If your business is not yet on social media, chances are you could be losing out on potential customers. It is the current trend right now and you need to take advantage of it while it is still hot. According to Hubspot, 92% of marketers claimed that social media marketing was vital to their business and 80% indicated that their efforts resulted to an increase in traffic to their website. One reason why businesses are not yet in social media marketing is because they are unsure whether it is the right strategy for their business. If your business is not yet optimized for social media presence, here are 10 tips on how you can optimize your business for social media marketing.
1. Choose The Right Network
One of the reasons businesses are not yet jumping on the social media bandwagon is that they are not sure which platform to choose. This was validated by Social Media Examiner which found out that while 97% of marketers are participating in social media, 85% are not sure which social media tool to use. But how do you choose the right one? Experts recommend joining 4 of the most popular and then from there choose the platform that is right for your audience and goals. Here is a short guide on each network to help you decide:
- Facebook is ideal for businesses looking for lead generation and relationship building.
- LinkedIn is for building trust, authority, and audience engagement
- Twitter is perfect for businesses targeting clients who are below 50 and requiring information such as breaking news, announcements, and trending topics
- Pinterest is great if you are in the sales businesses because its users will be looking to purchase items
- Snapchat is a great platform for offering promotions, personalized content, exclusive access, and building relationships with influencers.
2. Set Goals
Social media marketing can help you achieve a lot of your business goals like customer service, customer engagement, lead generation, driving sales, increasing web traffic, to name a few. However, for each activity, you need to have a goal that you want to accomplish. Your goal will dictate the strategy that will help you achieve your goal.
3. Devise a Strategy
Setting a goal is not enough. Once you know what your goals are, come up with a strategy that will help you achieve that goal. You can choose members of your social media team and delegate clear roles and responsibilities. This will help set expectations.
4. Create Content With Your Target Audience In Mind
Knowing who to target will be crucial to social media engagement. Once you determine the interests and needs of your audience, it will be easier for you to create the content that you should be sharing and use for engaging with your followers. You should know the demographics of your target audience such as their age, location, gender, and others.
5. Select Tools To Schedule And Automate Posts
Success in social media marketing requires time and dedication on your part. But you can make your job of getting twitter followers by utilizing automation tools such as Hoot suite, Buffer, Sprout Social, BuzzSumo, and others. You can schedule posts as early as one month in advance.
6. Find Relevant Ways of Audience Engagement
Although content is king in social media, it is not enough to post content. You should find ways to connect and engage with your audience. Your main objective is to build and gain the trust of your audience. There are many possible ways you can engage with your audience:
- Commenting on posts
- Starting and participating in conversations
- Sharing relevant information
- Sharing user-generated content
- Posing and answering questions
- Addressing complaints and criticisms
- Showing appreciation for customers
7. Lessen Time You Spend for Promotion
Although social media marketing can be the perfect platform for promoting your products and services, you need to lessen your time promoting. It is best to use your social media network for engaging and communicating with your target audience. At best, limit your promotions to just 20 percent and spend the bulk of your time meeting the needs of your audience.
8. Maintain Constant Presence
Success in social media marketing does not come in a wink of an eye. It will take time and patience for you to be able to maintain a constant presence. By using the right automation tools, you can lessen the time you will have on social media marketing. However, you should still spend around 15 minutes to monitor your channels and respond to questions. The frequency of posting will depend on the social media platform you will be using. For LinkedIn and Facebook, limit your posts to 5 times weekly. For Twitter, posts change so quickly so the more post you make, the better.
9. Present Audiences With a Consistent Voice
Social media marketing offers an effective strategy for building your brand and increasing its recognition. For this to be an effective tool for brand building, speak to your audience in a way that is consistent with your brand and image. For this reason, it will be best to just designate one individual for social media marketing. Assigning different people to do social media marketing will confuse your audience as their will be different personalities on the post. It is important that the person assigned to your social media posts will be on the same page with you in terms of the voice and image you want to convey.
10. Watch The Right Metrics To Monitor Your Progress
Social media is continuously growing giving you an opportunity to gain more active users on a daily basis. It is not necessary to have presence on every social media network. The most important thing is to establish clear goals, determine your target audience, and select the right network for you based on those criteria. Your goal is very important in determining the metrics that will most matter to you. There are different tools that can help you monitor your metrics such as Google Analytics, Buffer, and others.
At first, it will not be easy but by following these 10 tips, you could see progress with your social media marketing campaign.
My name is Matthias, I am the one who runs viraltwitter.net. I am happy to assist with any questions or concerns that you may be having about clean. You will learn a whole lot from my experience. Hit me up, in case of anything.