Social media slowly crept into our lives, little by little. Until it was the focal point of our lives. Today, 7 in 10 Americans use social media, Businesses took notice, and social media has since revolutionized the way we do marketing.
The benefits are endless with a well-executed social media strategy.
A few benefits of a killer social media strategy:
- Increased brand awareness
- Grow a larger audience
- Connect with your audience better
- Increased website traffic
- Generate more leads
- Make more sales and money
There’s no doubt about it – social media should be a vital component of your overall marketing efforts.
Just take a look at some of these social media statistics:
- Each month, Facebook receives an estimated 4.4 billion visitors.
- Pinterest? It has over 454 million users.
- There are over 500 million active Instagram accounts every day.
It’s a large pond to go fishing in for your target audience. Not participating in social media marketing would lead to an incomplete marketing strategy.
If you’re ready to jumpstart your social media strategy, keep reading.
We’re taking a deep dive into the best cutting-edge tactics around.
1. Lay out your goals and objectives
Having a solid plan, objectives, and goals are imperative if you want to jumpstart your social media strategy.
If you don’t know what you want, then how are you supposed to get it? Besides, you can’t measure or evolve your strategies if you don’t have clear goals, to begin with. Your social media goals should align with your overall marketing efforts. Writing down your goals is paramount if you want to reach them.
According to a study conducted by Harvard Business Review, writing down your goals makes you 30% more likely to achieve them. Studies show that up until 40% of people who begin an exercise program drop out of it before they complete it.
Set your goals
When you set your goals, make them attainable and break them down into smaller action steps.
How to set attainable goals to slay your social media marketing strategy:
- Use numbers (like reaching 5,000 followers).
- Always set a deadline
- Be specific and make your goals “SMART”
- Your goals should be in line with your overall marketing strategy.
2. Research and learn about your audience
If you want to turn a profitable business, connecting and engaging with your audience must be a priority.
But, in order to do that, you first need to understand your audience – inside and out.
You should be able to identify their needs, wants, desires, and goals if you want to create a successful social media strategy for them.
How can you better understand your audience?
- Survey your audience to better understand their pain points.
- Look carefully at their demographics
- Participate in conversations on forums where your target audience hangs out.
- Comment on your own blog, and comment on others’ blogs with the same target audiences.
- Reply to all comments or questions on your social media channels
- Use user feedback tools to collect feedback from your users.
Once you know who your target audience is and understand their needs, you’re better prepared to help them. They want to deal only with businesses that care – they don’t want to deal with faceless brands.
This is a crucial step in creating any social marketing strategy.
3. Run contests to amp up your social media strategy
Creating a successful social media contest can be one of the most allureing tactics you can use. It’ll increase your online visibility, your followers, and your engagement.
There are several social content tools you can use to create an exceptional giveaway or sweepstakes.
The key to executing a successful contest is offering something of tremendous value.
Something that’ll be irresistible to your audience.
How to run a contest on social media:
- Figure out your goals (do you want more Facebook page likes? Instagram followers? How many?)
- Decide what social media channel you’ll host the contest on
- Come up with a deadline for when it’ll end and when the winner will receive their prize
- Create the contest (look at different types and choose the right one for your audience)
- Promote it with all your might!
To get mind-blowing results, aim to have your audience do some of the heavy liftings.
Set the contest up so they get extra entries for sharing the contest or completing similar tasks.
Such as: “Pin on Pinterest”, “Share on Facebook”, or “Like my Facebook page”. You can also give them a unique link to share for extra entries.
It’s genius. Your contest will run itself!
4. Craft your social media content carefully
Every piece of content you post on social media should be carefully considered. If you’re just posting for the sake of posting, you’re doing it all wrong.
Depending on the social network you’re posting on, you’ll need to learn the various purposes of each network.
Here are some examples:
- LinkedIn – A professional network that is perfect for B2B audiences. Also includes LinkedIn Pulse, a content publishing and distribution platform.
- Facebook – Almost everyone has a Facebook account. Particularly good for news/entertainment-related content. While Facebook Pages struggle to perform, Facebook Groups can be a great way of connecting with your ideal audience.
- Instagram – Perfect if your content is highly visual. Static images and short videos work incredibly well but it’s not as good at driving traffic back to your blog.
