5 Essential Social Media Marketing Tips
Starting a new business is exciting. It’s also challenging and can cause a lot of headaches. If you do not follow a well-structured business plan, then there’s a chance that your efforts may go to waste. When it comes to social media marketing, many businesses are still failing to harness the potential that social media platforms can provide. So, to help expedite your efforts, here are 5 essential tips you can use to boost your social media marketing.
1. Hang Out Where Your Audience Hangs Out
The most important aspect of your social media marketing campaign might be where you promote your brand and content. There are different social media networks that you can utilize to promote your business, but not all of them are appropriate for your specific business.
For example, Facebook recently surpassed 2 billion users but for certain businesses, promoting on a platform with fewer users, such as LinkedIn, might be more effective. Start by analyzing your own business to identify your target market. Ask yourself who you are targeting with your products or services. Once you have identified who your target audience is, you need to find on which social networks they are most active, then target those particular social networks.
2. Don’t Use Them All
Businesses often tend to target as many social networks as possible when they are getting started. Unfortunately, this also means they will have to work much harder to keep their social accounts active. That’s time and effort that could have been used on more important tasks. Instead, start by targeting a single social media channel. This reduces the time needed to maintain your social media profiles and ensures that you are able to devote most of your time mastering one particular social network before moving on to the next.
3. Perfect Your Profile
Branding is essential if you wish to build a successful business that is easily recognized by both existing customers and new prospects. For this reason, ensure that every site your business has a presence on is set up for maximizing brand awareness. The same goes for your social media profiles. After creating a profile for your business on appropriate social media networks, then you should spend some time to officially brand your social profiles with the logo, colors and information about your particular business.
Kissmetrics recommends paying close attention to a page’s name, as well as the profile picture used. Always remember to fill out the description or bio section, and include a link back to your website.
4. Create Weekly Schedules
Even though social media networks were once meant to help people stay connected with their friends, family, and other acquaintances, these platforms are now much more powerful than ever before for businesses as well. By utilizing social media platforms for your business, you can easily stay in touch with your customers and build trust.
Unfortunately, it is not always possible to spend several hours every day creating new posts. Instead, set aside time one day of each week to schedule the entire week’s posts. This will help to keep your audience engaged without the requirement of having to log on multiple times every day to post something to your company’s page or profile.
5. Utilize Social Media Marketing Tools
An excellent way to keep your business engaged on social media is to use a variety of tools to help you gain more insights into your target audience. That includes who they are, where they hang out and how engaged they are with your platforms. Many of these tools will also help you schedule and automatically post to groups that are relevant to your niche. OptinMonster recommends some of the most popular social media marketing tools available including Buffer, Hootsuite, IFTTT, and BuzzSumo.