In today’s day and age, social media plays an important role in our life. It has gradually taken over our lives and has now become an essential part of it with such a vast reach and presence social media marketing is the new nom in marketing
In order to fully utilize social media marketing by following a few tips can increase your presence in the market. A well-executed social media strategy can boost the product or company.
The following list shows top 9 social media marketing strategies a business shirt implement to increase their overall reach and gain more benefits
1- Set Clear Goals
The most important factor in marketing is to know what you plan to achieve from it. Well defined goals help in planning the marketing strategy; accordingly, it’s also so important that those goals achievable
The SMART goal strategy is beneficial to achieve a successful social marketing
S – Specific: Meaning the goals should be specific, and the desired results must be known.
M – Measurable: Meaning what level of success has been achieved, most likely in terms of percentage
A – Attainable: Meaning no far stretched goals are kept in mind, which can lead to disappointment and frustration if not achieved. In short, the goals must be practical.
R – Relevant: Meaning the defined strategy is making an impact on the final goal or not.
T – Timely: Meaning that time is of the essence, and the goals need to follow specific and strict timelines for successful monitoring.
2- Identifying the Audience
Effective marketing is only possible when the audience it’s being targeted at is clear. Only when the target audience is in sight, the marketing strategy begins. Setting the marketing strategy and goals to achieve it becomes much easier. The following techniques can help Identifying the target audience: learning the demographics, by doing surveys and collecting feedback through various tools. Various forums and blogs are also helpful in identifying the audience.
3- Choosing the Right Platform
The biggest mistake a company or individuals can do is to market it on multiple social media channels, which leads to exhausting of resources and efforts. Instead of focusing on multiple forums, choose a social media site by seeing on which platform the target audience is mostly on and then putting all your effort into it. The platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or any other so now market your product or service where your majority of the audience is present.
One smart move is to identify what social media platform the main competitor. It will help in identifying the platform much quicker, and with extensive research, one could get an insight into their audiences as the competitor would already be engaging them.
A few social media sites and their audiences are as follows:
LinkedIn: it’s the world’s biggest careers network, with nearly 500 million users.
Facebook: it’s the most common and popular social media site with over 2 million users. Unlike other platforms, it has the most regular user base.
Instagram: It focuses on the visual aspect with slightly less focus on content as a result has the highest engagement level among other platforms
Snapchat: The most popular platform amongst the youth
YouTube: it’s a video sharing platform, and a good video showing your product or service can be helpful.
Pinterest: it’s a relatively new platform and goes for it if you feel the product/service is engaging, attractive, and can be an impulse buying thing.
4- Higher Well Qualified Social Media Handler And Staff
One big mistake companies make is to hire incompetent employees whose wages are less. It is really important to hire professionals for this and one who knows what they are doing. A qualified manager and staff have strategic thinking which is a must in marketing. A competent person will know how to post and engage followers. These people are the voice of your company and choosing people with excellent writing skills will help your campaign and the overall company
5- Choose Quality Over Quantity
In marketing the biggest blunder, a company can do to post content constantly on their preferred media platform. It brings down the quality, and no real benefit comes out of it. A well researched and thought out post towards your target group will reap many more benefits than just simply bringing out stuff just for the sake of it. In short, one good post per week is better than posting multiple posts in a month
6- Get On The Influencer Bandwagon
Getting an influencer to post your stuff on their pages can benefit your product by up to 50%. In this regard, thorough research is required to identify the targeted influencer based on the audience and the platform where the influencer is present.
Now, this these influencer won’t just post stuff for free, and nowadays proper contracts are signed. It all depends on how much and how popular an influencer is. An influencer who associates with the product on a personal level might do this for free, in short, it all comes down to your negotiation skills and how you can fully utilize the influencer as per your needs.
7- Run Tests to Boost Your Social Media Strategy / Engaging the Audience
Who doesn’t want something free by simply tagging their friends or answering a simple question?
Having these small contests with the users could help your brand in getting a wider reach.
The contests can be as simple as giving some giveaways of your products or service to the person who wins. The most common types are tagging someone in the post, like that particular page, sharing it with your friends and other small stuff. No rocket science is involved and fruitful gains are achieved from it. In short, the product promotes itself
8- Grow Your Audience
More the eyeballs on your post more the results. It’s the job of a social media manager and influencers to focus on increasing their followers. To do this, you want the followers to subscribe to your channel, so it keeps them updated on your future posts and ultimately leads to an increase in followers.
Paid advertising is a necessity when you are initially starting your business as you need to catch the eyeballs which see your content. When a user is browsing through a social media site, these paid ads are great in reaching out to users that otherwise could not have come into contact with your post.
9- Working with the Right Tools
Using essential tools will ensure that the are social media strategy runs smoothly. These tools are most likely automation tools which help you schedule your social media content. Every business needs a different tool based on their requirements.
Tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer can make a life of social media team much easier. A few features are the Integration of different social media platforms. The ability to plan ahead about what kind of content to post and their schedule can is an added benefit.
Conclusion
The impact of social media marketing is undeniable despite being a tedious task. Any lapse in the work will ultimately cost you, customers. The tips mentioned above can help in planning your social media strategy. You could reap the benefits of this new age marketing.