There are 3.5 billion people active on social media on a daily basis.
The average person spends three hours per day on social media networks and messaging. 54 million social browsers use social media to research products.
There are approximately 75 trillion articles written on tips for social media marketing.
Kidding…mostly.
A great deal of the time, these tips and advice are for seasoned marketing agencies or CEOs with decades of experience looking for a refresher.
A simplified, all-you-can-read article for marketing on socials is rare.
This may lead to a new business owner becoming frustrated. They may ultimately settle on winging it because of that frustration.
Unfortunately, randomized posts aren’t going to cut it. Social media is a mighty marketing tool. But there’s a basic system you have to know how to play if you want to convert your followers into consumers.
Here’s a narrowed down, need-to-know basics of social media marketing. Here’s your thorough yet simple beginners guide!
1. Identify Your Brand’s Overall Vibe
This is a sink or swim situation. If you don’t know your brand’s identity, you’re going to sink pretty rapidly. You need to meditate on what kind of language your brand will use.
Are you a hip millennial and Gen Z brand slinging slang around in your captions? A professional and no-nonsense brand that uses informative, formal language in your captions?
Do you have a particular mission or vision in mind? Brands built around or supporting a specific cause is excellent for running both an effective social marketing campaign and generally raising awareness for that cause online.
2. Create and Embrace Your Signature Branding Style
Your brand is its own entity. The colors, visuals, and overall message will be your trademark social media look and feel. You want people to recognize your branding by your standout style and design.
Do you have an official logo design to use as your business page’s profile pictures or header banners? Does your brand have a motto or signature catchphrase? You have to work your brand’s individuality to create a signature social media aesthetic people will automatically associate with your brand.
Once you establish your style, apply it to your photo filters, hashtags, and photo captions.
3. Pre-Plan Quality Content
Prepare a folder of content you plan on posting before you officially go live with your brand’s social media presence. The folder should be a variety of content for each of your chosen platforms. You don’t want to scramble daily to create posts on the fly.
Monitor analytics and track what content has the highest engagement rates, actions taken, and overall reach. Make these popular posts your signature content.
Once you’re posting content your audience cares about, you’ll able to reel in an even larger audience. You’ll run ads that pique your target audience’s curiosity when you know what attracts them.
4. Snoop on Your Competitors to Find Worthwhile Tips for Social Media Marketing
Watch how your competition interacts with their audience. Keep an eye on what social tips and trends they’re utilizing or following.
Are their numbers higher or lower than yours? If more economical, you’ll know what content avenues you should avoid. If higher, you’ll know what forms of content are attracting the attention of consumers in your particular niche.
Hiring a service to conduct a competitor analysis for your business is also something to look into.
5. Seek out Reliable Brand Ambassadors
Contract a few brand ambassadors to increase your business’s reach. In business, you grow in numbers by expanding your numbers.
Brand ambassadors get the word out about your business and your product, or service, by literally placing it in their faces. Brand ambassadors do this by mentioning or showing it on their own social media pages. They tag your company’s page, and talk about or model your products on their stories and feeds.
Brand ambassadors will save you from having to do everything for socials on your own.
6. Team up With Micro-Influencers
10 micro-influencers are worth more than one massive influencer. Search for smaller influencers that match the personality, vibe, and age of your company’s buyers persona. The audiences of lesser-known influencers are more likely to be keeping up with their favorites’ new likes and interests.
A more modest niche market audience is more likely to click that link or give your business page a follow.
A larger influencer’s audience will just scroll past said influencer’s 10th ad post of the week.
Micro-influencers are much more affordable than their counterparts. Celebrity influencers can charge up to $75,000 for a single Instagram post. Micro-influencers will accept less than $500 for a post on average.
7. Interact and Build Relationships With Your Audience
Your business instincts may be screaming at you to sell, sell, sell, but you have to include humanity into your business.
If your goal is to move units alone, having fun marketing on socials will be noticeably absent.
Interacting with your audience will provide better insight into who your audience is, what their reactions to, and opinions on your business are. You’ll learn what pain points they’re seeking out a solution for.
Set aside time to respond to comments. Encourage a conversation in the comments of your posts. Conduct audience polls and ask for your audience’s opinions in the comments.
Brand Recognition Online
With classics like the fill-in-the-bubble assessment tests transforming into online assessment tests, a quick run to the grocery store transitioning into hiring a Postmate, the landscape of advertising has evolved from the print ad to a mishmash of options for running social media advertisements.
Every platform is a diverse set of opportunities for your business—a popular post on Facebook may be less of a hit on Twitter or LinkedIn.
To maximize your return on social media ads or boosted posts, customize your business’s approach on each separate platform. Deal with each platform in a way that matches its distinctive vibe.
Social Media Posting Checklist
As an up and coming business, with all of the platforms available to you, things can be lost in the shuffle. Keep this list on hand to track if you’ve posted your preferred social media outlet recently:
- Instagram feed
- Facebook business
- Facebook business page story
- Pinterest boards
- Snapchat
- YouTube page
- LinkedIn business page
- LinkedIn profile page
Social Media Marketing Resources and Tools
If you don’t have the time or the inclination for posting to your socials on a daily basis, tips for social media marketing will only get you so far.
Remember that there are countless downloadable tools along with services catered to aiding your business’s marketing journey. There are no excuses for not establishing your social media presence and implementing social media strategies ASAP!
Check out our other articles for more social media tips and tricks.
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