones which fulfil your brand needs.
Emphasize more on quality rather than quantity. Running campaigns mindlessly will get you into trouble some or the other day. Thus, focus on running effective and successful campaigns on selected social media sites.
- Do stay active on all your social media accounts
No wonder, these days every brand registered on at least 2 to 3 social networking sites for promoting their business. However, creating an account is the easiest part, but the actual hard work comes when you need to stay active in all of them.
Most people juggle to find an answer for “ How many times to post in a day? ”
To be honest, the answer varies depends upon the industry and your brand. There is no such pre-decided number to follow when it is concerned with the posts.
But to stay active, you should always try to post at least 3-5 times a week. Practising this will help you to get in touch with your customers regularly and also keeps the content fresh for the visitors.
Thanks to technology a lot of social media management tools like Socioboard have also been there in the market using which you can easily automate most of your manual tasks.
- Don’t stick to one strategy
All social networking platforms are different in some or the other way. So, the strategies used for marketing should also be distinctive.
Apart from that, getting out of your comfort zone and experimenting with something new is always reviving. So, don’t stick to one approach for marketing on social media because that will not make people stay engaged for long.
Keep changing your marketing style and tweaking your product features as well as build new links with other communities. As this is all that makes the world hooked on social media.
- Do make a checklist
Content plays a significant role in social media marketing. It’s the only way to put your brand in front of people. Sometimes a small piece of content works like a charm but can also turn into a blunder.
Making a general checklist is the best thing to assure that even the smallest thing won’t slip out of your mind. Keep a note of all the things you want in your content so that you can quickly have a check before making it public on social media sites.
- Don’t ignore comments
People generally make all efforts to get their brand heard and liked by everyone but often miss to engage with their customers.
Social media is just like that. People expect you to be available and responsive. You will get to see a lot of comments on your posts, and you need to handle them all.
But do you have to reply to every single comment? The answer is “no”. It is a very time-consuming process and necessary too. So, respond to the ones that need your immediate attention, for example, negative reviews, questions, or complaints.
See the reviews, questions, tags, and likes as opportunities and do not ignore them.
- Do give credits, and think before editing
It’s a good practice to credit writers while using their piece that boosts your reputation on social media. This will not only make your posts look more credible but also help you to make new connections.
Also, tag the people on your posts, but do ask for their permission before doing that as unwanted tagging can also negatively impact your brand, and you might end up losing some followers.
- Don’t excessively use Hashtags
No doubt, hashtags are trending and can go viral in just a few seconds. But using hashtags on social media with every word or line is not good. It may look fancy but might not serve your purpose.
Therefore, do not overstuff hashtags on your captions and use them in the right way.
- Do analyze results
Evaluating results is very important to understand whether you are moving on the right track or not. Remember, all your social media marketing strategies and efforts will go in vain if you don’t analyze their effectiveness.
Moreover, by doing this, you will also get to know what strategies are working good for your brand and what needs to be changed.
This is the easiest way to measure the success of all your social media strategies and campaigns.
Conclusion
There can be countless ways of marketing and implementing strategies on social media. But like any other thing in the world, there is also a learning curve in social media marketing.
When done correctly, social media marketing can bring immense growth to your business, and the aforementioned tips will surely help you in doing that.
This is a guest post by Sumit Ghosh. Renowned performance marketer, user acquisition expert, and a product fanatic from Bangalore. He is a prominent speaker in masterminds and events in the performance marketing space. Sumit is the Founder of Socioboard, which owns products like Poweradspy, Socinator, Gramboard, DominatorHouse, and mobile apps in social media automation space which have millions of users.
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