- Pinterest – Similar to Instagram, Pinterest is highly visual. Although it’s limited to static images, it can be highly effective at driving traffic back to your blog.
Once you learn about the varying networks, you can focus on which ones you think will mesh well with your business.
A major component of killing it at your social media strategy is using the right words. The way you get your message across will vary depending on the social network you’re posting content on.
But, in general, there are ways to improve your online visibility over all the platforms!
To craft captivating copy on social media:
- Use Copywriting Techniques.
- Address your audience directly.
- Use snappy, witty, or intriguing hooks to begin your social media posts.
- Try different types of content (e.g., links to blog posts, videos) to see which ones get the most engagement.
- Always write a description on every link you post. Never just put the headline of the post.
If you perfect your content, you’ll see higher engagement rates, more followers, generate more leads and sales.
5. Keep the sales tactics to a minimum
Traditional marketing has gone out the window for good reasons.
People don’t want to be sold too.
They want to establish real connections and relationships with you.
That’s the secret sauce to getting your audience or customers to trust you.
And, if they trust you – they’ll buy from you.
Consumers find it offputting when brands and businesses post too many promotions.
Alternatively, you can craft helpful content that people liketo consume. Content that leads buyers to your products or services – without being pushy or sales.
6. Take advantage of video content in your strategy
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know how potent video content has become. Especially in social media marketing.
So, if you haven’t already, it’s time to jump on that bandwagon as soon as possible!
There are loads of different ways to use video content in your social media strategy. But live videos (like Facebook Live Videos) appear to be all the rage right now.
Facebook Live allows you to connect with your audiences in an authentic way that is not possible in other content formats such as video. You can repurpose your live videos too!
People engage by asking questions. So you can show them you’re not just a brand, by interacting with them during and after your live video.
They’ll know that you’re a real business owner who cares and they’ll get more out of their experience with you. According to Facebook, if you use live videos, you’ll get 6x the interaction and engagement compared to regular posts.
However, a combination between live videos and regularly recorded videos will be your best bet for success. People will flock to you.
7. Create mind-blowing images
It probably comes as no surprise that crafting mind-blowing images for social media should be a top priority.
You don’t need to be a graphic designer to design stunning graphics for your brand. You can utilize tools to craft alluring images to wow your audience.
You could also outsource the project. Many business owners and blog writers do this, and it’s worth every penny.
You’ll need to create graphics for:
- Cover photos for each social media platform you have
- Images for your opt-in freebies (you’ll want to post these on Facebook sometimes)
- Facebook and Twitter posts
- Instagram images (You can use copyright-free stock photos or create a graphic using Canva or PicMonkey.)
- Infographics
- Pinterest graphics
The dimensions for these will change over time. So do your research when creating these to find the right sizes for social media images.
Every business’s images and graphics will differ, but you’ll want to make them cohesive with your brand and always eye-catching.
8. Connect with your audience
If you’re not building relationships with your audience and/or customers – it’ll have disastrous effects on your business.
Expanding your reach is undoubtedly at the forefront of your mind. And the best way to do this is by connecting genuinely with your audience.
This will lead to targeted people landing smack dab on your website and purchasing your services or products. Social media is one of the best tools to bring in new customers or clients.
Over 73% of people purchase items or services because of social media:
Social media is a powerful tool for any marketing strategy. And that mainly comes down to the fact that businesses can interact and engage with their customers in a way that’s impossible otherwise.
Smart ways to connect with your audience:
- Interact in Twitter Chats
- Retweet on Twitter
- Survey your audience
- Engage in Facebook groups with a similar target audience
- Always reply to comments on your Facebook business page
If you can master this, you’ll start to see the leads pouring in.
9. Utilize Pinterest to take your strategy to the next level
Pinterest is an extremely popular social network that happens to be one of the largest search engines.
A bit confusing, right? Is it a social media platform, or a search engine?
It’s a visual search engine, that’s frequently confused with a social media network.
Regardless, Pinterest can maximize your website traffic, your income, and your credibility and authority in your niche.
So if you’re not utilizing it to its full potential – you’re missing out, big-time.
To get started with Pinterest in your social media strategy:
- Create an online business account
- Enable rich pins
- Create an awe-inspiring and keyword-rich profile
- Create relevant boards (use keywords as the board’s name and in the board description)
- Start using an automation tool, like Tailwind.
