Posted by Social networking sites have become an inseparable part of our lives. It helps us connect with our social circle and far-off corners of the world just by tapping our screens.
Do you know on average, an internet user spends 145 minutes daily on social networking sites?
Isn’t it a great opportunity to join this tremendous platform and fetch customers for growing your business and increasing your profits?
If yes, then keep reading to discover some effective social media marketing tips that will help you boost your online presence.
1. Jot Down Your Goals
The first step to build your social media marketing strategy is to build a solid plan of what you want to achieve by making a presence on a social media website.
The majority of the businesses dive into creating social media profiles on every platform, without knowing what they want to achieve.
If you do not know what you want, how are you supposed to build your strategy?
Moreover, failure to have precise goals and objectives will make it difficult for you to measure your performance and activity.
Social media marketing is an integral part of digital marketing campaigning.
Therefore, before you begin creating your profiles on every social media platform that you come across, sit with your team, and write down your objectives.
Keeping your objectives in your head isn’t going to help you much. How would your team know what you expect from being on social media? Therefore, it is a better idea to bring your thoughts in proper words that can be communicated to everyone.
Make sure your goals are realistic and humanly possible. For instance, aiming to get 1 million organic followers in a month is not a realistic approach.
You don’t have to set a lifetime goal, no. You can even set weekly or monthly goals, for example:
- Increase engagement of your followers
- Host a contest
- Growing followers list to 10k in a month
- Post more infographics than your competitors
2. Understand Your Audience
What is your ultimate motive for digital marketing? To increase traffic on your website and sales, right?
All your marketing efforts will go in complete vain if you do not understand your potential buyers and design strategies to target them.
Social media websites have billions of active users, how do you know which group of people would be interested in your brand? To answer this question, you must research before you jump cluelessly into the world of social media.
You need to understand the demographics and psychographic of your audience:
a) Demographics
Demographics is the quantitative and qualitative data of the group of people. It deals with age, gender, educational level, profession, etc.
Every business has an ideal buyer profile. To find out where your ideal buyers are, you need to collect demographics. For starters, you can research on which social media platform you will find your ideal buyers.
For instance, if you have a product for teenagers or youngsters, then Twitter is not the place to market your brand. Teenagers and youngsters use TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat the most. Similarly, you will never promote your goods for senior citizens on TikTok.
b) Psychographics
Psychographics helps you to understand your customer from his inside, for instance, his feelings, opinions, beliefs, etc.
Without understanding the feelings of your audience, you will fail to craft a precise marketing strategy to capture their attention.
Fetching psychographics is not easy as demographics. To learn more about your ideal buyers and their online behaviour, you have to join different communities, forums, and groups. Take part in the conversation, observe their comments and reactions to the group posts and debates, etc.
This will help you to understand what type of content your potential audience likes.
3. Create Engaging Content
Before we begin to discuss it, let me ask you a question, ‘Why do you think people log on to social media sites?’
People love to connect with their social circle and view some interesting content. Do you think people would love to see your content if it has nothing unique or interesting?
Publishing posts that lack creativity will be overlooked in the rich newsfeed of your audience. To make the user stop and view your content, you have to upload carefully planned posts.
Instead of writing long boring text, use videos, images, GIPHY, infographics, to catch the attention of your audience. Use a catchy caption, invite your followers to share their feedback under a post, stir up a conversation, etc.
Do not limit creating and posting content for your feed only. Make optimum use of other features, such as stories and live videos, etc.
Also, try to be consistent in posting your content. If you take long breaks after posting once in a blue moon, then get ready for people to unfollow you.
4. Craft A Successful Social Media Contest
A social media contest is a perfect way to boost your online presence. Hosting contests and giveaways are some of the most important social media marketing tips to achieve your goals.
Contests increase your visibility, followers, and rate of engagement under your posts.
The secret of a successful social media contest is to offer something valuable to your audience. If the prize that you have announced is valuable to them, then they will make the effort of following all the rules. However, if the prize is not valuable then do not expect your followers to engage under your post, or invite their friends to follow your page.
For instance, Brand A announces lipstick as a prize, and on the other hand, Brand B announces giving the latest iPhone. Which one of the two you think is going to be successful in getting more followers?
Furthermore, do not complicate the rules. Keep simple rules. If you ask the followers to like 20–30 accounts, comment on 50 pictures, share 15 posts on their feed or stories, etc. it will be a big turnoff for them to participate in a giveaway or contest.
5. Focus On Graphical Content
Do you know the attention span of an average human being on a website? No?
Well, let us tell you…the average attention span of a person on a website is…8 seconds.
That’s right! 8 seconds is all you have to keep your user interested in your content, or else he’ll scroll his screen.
Do you think textual content is enough to catch the attention of your user and keep him hooked on your content?
This means you need more than text. Social media is nothing without graphical content.
Use high-resolution images to appeal to the visual senses of your followers. Don’t rely on images captured from your phone. Hire a professional product photographer to take aesthetic pictures of your product in proper lighting and background.
You can also use videos to develop the interest of your followers. There are many video-making tools available in the market. You can easily create and edit engaging videos for your social media profiles.
6. Paid Ads
There is no harm in spending a little to drive organic followers to your social media page, right?
Thanks to social media ads that allow you to target your potential customers and lure them to follow your page.
Social media ads are not as expensive as you think. You can set your budget and bids. These ads will reach the right people at the right time.
Furthermore, these ads help you to retarget the people who had previously shown interest in your brand or products. Isn’t it amazing?
7. Engage With Your Audience
If you wish to increase your online presence and followers list, then make sure you respond to your customers on social media platforms.
If they comment under your posts and provide their valuable feedback, make sure to respond to the customer feedback politely, and don’t forget to thank them.
Similarly, if you have some difficult customers who love to bash you under your posts, stay cool and reply to them politely and offer to help them. Remember, people notice how you respond to negative comments. The best practice is to delete such comments if you do not wish to respond to them. However, if you do respond, then do it with courtesy and professionalism.
Also, if your followers reach out to you for their queries by messaging you directly, do not ignore them. It frustrates them. Solve their queries and show them that your customer care service is remarkable.
By being available for your audience, you will grow in no time.
8. Automate Your Social Media
Imagine you have to post a mother’s day picture along with a caption on 5 different social media platforms, exactly at 10 am. Do you think you’ll be able to post at 5 different places at the same time?
Maybe yes, if you have more than 1 or 2 laptops. But, small-scale businesses cannot afford such a luxury, can they?
Work smart and use social media automation tools. It helps you to schedule the posts for different dates and times, and you don’t have to worry about forgetting to post, or posting late.
By automating your social media profiles, you’ll be able to focus more on creating content rather than publishing it.
Pulling The Plug!
Marketing your brand on social media is sure a lot of work, but isn’t it worth it all? You get to reap immense benefits from these platforms.
It is vital for all businesses, irrespective of their size, nature, and scope, to boost their online presence on social networking sites.
Shine through the crowd by implementing the above-mentioned social media marketing tips and amp up your business.
With Crowdfire, you can find curated content, schedule your posts, engage with your audience, deep-dive into analytics and create custom reports. Now introducing Social listening. Try it for free.