Businesses of all sizes and across all industries have a presence on social media, but it’s not enough to simply ‘be on Twitter’, ‘set up a Facebook page’ or ‘get an Instagram account’, you need to pick your platforms wisely and be creative to make the most of the unique marketing opportunities on offer.
How to make the most of social media marketing
It’s also often worth employing the services of a social media marketing agency, particularly when you’re looking to dip a toe into the world of paid social media marketing. But before you do, it’s worth considering the following tips to help your business get more out of social media marketing.
- Know your audience
Different social media platforms appeal to different demographics, so one of the first things you need to do is define your market and use this knowledge to inform your choice of social network. Any customer data you have will also be key to defining how you shape your posts and even when you send them.
Once you know your core audience, you need to look at your social media channels more like search engines, where people not only go to look for information on your business or to reach your customer service team, but also to research topics related to your industry. You can use social listening software like Onclusive to monitor keyword, brand and topic monitoring searches by your customers – so tailor your output to meet the needs of customers in all stages of the sales funnel.
- Choose quality over quantity
There’s no point having a presence on every single platform – you may not have time to keep each of them updated and, even if you do, your message might not cut through on all of them. So choose a few key platforms based on what’s most popular among your customer demographic and create quality posts on each of these. You can check how strong your relationship with your customers is by calculating engagement rate. A good result would be anything from 1% to 5%. However, the more followers you have the harder it is to achieve that rate.
- Treat each social network differently.
It’s often tempting to duplicate your posts across multiple platforms, particularly if you’re short on time, but it’s important to remember that each social channel has different strengths and different demographics.
That’s why it’s important to tailor your posts to the specific network and the users that follow you on each – even if you’re posting about the same subject, create posts that cater to both the platform and its members.
- Create a community
Social media isn’t a one-way street, so it’s important that you don’t just use it to shout your message loud and proud. People often turn to social media as a first touchpoint when trying to contact businesses directly, whether that’s to heap praise or make a complaint, and it’s important that you respond to both in a timely manner.
Making sure you treat social as a two-way conversation is a good way to help increase engagement, followers and clicks.
- Mix up your content
Although it might be tempting to set up every post with a sales message and link each one back to your website’s main conversion page, customers will quickly switch off if this is the sum total of your content – no one goes on social media to simply be sold stuff.
So mix up your content with other information about your business or industry that customers might find interesting, link to blogs or news stories from other sites (always fact check anything before you post it) and add images or videos to get the attention of your audience – remember, you need to grab their attention while they scroll.
- Have a human voice
No-one likes a faceless corporation with zero personality, but not having a human voice is an easy trap to fall into in the world of social media marketing. Consumers, and social media users in particular, want to get to know your business on a personal level – transparency is important.
It’s a tough balancing act – you also don’t want to come across as a cringeworthy corporate account trying hard to be down with the kids – but don’t be afraid to test and review until you’re hitting the right notes. And bear in mind that simply having a more human presence on social media has become an expectation among many followers.
Social media is so easy to get wrong, and your attempts at cracking your target market might fall flat at times, but the key to success is to learn from your mistakes and not be afraid to try something new. And once you get the balance right, a whole new world of opportunity will open right up.
