Social media has grown exponentially over the last decade. A decade ago, no one would have imagined that in 2017, there would be billions of people operating social media accounts globally. It became clear a long time ago that businesses could not ignore social media.
Your Social Media Success Roadmap: 8 Social Media Tips You Need to Know
But, many businesses are yet to fully harness the power of social media. Do you want to become a social media rockstar? In this article, I discuss ten ways to improve your social media marketing.
1) Know your audience
You have to define your audience. Your audience is not going to be the whole world. You need to define a specific audience that you’ll speak to. Identify their problems, needs, and goals. Next, ask yourself the following questions:
- Where does your audience spend their free time?
- What do they do for a living?
- Where do they work or are they self-employed?
- What is their education level?
- Do they have kids?
- What are their interests?
- Where do they vacation?
There are gazillion questions you can ask about your audience to help you understand them better and tap into a specific empathy. The more you know about your audience, the more you can provide real solutions. This is the first step to successful social media marketing.
2) Find your audience
Don’t just jump on to social media and start blasting out content. That’s the wrong way to do it. Don’t get onto every single social media platform just for the sake of it. Remember, your time, energy and budgets are limited and you can’t afford to be on every social media network out there. You have to be effective and use your time, energy, and resources in the right place. Figure out where your audience is and focus on that social network as a start.
3) Provide value
People on social media are looking for solutions to their problems and information that is of value. This is what you need to provide. You need to provide content that grabs their attention. Next, you need to make sure you don’t sound like you are selling. When you are providing value, you want to come across as being helpful. Avoid trying to sell on social media in order to build trust. This adds people into your sales funnel organically.
4) Strategize and plan
What’s your online marketing plan for this week, next week, next month and so forth? You need a social media calendar that well thought out and that guides your social media plan for the year. Your plan should take into account the different seasons and events that happen during the year. By having a plan, you can keep track of what’s working for you and what isn’t as well as hold yourself accountable. How you maintain this plan is entirely up to you. Just make sure you have something written down.
5) Consistency
This is the oldest secret of success. Overnight success is rare unless you win the lottery. You have to be consistent day after day with your strategy and plan. Don’t give up after a while, keep doing the right thing over and over again and eventually, you will find success.
6) Engage
One of biggest problems for social media marketers is improving engagement online. Consistency is one way to improve engagement. Another way to increase engagement is to participate in conversations that are already taking place at social media sites. Also, use a real human face on your profiles instead of avatars. People like to know that they are dealing with real human beings.
7) Vary content
You want to find the sweet spot with your content, maximize engagement and vary your content delivery. Variety is the spice of life goes an old saying. Have a lot of different content that’s wide enough but still within the same scope of your brand. Your content should also be delivered in form: writing, images and video and for different types of devices as well.
8) Review
Go through your analytics at least every week and get to know how many visitors came to your website from your social media sites. Which pages did they visit and how long did they stay? How many people downloaded your lead magnets …your giveaways as a percentage of visitors? Which social media posts specifically drove the most likes and comments? The answers to these questions and more will help you tweak your plan every week so that you get the right mix.
Conclusion
There is a lot more that can be said about social media marketing but these eight tips will help you build a brand from scratch into a social media rockstar. Once you get the hang of the basics, it is also a good idea to invest in social media management tools.