- Craft pin-worthy graphics
- Begin engaging on the platform directly (as well as with automation tools -for best results)
This will help grow your Pinterest followers, and the rest will fall into place.
The traffic will begin to pour in. You’ll become a go-to authority figure. And your income will ignite.
You’ll be glad you made Pinterest a priority in your social media strategy!
10. Use the right tools
The tools you use will determine the strength of the whole social media marketing strategy.
Think of it like building a home.
If you started by putting up drywall, installing a deck, or any other type of construction project, it would collapse.
You need to lay down a steady foundation first.
The same goes for social media marketing. You need to find the right tools to ensure your strategy runs smoothly.
You’ll want to choose a social media management software to help you schedule your social posts. Consider your options carefully – every business has different requirements and needs.
Automation tools like Buffer are extremely useful, but there are other tools out there that can help you manage most of the steps of the social media marketing process.
To avoid feeling overwhelmed by too much to do, look into social media management tools to help you manage everything for yourself.
And if you’re serious about your social media strategy, you’ll want to monitor your presence on social media platforms. Social media monitoring tools and analytics tools can help you with this.
It depends on your personal preferences, budget, and whether you’re serious about creating a cutting-edge social media marketing strategy.
11. Start a Facebook group
If you’ve thought about creating a Facebook group – now is the time.
With the drastic changes occurring within social media – Facebook was hit the hardest. Facebook’s algorithm changed, making Facebook pages more challenging to grow or profit from.
Facebook is saying you’ll be seeing more from your friends, family, and groups in your newsfeeds. And less “public content”, such as from businesses or brands.
Benefits of running a Facebook group:
- A rise in website traffic
- Promote your products or services in a non-selling way
- Connect and engage with your audience in an honest way.
- Build your email list
- Grow your business and increase your income.
Adding an FB group to your online marketing plan is a quality strategy to add to your overall plan.
To launch your own Facebook group, head to the left bottom-hand side of your newsfeed, click on “Create” and select “Group”.
Once you’re ready, check out my post on promoting your Facebook page. Inside, I share sixteen strategies you can use to speed up the growth of your new online community.
12. Promotion is key to your entire strategy
You could create the best content on the web, but if no one sees it, you won’t get results.
That’s where promotion comes in.
You need to use automation tools for the social media platforms that you’ve selected for your social media strategy
You’ll also want to have a Pinterest tool, such as Tailwind.
That’ll maximize the number of people who see your content and it’ll help to skyrocket your website traffic and your income.
Creating outstanding and diverse social media content is crucial, but don’t forget about the promotion process.
This is a massive mistake that many bloggers and business owners make.
So what promotional work can you do to level up your strategy?
- Promote your content across your other social media accounts.
- Work with influencers in your field
- Post a contest on your social media pages that encourages people to follow you.
- Leverage other platforms where you can reach your audience (for example, after people subscribe to your email list, send them an email inviting them to follow you on Twitter).
- Use an SEO-driven approach when publishing content on social media. For example, use relevant hashtags on Instagram and use popular keywords in the title/description on youtube.
13. Consider the latest trends and changes
Being ahead of the curve is vital for social media marketing.
Algorithms are constantly evolving, and they’re always changing. Staying up to date on the latest trends and changes on social media.
This includes researching current statistics for the social networks you use, and social media statistics in general.
For example, here are some trends happening right now:
- Live video content is growing at an incredible rate, and it’s only going to continue to grow.
- Instagram Stories are a go-to tactic when it comes to business.
- Messaging apps are on the rise as a way for consumers to speak to businesses
- Influencer marketing is all the rage
- Virtual reality in marketing is becoming more popular.
To make the most out of your social media strategy it’s imperative to stay on top of these trends and any algorithm changes. Because we both know what was trending a year ago is likely not now!
Wrapping it up
Social media marketing can be hard work. But the benefits are difficult to ignore.
If you don’t take it seriously, you’ll undoubtedly miss out on leads, customers, online visibility, and sales.
Use these social media marketing tips to fine-tune your strategy until you’ve created a winning strategy.
Just remember, social networks are made for conversing with others. If you don’t make your audience a top priority – you won’t see results.
If you’re looking for influence, here are My Blog Poster articles that may help.