If you have a business, then you’re going to need to make use of social media. There’s no point in denying it. If you’re not doing it, then ultimately you’re not giving yourself a good enough chance to be seen online. It’s even worse if you’re in an industry where your competitors are active on social media. The chances are that you’re going to lose your competitive edge and will end up failing. That might make for grim reading, but unfortunately, that is the reality for many companies, particularly smaller businesses. That’s why we’ve curated this list of our top five social media marketing tips. You’ll be able to use these to optimise your content strategy.
Have Different Social Media Marketing On Different Platforms
You should have different smaller plans and strategies for your social media marketing. This should be reviewed and looked at based on the platform you’re using. To get a better understanding of how you’re going to target your content, you should be asking yourself a specific series of questions. If you fail to effectively answer these questions, then your content strategy is going to be similar to flying blindfolded.
- Why am I using this social media site?
- Who uses this social media site?
- What kind of post gets noticed on this platform?
- How do my posts bring value to this platform?
If you’re only just beginning with your social media marketing strategy then you should focus on making good content over making lots of content. For the majority of startups, it’s not a good idea to focus on too many social media sites at once. You’ll end up being a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. When it comes to social media marketing, this is something you really want to try and avoid. If you struggled to answer those questions then you might want to rethink your strategy. Having effective answers will help you in the long term.
Post Consistently When Using Social Media Marketing
The amount that you need to post to be competitive on social media is very dependent on the platform. Say for instance, with Linkedin, if you post multiple times per day, your latest posts won’t do as well. Then you have platforms like Twitter and Instagram, where posting multiple times per day is how you’re going to get the most out of it. A good starting point when figuring out what to do in learning more about how each social algorithm works. This will put you in a much better position to optimise your content strategy and get the most out of your posts.
You can also see that this can relate back to the context of you using a social media marketing plan. To get the most out of your social media marketing, you should keep the following in mind.
- How often you’re going to be posting to meet the content guidelines for the platform.
- What style of content are you going to be posting on the platform.
- Who are you planning to target on the platform?
You can easily find yourself slipping away from people’s minds if you’re not posting consistently. I’m following thousands of people on LinkedIn (my main platform) and the people that I regularly engage with are the ones that post consistently. The people that don’t, I generally don’t see them and that’s because LinkedIn favours those who engage with their audience.
Keep Your Eyes on The Trends
Once you have an idea of the message that you’re going to use to communicate your brand, you should then keep an eye on the trends for your preferred platforms. If you can see a strategy working for a similar business, then maybe you should consider adopting it yourself to stay competitive. This will also help you to drive further engagement and exposure to your brand. You should be careful to try and avoid strategies that don’t really align with your message and what you’re about. Don’t just copy someone because it works for them. Emulate it and make it your own if it works for your business.
There are ways for you to easily keep on top of popular content in your niche. For instance, get a group of websites that you trust in your area and put them through an RSS reader. This will give you an array of new content that is trending in your niche. The content is also more likely to be legitimate as the source material comes from a trustworthy source. If you can, you should try and use this as inspiration for your own content. Only reshare if you have something valuable to add.
Use Social Media Marketing Analytics
I’ve got one simple question for you. How are you going to know that your content is working, if you don’t measure it? You can’t, that’s the answer. You need to make sure that you’re collecting accurate and trustworthy data for your analytics. There are estimates that 40% of companies aren’t doing this effectively, which poses a serious problem. You should be thinking about which different KPIs are going to be important for your brand. The below metrics are things to keep in mind for various social media platforms.
- Facebook: Reach and Engagement.
- Twitter: Impressions, Retweets, Mentions.
- LinkedIn: Clicks, Impressions, Interactions.
- Instagram: Likes, Comments, Mentions.
When looking at these metrics, it helps to review them on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. Hopefully, you should be seeing a general upward trend in your metrics at each stage. If you’re not, it could be a sign that something needs to change in the near future.
Keep in Contact With Your Audience
People on social media really want important and meaningful interactions with brands. This means, even if you’re posting amazing content if you’re not engaging, you’re not doing all you could be. You should keep an eye out for what your audience is saying and whether you can interact with them, answer questions and offer assistance. This will make people have a better perception of your brand overall. They want to know that there is a real person in there, so don’t be afraid to jump into a conversation in your comments, even if you weren’t prompted. That will also score you serious points.
Conclusion
In closing, if you want to keep on top of your social media strategy, you need to plan. You need to understand that different content will perform differently on different platforms. Then, using this knowledge, you will get an understanding of what content you should be posting. It should also be noted that you should not attempt to jump into every platform at once. You should identify the ones that work for your business. Another key to staying competitive with social media marketing is to post consistently. If you don’t do this, you’re just going to be left behind by competitors in your industry.
You should also be aware to keep your eye out for trends on your platforms. Conforming to certain trends that fit in with the message and values of your brand can really drive engagement and exposure. To sustain success with your strategy, you need to be keeping track of your metrics. This is because you’ll be able to use them to figure out what style of content has been working. Without them, you’ll be stuck in the ocean without a sail. Finally, you should make sure to keep in touch with your audience. This is because it adds more personality and memorability to your brand in general.