Let’s have a quick reality check—managing multiple accounts can be time-consuming and hectic. We understand it’s hard to manage social media, especially if you have other things to focus on. The following guide should help get your social media off the ground. You don’t want to lag behind when 73% of marketers agree that social media marketing has been useful to their business.
Here are some tips you can implement.
1. Formulate a Social Media Marketing Strategy
Social media marketing is just as important as other promotion strategies. It’s an ingenious way to grow your business, and it’s vital to have a blueprint on how to stand out. Document your goals, do a competitor analysis, and answer the questions of what, when, why, and how for all content you desire to post.
Creating a strategy at the beginning of your marketing campaigns lays a strong foundation for skyrocketing your business. Lastly, update your social media strategy from time to time to keep up with the emerging trends.
2. Create and Publish Quality Content on Each Platform
Creating quality content is a great way to stand out from your competitors. To get better results, post videos, infographics, short posts, and links to studies/important information in your industry. This way, people will start using your Facebook page, or Twitter handles as a source of information.
For instance, WordPress has thousands of tutorials on YouTube on how to blog on the platform. Since information spreads so fast on social media, refrain from controversial content that may hurt your brand or land you in trouble.
3. Identify Your Ideal Customer
A successful business owner understands they can’t sell to everyone. A target audience is a group of people who are likely to buy your product or service. Often, businesses wrongly identify their target as a general group. For instance, you can say that your ideal customers are ‘women’. Well, that’s one step ahead, but who are these women?
Discovering the ideal customer means doing thorough research based on multiple factors other than one external factor, like gender. The best way to get it right is by having in-depth knowledge about the group. Some of the things to look at are gender, age, occupation, level of education, location, and their pain points.
Once you have the information, it will enable you to create personalized content and campaigns. Customers love it when you speak their language. If you have multiple audiences, you can use platforms where they spend more time. For instance, you can reach young people through Instagram and your older audience on Facebook.
4. Create an Editorial Calendar
You need a content calendar to post content consistently. If you’re on various social platforms, it’s vital to schedule content. Posting similar content on all networks will only bore and drive away customers. Juggling multiple channels will require you to have a plan for each.
A content calendar makes your work easier. You can effortlessly create posts for each platform, and this ensures you post daily. In short, having a calendar does an excellent job of keeping your social media presence organized and professional. You can use tools like Google calendar.
5. Invest in Social Media Management Tools
Marketing your business on multiple networks can be quite overwhelming. Additionally, you may not have the skills to manage social media. Fortunately, there are various social media management services and tools to make management easier. Here are some of them:
Buzzsumo – If you want to know the most shared content in your niche and the trending influencers, this is the right tool for you. You can also use it to test which content works best for your business.
Google trends – If your business doesn’t have a budget, this the right tool for you. It’s free to use and ideal for searching for trends on the internet. The software also helps you find the right keywords to use in your posts.
Canva – It’s the best for designing killer posts. It has hundreds of images to help in design and templates created for each social media platform.
Buffer – Buffer is suitable for businesses overwhelmed with managing multiple accounts. It allows you to queue posts for various channels. What’s more, the app supports tools for image editing and analytics.
6. Select the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Business
It’s vital to understand that the channels are made differently and cater to different types of customers. Selecting the right social media platform for your business saves you time and helps connect with the right audience.
Instead of opening accounts blindly, evaluate the social networks based on the audience and the nature of your product. For example, LinkedIn favors B2B industries, while Pinterest is suitable for home decor and fashion industries.
7. Analyze the Performance of Your Social Media Strategy
An excellent social media campaign isn’t just about posting compelling content. It also involves evaluating the performance of each activity. Tracking the success of your content can be a complicated task for some. The solution to this is documenting the goals of your organization and using social media analytics tools like Google analytics and Keyhole.
Measuring performance will help you improve your work and invest more time in posting relevant content. When your content connects with the audience, it will prompt customers to take action. Remember that knowing your KPIs (key performance indicators) is the only way to see if you’re growing.
8. Monitoring Your Social Media
When done correctly, social media monitoring helps you establish a reliable communication pipeline in your organization. Social media monitoring is the process of assembling social messages from multiple channels into a single message in response to each comment, private message, or several mentions. Usually, social monitoring is confused with social media listening. Social listening involves using large volumes of messages from a particular keyword to draw an analysis.
The main benefit of social monitoring is that you get to see the impact your brand has on people. No surveys needed. For effective social control, you can use tools such as Hootsuite and Zoho social.
9. Collaborate With Influencers
Influencers usually have a significant and loyal following. Often, their fans trust them as experts in their respective niches, and gladly take advice from them. Many businesses shy away from influencer marketing, with the belief that influencers have to be celebrities. An influencer can be anyone as long as they have a considerable following, and what they do is relevant to your business.
Collaborating with an influencer serves as social proof for your business. Just like any marketing strategy, conduct research on your target influencer. Also, establish whether the followers would be interested in your brand. If you’re in the fashion industry, for instance, target models. Keep in mind that there has been so much talk about influencer marketing, so do your research to know how to benefit from this strategy.
10. Run Paid Ads
Nowadays, almost every company invests in social ads as a way of scaling digital advertising. Paid advertising helps brands to reach a broad audience and gain organic leads quickly. However, before rushing for paid ads, you must understand what PPC ads are and how they can boost your business. Pay per click is a type of advertising where a company pays per click fee whenever a user clicks on the ad.
Paid search advertising involves running ads on search engines like Google. As a result, users will find your business as a sponsored link on the Google results page. To win with paid ads, make sure your campaign is targeted. The more targeted it is, the less fee you pay.
11. Exemplary Customer Service
Since you’re on social media to meet your customers, expect them to contact you through the same platform. Unfortunately, most brands ignore social customer care. Many times messages, comments, and inquiries go unanswered. Social media is a public space, and neglecting customers is detrimental to your brand image.
To offer quality customer experience on social media, create rules that will guide your social customer support team. Before you jump on creating a guide, ensure the customer care process aligns with your business and customers. The following tips should help you build a good reputation online.
• Create a guideline
Your team needs a plan on how to handle customers online. Include what you want to be addressed in your social care process. For instance, you can brief them on the tone to use and what to do in case of a crisis.
• Ensure you respond on time
Whether it’s a mention, comment, a direct message, or a complaint, immediate feedback is key to customer retention. Apart from instant feedback, customers also expect to be listened to their issues resolved. However, no human can manage to stay awake 24/7. Consider using automated messages whenever you’re out of office. Lastly, you can create a detailed frequently asked questions (FAQS) section to help customers who need answers.
With the right strategies, social media platforms can be an asset to your company. The tips provided in this guide will help you become a better social media manager. If you have other projects to tackle and are too busy, you can use a social media management service.
Author bio:-
From design to anything digital, Brenda loves connecting from one social media agency to another to learn the tricks of the trade. She loves to write and share stories about digital trends, design, and even business!
Featured Image Source: Pixabay
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