Social media marketing has become a cornerstone of digital marketing strategy. Why is social media so intriguing? Well, it appeals to us in a lot of different ways; it essentially has something for everyone. Among other aspects, social media satisfies a current cultural need for instant gratification. What we want, we want now. While many may consider this a downside to our internet engulfed society, it’s a good tool for content marketers who want to broaden their brand’s reach with social media marketing.
For those interested more in building meaningful relationships, social media enables us to create a sense of community around issues that people care about. You don’t even need to leave your house to share your ideas and opinions with many other like-minded individuals. Social media has become ubiquitous; it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. So let’s get started with some tips that will help you market yourself on social media more effectively.
1. How to Keep Branding Consistent
How are you telling your story? In order to reap the benefits of social media marketing, you need to know some of the fundamentals of good social media branding.
Social media relies heavily on visual content.Videos, info graphics, and enticing graphic design all attract people to your posts; plus, this type of content is the most frequently shared. So while you’re creating awesome written content with strong SEO, content that helps you build out your brand as a trusted industry authority, you need to also incorporate a variety of visual content to keep your audience interested.
There are a lot of benefits to social media marketing as a tool for keeping your brand voice consistent. It’s an excellent platform for frequent, but not annoying, content that showcases your brand’s unique identity, making your business more relatable to a wider audience. Frequent posting of fresh content helps your business stand out in a sea of competitors, and it keeps your business at the top of your consumer’s minds.
Social media marketing also increases audience engage, which increases brand loyalty. Basically, the more people who like, comment on, and share your social media content, the more likely your brand is to have good customer retention. They trust you, so they keep coming back for more.
2. How to Time Your Posts
If you have yet to notice, there are certain days of the week and certain hours of the day that your content is more likely to get engagement. Looking at when your competitors get the most social media engagement is an efficient method of improving your own social media strategy. But how do you actually figure out the best times to post to social media?
Don’t look for a specific time, look for time frames. Knowing your audience, and knowing when they’re mostly to be surfing their social media accounts, helps you understand when and why you should post specific types of content on specific social media platforms. For example, you’re likely going to want to post to Facebook at different times than you post to Twitter.
Furthermore, there are some platforms that you should be posting to more frequently than others. You don’t want to post five blog posts a day; that bombards your audience. However, a few well-timed daily posts to Instagram and Twitter totally make sense. Remember to keep all of your posts short though. People aren’t like to read status updates that are more than 50 words, and twitter only allows 140 characters.
3. How to Engage Your Audience
How do you connect with your audience? First, you have to identify who your audience is. Once you figure that out, direct you social media marketing strategy toward speaking to one person, the person who embodies the ideal qualities of your target customer. This strategy will help you to build an emotionally connection to your audience, it personalizes your content while still appealing to a wide audience.
What emotions should you appeal to?Generally speaking, humans are pretty social creatures, looking for meaningful connections. We want to relate to each other. Use humor; make your audience laugh. Think how many shares funny memes get, for instance. Utilize empathy. Working in your local community, supporting non-profits, and other such endeavors transforms your business from some faceless entity to a group of ordinary people who want to make the world a better place. This, again, makes your business relate-able. Plus, social media loves good human interest stories.
You can also engage people through valuable discussion. Write about an issue that is relevant to your industry, then ask questions that will facilitate dialogue between you and your audience. People love to give their own opinions on pretty much everything, so give them an opportunity to share their thoughts with you.
4. Evaluate What Your Competitors Are Doing
When considering your own social media marketing strategy, it’s wise to research what your competitors are doing. What’s getting good results, and what’s failing? This can help you refine your own strategy, and get you to the top in search engine rankings. This takes some time and effort, but it ultimately yields great results for boosting your own social media presence. You need to invest a good bit of time checking out competitors’ profiles, reading their content, and reviewing how and when their audiences respond.
You should also evaluate which social media platforms are working the best in your industry.
Maybe YouTube and Instagram are more effective in your industry because people are responding positively and more frequently to visual content. Or maybe your industry is having more success by building thought leadership and brand authority using Facebook and LinkedIn. Knowing where to focus your efforts and knowing where you would just be wasting time and energy are both really important to developing an effective social media strategy.
It’s also worthwhile to spend some time checking out what really successful brands that aren’t in your industry are doing. What seems to be working the best for the most popular brands right now? And what has caused previously popular brands to fall behind? Researching the non-competitors can give you some valuable insights into some techniques that might work for your business too.
To recap, social media marketing is an asset in which you should definitely invest. It helps you build and maintain your brand’s identity, and it’s an easy method of engaging your customers. It’s important to remember that bad social media marketing can actually be detrimental to your business (think bad reviews spreading like wildfire), but done right, implementing a strong and sensible social media marketing strategy can definitely be cost-effective, boosting your bottom line quite a bit. It may take some time to learn what to do and how to do it, but once you get started, it can be relatively uncomplicated to maintain.
However, if you don’t have the time and need a trusting partner to deliver a social strategy to enhance your brand, contact MicroD. We are a social media marketing company and just a phone call away.