Essential Elements of an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy

Getting yourself organized is the first step to an effective social media marketing strategy. You need a social media management tool that will let you monitor your social networks from one place. Your tool should integrate popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube to your dashboard. Basically, you need one place to manage all your social media accounts. This allows cross-networking and easy monitoring of your messages.

Creating a social media army requires a team with a special set of skills. In cases where you will be away, someone else should take over because social media management doesn’t go on vacations. You need to have trusted individuals to collaborate with in managing your social networks.

You also need to create a content calendar since social media doesn’t sleep. A scheduler allows you to be present on social media even when you’re away from your computer. It will let you compose content ahead of time and pick the date when you want it to be published. Advance content will help you manage your social messaging allowing you to connect with conversations that are valuable to your business.

Generating leads, building a brand may seem like a huge task especially if you are in charge of the company’s social media marketing. However, there are tips that you can follow to increase your chances of succeeding. Follow these social media marketing essentials that will surely propel you to the next level.

Social Media Channel Plans

They say that when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Some businesses blindly jump into social media marketing without a strategy. For starters, we recommend that you keep your social networking sites to less than three.

It is important that you have a routine posting schedule. You should carefully plan what type of content you are going for and how often do you want it to be published. If you aren’t publishing new content every now and then, your posts may be lost and forgotten. However, always be picky about what you share. Remember that quality always beats quantity.

Quality content must always be helpful, entertaining and relevant to your audience. Be careful of tools that suggest content. In most cases, those content is not of high-quality because most tools are run by data feeds and keyword.

Social Media Management Tools

You need social media management tools that publish content across multiple platforms and schedule posts in advance. It should allow you to collaborate easier with your team and see all of your social media feeds from just a single dashboard. You also need a tool that can measure and track your results.

You must also have a tool that allows you to manage your social media accounts from your phone whenever you’re on the go. Using a dashboard has a lot of benefits, but you may still need other tools to make you more strategic and efficient.

Images and Infographic

Photos are known to be the most popular type of social media content that get the most shares on social media sites like Facebook. Sites like Instagram and Pinterest, which are mainly driven by images, has the most engagement among social media channels. There are tools that make adding images to your social media post easier.

You can also use these images when you have events. People are visual creatures so make sure to embed images on your posts for it to stand out.

Metrics

You need to analyze the results and measure your efforts. Other businesses don’t have an idea whether their social media marketing strategies work because they don’t track their return on investment.

Some of your metrics should include engagement and reach on Facebook, visits and impressions on Twitter and comments, likes and mentions on Instagram. These metrics should be tracked on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis to know if certain changes on your social media strategy must be executed.

Communities

There are a lot of opportunities for you to connect with other people with the same interests as yours through social media platforms like Twitter Chats, Facebook Groups and Google+ Communities.

It is highly recommended that you participate in these communities to establish a reputation for your company. Connecting with influencers will get your company’s content a higher chance of getting shared on their own websites and even social media. It is important to look for communities that are related to your industry and actively participate in them.

By any chance that your industry does not have existing communities yet, it may be up to you to create one. Start by reaching out to people who might be interested in your industry. Let them know that you are starting a group and try to invite them. You can start a small local business group for your city. You need to take the lead and create a group otherwise your business won’t have the chance to succeed.

Interaction

This social media marketing strategy is a game changer. It is called social media for a reason. You need to socialize and interact with other users. You can’t just fill your social media stream with links all day. Engage with your audience by replying to their posts even if it does not always mention you.

Try to avoid one-way posts. Always make sure that you encourage communication and conversation by asking feedback and opinion from other users. This will also help you observe your competitors especially those who are killing it on social media. Analyze what’s working for them and incorporate this into your own strategy. However, avoid copying a competitor completely since it is unethical.

You always have to do your best to make each post unique. You should give them a reason to follow you. Out of the thousands of people to follow, you need to somehow stand out.

Partnerships

It’s hard to build a social media presence especially if people don’t know your company at all. An effective way of getting noticed is to partner up with a well-known company with active followers and influencers. There are companies who have been successful by using this kind of technique. Some Instagram users went from zero to almost a thousand followers in just a few weeks.

This approach makes use of the “Know, Like, Trust” philosophy. Whenever your partner company gives you a shout out, it is instilled in their audience that you are a trusted brand as well. A paid shout out is the easiest way to get started. Look for sites that connect pages to companies with a huge number of followers. Also, never avail services that promote buying of fake followers.

Another effective way to promote your product is through relationship building with influencers and let it develop organically. This allows you to reach an audience as long as you keep in touch and occasionally share their content as well.

Hashtags and Keywords

There is more power to social searches than what you think. Social media accounts have search features that work like search engines. When a user searches for a phrase or keyword, the site’s bots will look for all of the content on a particular site to be able to display the most relevant information. Having keywords and phrases in your posts will make you more searchable.

Searching on social media has become more accurate and advanced because of social media optimization. Hashtags are one of the best ways to expand your reach organically on social media.

However, it is not effective that you only use a random hashtag. You have to research on the popular hashtags in your industry and add it to your content. These hashtags have a better chance of showing up since these are what the users are actively searching for.

Promotion

It is true that shoving too much content to your audience is not an effective strategy. Being too conservative with what you are posting is also not good. Promote your brand occasionally but be careful not to go overboard and come across as spammy. Create a healthy balance so that you lose won’t your followers.

Always consider that your audience is not all alike. Even if your company may attract a specific demographic, the individuals who follow you may like your product for various reasons. This is where social media targeting plays an important role. It allows you to choose the audience for your content. You can target posts by demographics, language or location.

Lastly, all successful businesses dedicate at least 10 minutes a day for publishing content and engaging in conversations on social media. You only need a few minutes to improve your social media presence and build your online reputation.

Your goal is to provide your audience with the best content. Don’t settle for what’s immediately available. Content that is not helpful will cause you to lose followers. Always prepare a steady supply of fresh content that you can share with your audience. Make sure that you are updated with the latest trends on social media and try to incorporate it into your marketing strategy.

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