The social media realm bursts with opportunities to make a huge impact and build your brand. However, it’s not sufficient to simply use the exact same marketing strategies relied upon outside of social media and expect them to gain momentum on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Keep reading to get some actionable tips about how to alter familiar marketing strategies, so they’re as worthwhile as possible on social media sites.
1. Employ a Diverse Content Strategy
While researching tips for making social media work to your advantage, you’ll almost certainly come across tips that mention how certain types of content are better than others. Although that’s true in some cases, one thing that’s crucial to remember is that a diversified stream of content is a lot more interesting than a feed full of text-only material.
Take a look at the social media pages of some of the most successful brands. Notice how there’s typically a mixture of videos, blog posts and images. That kind of variation is necessary because people who use social media usually have short attention spans. There are so many things competing for attention online, and if people aren’t captivated by what you offer, they’ll just scroll past the content.
2. Become More Aware of Different Types of Social Media
The platforms mentioned in the first paragraph are some of the most well-known social media avenues, but they are not the only ones. In fact, various websites might not immediately come to mind, but they’re still useful for growing your business.
For example, Reddit is a social media site where people gather to discuss topics ranging from pop culture to politics and so many others. After finding a section that relates to your company, you could advertise on the forum, as long as you’re careful to keep advertisements separate from other types of informative posts.
TripAdvisor and Yelp are two other forms of social media. They exist as review sites and could help your business gain traction if a large number of people have great things to say about the company. On the other hand, if you receive bad feedback, decide to take a proactive approach and respond back to the individuals who give it.
The opinions people have are often considered “social proof” that something is worthy. It could be more valuable than any created advertising campaign. Before diving deeply into what social media offers collectively, explore how specific online destinations could be particularly advantageous. For example, if you have a travel website, the image-heavy Instagram could be a fantastic way to promote the destinations people might discover courtesy of your business.
After understanding how social media sites work, look closely at the marketing tactics you know. Come up with effective ways to capitalize on a platform’s strength and cater to its user base.
3. When Creating Videos, Make Them Shareable
Video content is becoming perpetually dominant online. However, you can’t just make a bland clip and expect people to care about it. Viewers will only respond to material they find interesting, important, funny or useful enough to share. In the case of videos, the first 30 seconds are the most crucial. Focus on relevant topics that make people want to spread the word to their friends. Also, realize that the visual portion of the video may be far more noticeable than the audio, at least in getting your audience to initially pay attention and eventually share the content. That’s because most users on Facebook watch videos on mute.
4. Maintain Consistently High Quality for All Your Content
You wouldn’t send out a press release riddled with typos or publish a snapshot in print media that’s out of focus. Those shortcomings build bad impressions about your business and make people think you don’t care enough about the result. Similarly, you must take an all-encompassing approach to distributing fantastic content across social media.
When writing blogs, craft headlines that grab attention. Fill your materials with actionable tips and make it easy for people to absorb the need-to-know content. That might mean creating scannable articles or arranging content on an infographic through a color-coding method that facilitates identifying the most important sections and statistics.
When using social media, people crave information. They want it quickly and assume it’s accurate. Even your most effective marketing strategies become nearly useless if the resultant content features haphazard research and other mistakes. Be painstaking in your actions and understand that if some social media campaigns take longer to implement than expected, meticulous methods are worth the effort.
5. Figure out How to Interact With Social Media Users Efficiently
Launching a social media campaign that features a great deal of interactivity is usually a smart move. However, remember that people may not want to leave social media channels to connect with your company. Years ago, target audience members would watch a commercial or read portions of mailed advertisement and call the respective businesses to learn more. Now, you cannot count on social media users to willingly leave a site to find out more.
That’s why it’s so important to pick timely techniques for regularly communicating with people on social media channels. You might hire social media specialists and stagger their shifts throughout the day and night, so no matter when a user reaches out, he or she gets a response within an hour.
Many businesses are also depending on chatbots to field user questions both inside and outside of typical operating hours. Imagine how helpful it would be if your brand were preparing to debut a product line, and most of the questions your customers asked across social media were somehow related to it. A chatbot programmed to give helpful responses to the most frequent queries could make users feel well-informed.
6. Keep Small Screens in Mind
Social media users love to view content on their smartphones and tablets. Due to that reality, it’s probably not a good idea to focus on any marketing strategy that involves huge blocks of text or media that’ll take a long time to load. Both of those things can quickly become frustrating for people on handheld devices and lead to heavy data usage rates.
It should now be clear that tapping into social media’s power and using it to benefit your business requires a flexible mindset. Attempting to do the same things you’ve always done and applying them to social media without altering them leads to a high likelihood of failure. Instead, observe targeted social media channels closely and evaluate ways to appeal to people by adopting strategies you know well.
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Thank you, Lexie, for the great information.