Social Media Marketing is becoming a profitable marketing strategy to reach billions of people worldwide. It is one of the most effective strategy to grow your business’ online presence, generate leads and engagement, reach potential clients and boost sales or income. Across the globe, Facebook is number 1 in rank with more than 2.2 billion active users, followed by Youtube with a huge margin of 1.9 billion and Instagram with 1 billion. Having this data, most of the advertisement and campaigns nowadays are done using social media marketing. With the right campaign, and right content, your business could go far more than the traditional marketing plan.
Why is Social Media Marketing Important?
It’s a trend– A lot of people spend most of their time in social media. According to survey, average person nearly spends 116 minutes (nearly 2 hours) on social media everyday but still increases as platform develops even further.
Information travels very fast- updates on social media is faster than mainstream media. With just one post on Youtube or Facebook, it can go viral and reaches millions of people around the globe with just an hour or so.
Fast ROI- Did you know that 70% of the business-costumers marketers have acquired costumers on Facebook? With the right social media campaign and strategy, Social media media can increase your your brand presence which influence potential costumers to avail your product or services.
Social Media Marketing Top Tips
Whether you have just been active or just new to social media marketing and haven’t had much success in your social media platforms, here are some tips that could take your social media sites to next level:
1. Create a Plan on What to Post for a Marketing Plan
” If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Cliche as it may seem but the best way to get your social media sites to skyrocket is to create strategic content which appeal to the audience. Planning ahead helps you work effectively, creatively and efficiently. You will also save your time rather than staring blankly on your screen about what to post on your social media sites.
Part of marketing plan in social media is knowing what to post on your social media accounts. Every piece of content that you post on social media should be substantial and carefully-thought. If you are just posting for the sake posting something, then you are doing it all wrong. Here is an example of a content plan. Below is an example of a social media content plan.
2. Post Consistently
Most common question in social media marketing is how often do you post on your social media sites. Some would say 2 times a day on Facebook, others would say post between 1PM-4PM. This is a good strategy for some but not so true for others. Posting on social media vary from one business to another. It depends on your social media metrics. You need to always consult the data in your insight to guide you what and when is the most effective time to post or make marketing campaigns.
In terms of posting, aim for consistency rather than frequency. Frequency refers to how often you have to post on your social media while consistency means posting based on the strategy you’ve laid out. It’s is not like posting a flurry of posts all at once and then followed by a long days of silence but posting based on what have you created for your content plan.
3. Respond to Comments or Feedback
When you get comments or feedback, converse with your audiences. This is an opportunity to showcase your business and provide excellent customer service. Responding to comments or feedback provides, personalized human experience which allows you to connect to your audience or costumers. Aside from that, it also generates engagement which is necessary to grow your audience in any social media networking sites. The more people engage to your content, the more likely social media algorithms are to recommend your account.
4. Create Viral Content - A form of Strategic Marketing
As much as possible, create a viral content that is compelling and other people cant help but share it across social media sites. It can be a form of video, promotional advertisement marketing, picture, etc. But the challenge is, only few articles or content which have gone really viral. To create a viral content, you can refer to this article here.
5. Grow your Social Media Presence
Growing your social media presence can be very challenging at first; not to mention that people will look into the number of likes or followers before they get to have business with you. Like most other stable brands, it is the sole desire of every business to get their brand be known in the market. Here are some tips to grow your business presence.
Provide Quality Content- The more you plan, the stronger the quality of your content can be. An engaging content are most likely to get shared and drive traffic to your sites.
Know specifically your target market– In marketing, you are not just simply targeting everyone and expect them to really get interested with what you are offering. You need to identify who your target market is. Your content after all depends on your audience.
Have social media give-away– Who wouldn’t want freebies? This strategy would always bring in more likes, comments and shares and drive traffic to sites easily.
Engage in Different groups- Find a group that is related to your niche and start engaging with them. Who knows, you will get to find a client who wants your service or products.
Create strong and professional-looking profiles and pages– This requires indicating branded cover photos and profile photos to your pages or sites. Make sure to fill out the necessary information and description box which the social media sites have asked from you. Images should be professional looking since it is a business page and you want to catch the attention of your audience.
Share useful tips– Don’t just simply flood posts about what you are selling, you can also share useful tips to create engagement. You can make it appealing through infographics, videos, or blog articles.
Hosts Social Media Events– You can host an event like #SaturdayLive where they can engage with you personally and can ask questions related to their field.
6. Invest on Advertisement for Marketing and Campaigns
If you want to accelerate your social media marketing efforts and have budget for it, doing paid advertisements might be worth a try. Whether it is boosting a post or promoting something, social media advertising allow your business to grow faster than just organic visibility. What is good about paid advertisement is you can really get to the right audience that you want to market be it in their interest, demographics and gender and paid advertising can get your business to skyrocket if managed properly.
7. Measure and Analyze Data Marketing
Track and analyze your social media metrics in a weekly or a monthly basis so you can identify which strategy is effective or not and can make changes if necessary. Study shows that 40% of businesses don’t track their social media metrics so most of them are just circling around campaigns and advertisement without knowing which works best or whether they have achieved their goal or not.
Example for Facebook Insights:
Page Likes- Page likes are the number of people who like your page. Track the number of likes you had this week or month compared to the previous ones.
Post Reach– Total Reach is the number of unique people who have seen any content associated with your Page, including ads, during the last seven days. Post Reach shows the number of unique people who have seen your Page posts. Compare it to the previous week and see if its higher than the previous one.
Engagement– People Engaged is the number of unique people who have clicked, Liked, commented on or shared your posts during the last seven days.