In the digital world today, your availability on social media is of great value to the growth of your business. Your business might experience slow progress if you are nonchalant towards utilizing the power of social media marketing.
Right from the beginning, online communities have been an integral part of the Internet, and social media today has been widely accepted all over the world. As a matter fact, are there are estimated to be about 2.62 billion online social media users, and by 2021 it is expected that this value will rise above 3 billion!
Therefore, social media is the best marketing platform for businesses, even more so for business owners that wish to broaden their reach. Finding and applying proven social media techniques is paramount to achieving this goal.
We shall be looking at a few essential social media tools that will give you an edge in effective marketing and business growth.
Although a good number of experts have written books and formulas that are believed to be generally effective in marketing, they are sometimes not effective. Creating and publishing posts as often as possible might work for someone else but not for you. This article might sound very affirmative and compelling to follow; nevertheless, there is no specific written formula for successful online marketing.
The uniqueness of every brand or business depends on the problem they are offering a solution to and the nature of the audience involved. Not to mention that social media is ever changing and so is the character of those involved. This makes it even more difficult to have a generalized approach to building a brand online.
Would your approach towards marketing a florist and an eatery online be the same? Of course not. You must first carry out a careful study of your audience, then figure out the best way to reach out and turn them into customers for each business.
To measure your performance as an online marketer, below are a few tools that can be beneficial to you.
Content curation app, DrumUp provides you with content that improves your engagement. This app helps you save time by creating an account for multiple account management.
Image optimization app PicMonkey, this enables you to do justice to your images. It also has canvases for different purposes and ready-made templates to suit your needs.
With Google Analytics you can monitor your efforts and know which of your social media platforms are most effective for your online marketing.
Social Mention is a social media monitoring tool that helps you monitor things such as competition, important keywords, and brand mentions.
Engaged Following Is A Prerequisite for High ROI
Every social media marketer focus should be on their ROI, except if you aren’t looking forward to making any progress. Building a followership is always a challenge in the initial stages. This is because it takes time and quality content to attract your audience and make them stick around unlike TV and radio station marketing that doesn’t require as much effort.
Irrespective of the quality of your content at the beginning, you might still record a low rate of engagement. But applying the right approach and consistently publishing quality content will enable you to achieve that ROI you desire.
Creating A Specific Marketing Strategy Is Important
Research has shown that a large number of marketer’s lack strategies to reach their target audience. To build an audience of active followers, creating a marketing strategy is paramount. What is effective content?
• Content that brings about the desired response from an audience.
• Content that is relevant to an audience.
• Content with an engaging storyline.
Challenges Marketers Face with Content Creation
• Inability to monitor the progress of your efforts – to overcome this get a social media monitoring app.
• The difficulty in creating content that will captive and engage the targeted audience.
• Limited time to create quality content – this can be dealt with using content curation apps.
• Difficulty in matching content and required volume.
It is crucial to document your strategy as it helps you stay focused and confident in your actions.
Publicity Can Come in Different Ways
Just like in the physical world, people promote their businesses and brands through the referral method of “tell someone to tell someone” which could be done by customers, fans, employees or business partners. This can also be applied to social media marketing. Building a good relationship with your online customers will encourage them to promote your brand by introducing your business to their friends and family. Positive feeds and testimonies from your customers are also beneficial.
You can also pay online influencers with a large following to promote your product and services on their platform for a specific period.
You could also partner with other businesses and strike a deal with them. This may require you to promote each other’s products and services on your respective platforms. You could also leverage your employees into promoting the business and show your appreciation with incentives.
Ability to Understand the Significance of Data Is Crucial
Until you can understand the information behind your data and capitalize on it for improvement, limitations will keep locking up your business. This is to say that data interpretation is of great necessity in the process of marketing.
Data itself is limited in action and depends on you for specific clarification. No algorithm can detect the impression people have about your business. Therefore, it is your sole responsibility to have a proper understanding of the data your content generates.
It’ll be disastrous for your brand if you build your strategy around data alone. Utilizing the information from your data and applying other formulas to create an effective strategy should be non-negotiable.
As observed, businesses tend to grow faster on social media when there is an interaction between the audience and the marketer. Never neglect your audience if you desire continuous growth.
Focus also on your connection with people outside of social media. Your ability to maintain cordial relationships with your clients should be of the utmost importance.
Strange Social Media Tips That Work
Above, we have covered some proven social media secrets. Now, let us take a look at some strange tips that can help your brand.
Stir Controversy
Marketers who know what they are doing utilize controversy as a means of driving social engagement and traffic. Including the element of controversy in your social media campaigns aids in the following:
• Creating a buzz about your brand or organization.
• Pushes massive traffic to your profiles on social media.
• Enhances your engagement metrics and follower base.
So, how do you develop controversy? Below are a few of the best methods:
Take a different view regarding generally accepted information or facts. For example, if everyone detests a vehicle model, you can gain attention by going the opposite route.
Talk about a taboo subject in your field. For example, if you are into dog training, then speak about using electric collars for dog training.
Pick on Trending Hashtags
As you must be aware, Hashtags aid in classifying or grouping posts on social media. For example, #NewYear.
Additionally, trending hashtags are those trending on a specific day or time. For example: On 25th December each year, #Christmas is a trending hashtag.
This strategy needs you to utilize trending hashtags on your posts to amass peak exposure. But, how do you find a trending hashtags list? There are lots of tools like Trendsmap that can help you out with that. However, in using Hashtags, you need to be careful of the following:
Don’t Use Excess Hashtags
Except if an individual has lots of patience, he or she won’t go through a lengthy list of hashtags. Place the most significant ones at the start and the most entertaining ones at the end. These are two locations individuals have a high likelihood of reading.
Don’t Develop Long Hashtags
Since it is more difficult to read without spaces, restrict them to four words.
Don’t Utilize Hashtags That Beg for Followers
Having lots of followers is great but having real and engaged individuals is better. Begging for people to follow you is not professional. Stay away from hashtags like #like4like or anything that others would see as pandering.
Don’t Forget to Read Through
If you leave spaces out of some words, they will read differently.
Tag an Influencer
An influencer is a personality on social media who has lots of impact on his or her followers. Influencers create relevant content, curate and share the content of others. Aside from that, they are also an excellent source of industry information and news.
Generally, followers act based on the opinions and advice of influencers. They influence their followers’ decisions.
But, how exactly can influencers aid you in achieving your social media marketing objectives? It is easy. Say, for example, you wrote a post about freelance writing and tagged a recognized personality on social media. If the influencer you tagged likes your post and retweets or shares it with his followers, your post would instantly be exposed to lots of people.
Make Use of Emojis
Social media is a place filled with lots of businesses trying to grab as many viewers as possible. So, how do you ensure your brand is heard? Why not try emojis?
Emojis tend to capture the eyes of viewers because they are appealing. Additionally, they also make your posts seem more genuine.
Observe Your Competitors
Copying everything your competitor does is not good for business. But checking out other accounts can get your creative juices going.
Find out these facts about your competitors and other leading social media brands. What hashtags are they using? What types of posts are garnering lots of shares or comments?
You can also look at those who have the most interaction with your competitors and follow them. If they are taking time to interact with your competitor, there is a huge possibility that they will also engage with you as well.
Aside from this, you could also try liking or following the posts of your competitors. Just because they are your competitors, it does not mean you can’t be friends.