The process of gaining attention and traffic through social media sites is referred to as social media marketing. Employing social media websites as platforms to promote a product or service is becoming more and more popular for researchers and practitioners with each passing day. Organizations or marketers enable internet users and customers to post user-generated content employing social media websites.
Effective social media marketing aids in building successful businesses. A research by Shareholic tracked up to 300,000 websites over a period of 4 months and concluded that social media referrals lead to almost 30% of the websites overall traffic. You may need to reconsider if your social media strategy is actually working when your websites business falls below this benchmark.
You can consider the following few strategies that positively impact business growth and sales and boosts the social media marketing.
Commit To The Social Media- Commitment to social media is the first thing that entrepreneurs and business should look into for a successful business endeavor. Just like any other marketing strategy, employing social media to improve business can be challenging since it is tough to create great content, increase engagement and grow audience. You most often find brands giving up on social media after a couple of months. It is observed that it clearly takes anything between eight months to a year to actually get the hang of social media, not just to gain a consistent content stream going, but also to find out what your audiences don’t reverberate and what they do.
Set Social Media Goals And Objectives And Conduct An Audit- It is crucial to think way beyond the vanity metrics like retweets and the number of likes and rather concentrate on factors such as conversion rates, web referrals, and the number of leads generated. You can employ the SMART framework while establishing social media objectives i.e. goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely.
Social media audit means analyzing what social media networks your target audience use, how your social media presence actually measures and who is already connecting with you.
Perfect Your Content Strategy- Marketers with a data driven strategy often stand out. They mostly employ data that have accumulated over the years in various campaigns and social media projects to form a flawless content strategy. Marketers roll campaigns on social media based on this data rather than employing the trial and error method which seems more precise to retarget and target, design a campaign style and to allocate a budget. You can take all the essential steps to reverberate more strongly than the past and strengthen your brand. The better the content, the better is the performance of your brand on social media.
Determine The Right Website For You- Not all social media websites can prove suitable for the goals and objectives you have set for your business. You can adapt one or all the platforms listed here such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapshot, YouTube, LinkedIn, OLX and Pinterest. You can shortlist as to which of these platforms make the most sense to your business, which could be one, a couple or just all.
For instance, writing blog posts that gain attention on Facebook is a lot different than what works on LinkedIn, which is again different from what works on Snap chat, Twitter or Instagram.
Know Your Audience- One of the most important components of market research is determining the traits of your target audience. This aids in gaining insight as to what actually appeals to the target audience. You need to consider attributes like gender, age, goals, pain points, location, average income and many more. Creating an audience personal is one of the most effective ways to create audience persona, that can be done by accumulating data from surveys, social media, customer reviews and focus groups, tracking trends like age, behavior and occupation within the data and by finally determining goals and pain points and converting these attributes into job titles, career histories, and representations of people.
Listen To Your Customers Rather Than Focusing Just On Promoting Your Product- Exceptional social media programs are devised by listening to customers and not just by promoting your products or services to them. Social media offers an open-ended and an incredible platform that businesses can employ to engage and communicate with their customers. Social media is proving to be a great customer service platform in today’s time and age. You encounter more leads, engagements and comments as you get better at social media.
Incorporate Videos, Graphics And Images Wherever You Can- Regardless of the kind of social media platform or hash tag you employ, using visual elements like images, videos and graphics create an exceptional impact on the viewer. According to Lewis’ The state of Visual Communications recorded 67% of marketers stating that they employ visual content on social media. Incorporating visuals is very simple and easy, the only concern is ensuring that the visual is relevant to your content.
Success Follows Passion- Entrepreneurs and businesses must remember that passion aids in establishing great and a truly memorable content. Accomplishing success on social media is a very long process. The only way to ensure successful marketing on social media is following your passion. One good thing about this is that the content doesn’t need to be directly related to your industry, product or the brand. As the owners of an enterprise you need to choose topics that people would love to read and are extremely passionate about.
Respond To And Monitor All Social Media Conversations Around Your Business- Social media can act as a tool for face-to-face conversations in today’s world. Directly responding to your audience enables you to strengthen your brand image. Failing which your clients might assume that the organization is least interested in customer needs and wants which is in turn is not great for you. According to Altitude Software’s, almost 80% of the clients expect a marketer to respond within 24 hours of the social media post. Social media also offers you an opportunity to manifest your products or brands unique personality.
Showcase your business expertise without shying away to respond with a little bit of humor. Data records prove that an image rich social content drastically increases engagements, while you can also choose to use pictures of your employees and yourself to connect with your customers.
Posting relevant content, without compromising on the time you require to engage the audience actively is very important. Space up time for customer engagements by scheduling posts over various social networks.
Aquire Inspiration From Successful Brands And Those In Your League- Employing winner’s strategy’s on social media is not matter of shame. You can choose to experiment some of the tricks on your own channel taking inspiration from the established brands. You can also monitor and follow your competitors only to learn and adapt ideas for your own campaigns.
Final Thoughts
By spending just about six hours a week you can increase your businesses sales, traffic and recognition with very little or no cost. Almost 90% marketers declare that social media initiated great exposure to their organization which is just one of its benefits. Social networks claim to be a humongous part of all marketing strategies with substantial advantages and if any organization forgoes this cost effective resource, it is definitely missing out on a phenomenal marketing opportunity!
