Ah, social media. One of the gateways to reaching almost anyone online. Nowadays, they are more than just platforms for memes and videos as their tremendous reach and high user count means incredible marketing potential for any business. If getting your brand and products noticed by your audiences is what you are looking for, social media marketing is a sound option! But since social media marketing is quite different from using it for leisure, here are some tips to help get your social media game on.

Why social media marketing matters

It comes as no surprise that the open and, well, social nature of social media means a lot of people are using it these days. With the growing prevalence of the digital world, social media is ripe with opportunities for digital advertising and promotion by letting hundreds, if not thousands, of people see what you have to offer. In other words, it is a huge potential gold mine.

In comparison to traditional marketing, social media marketing has an edge by letting you reach more people, enjoy lower costs, and have a wider range of creative options to express yourself with. Plus, since social media is totally digital, you can get your ads up and running to more people a lot quicker. By moving online, you’ll see your business booming in no time – as long as it’s done properly, that is.

Tip 1: Plan your strategy

No one hops on a train without knowing their destination beforehand, and this applies to social media marketing as well. Before you start, it is super important to consider your strategy, goals, and objectives of going online along with how you plan to achieve them.

To build a proper strategy, you should ask yourself what your business is, what products you offer, and how they solve any existing problems. As knowing your target audience is crucial for reaching your customers, it is advisable to do your research by taking surveys, collecting feedback, using analytic tools, and so on. This provides valuable insight on your audiences’ needs and behavior to help you create your content better.

Once you have an idea of where you stand, you can then start finding the right channel – like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn – and content for reaching your audiences. By knowing your goals, this lets you better adapt your approach and measure your success. Just remember to use numbers and statistics when setting your goals to get more optimal results.

Tip 2: Embrace the use of chatbots

Customer service is a lot more automated nowadays than it was before, and chatbots are one important tool that are on the rise. Thanks to advances in technology, chatbots are now more than capable of meaningfully interacting with customers and collecting valuable data, making them an invaluable tool for social media marketing.

Being a type of intelligent computer program, there are plenty of good options for integrating one into your business. Predesigned chatbots offered by third party providers are the quickest way to set one up, but you can also build a chatbot from scratch through your website or external plugin. For added reach, you can even integrate chatbots with any messaging apps that your business uses, which opens up another channel for reaching more customers. As long as your chatbot can handle customers in your place, you’re all set.

While the use of chatbots isn’t fully widespread (yet!), their versatility and variety of technical functions do make them a useful asset to any business’s social media marketing efforts.

Tip 3: Work with influencers 

It’s pretty common for a lot of customers to count on others’ reviews and recommendations before making a purchase decision. For this reason alone, influencer marketing can be quite effective in convincing customers to buy your products or services.

The science behind this is simply that people are more inclined to take up the opinion of a person they trust or view highly of. Since influencers have higher knowledge of a given subject and greater popularity, influencer marketing leverages on this by having influencers convince customers to buy your products.

When it comes to influencer marketing, there are many influencer types you can seek out for boosting your business. Micro-influencers, social media influencers, celebrity influencers, and key opinion leaders have their own levels of reach that you can work with depending on your strategy. With a proper collaboration or partnership, this can be a win-win for both of you!

Tip 4: Stay active with quality content 

In the digital world, the huge amount of information being posted means it is all too easy for an inactive page to be forgotten. As such, staying active on social media is crucial for maintaining your relevance in your audience’s eyes and keeping traffic coming in. Plus, it would not be wise to stay inactive on a platform full of social activity.

Consistency and frequency matters a lot for staying active on social media, so strive to post good content regularly on your pages. Even so, your posts should still be relevant and interesting – it does not necessarily have to be something totally new and unheard of. For instance, if you’re creating a guide on how to use your products, you can revamp commonly used tutorial ideas by doing away with text and relying on graphics, animations, and videos.

While posting regularly shows you are active, quality content is how you retain your audiences’ interest. Don’t feel obligated to post multiple times a day unless you have the right content for it. Quality over quantity, after all.

Tip 5: Make ecommerce a part of your strategy

Since you are utilizing social media to sell, it can’t hurt to make ecommerce a part of your strategy while you’re at it. Using your social media together with your ecommerce presence lets you drive more traffic to your business and boost your sales.

If you’re leveraging social media marketing, this can be especially beneficial if you happen to have an ecommerce platform as you can encourage customers to purchase your products or services a lot more easily through an online store. Considering the rising number of businesses going online currently, it would be a good idea to get your business running on an e-commerce platform as soon as possible.

Fortunately, setting up an ecommerce platform is not too complicated. If you have already begun marketing online, you can bolster your online presence by setting up an online store on Lazada, Shopee, Zalora, or even Facebook depending on your business. Couple that with the right promotional material and your sales will skyrocket. 

Tip 6: Take an interactive and engaging approach

On social media, two-way communication is king, and this is no exception for social media marketing. Interacting and engaging with your audiences lets them know their presence is acknowledged, which can increase their interest in your business and lead to more sales. Plus, authentic interaction lets customers know they are communicating with a business that cares. 

For effective interaction, your audience should feel like they are a part of your social media and not just receivers; leaving likes, tagging, using hashtags, and replying to your followers are always appreciated. Besides that, sharing user-generated content created by your followers is a solid way of making them feel appreciated. And of course, video content should not be missed as it’s one of the best ways for bumping up your interaction and engagement.

Not only does doing all this give a nice touch to your business’s social media, but this also helps you build stronger connections with all your followers, which can mean more sales.

Tip 7: Stay up to date with the latest trends

Whenever something new and trendy pops up, social media will be on it in no time flat. For this reason, staying up to date with the latest and most popular trends on social media can serve as a good basis for creating your content. Besides increasing your engagement, this can also build up your image as a business that is up to date on the latest affairs.

Although latest trends are a good opportunity for content inspiration, it is important to make sure that they align with your business’s goals and strategy. For instance, you can skip on the popular trend of doing livestreams and videos if they are not compatible with your content approach. While social media is full of trends, jumping on the bandwagon all the time is not a good way to win over your customers.

Tip 8: Pay attention to your competitors

News flash: you aren’t the first one to utilize social media marketing, and you won’t be the last. On social media, there are lots of competitors out there just like you. Although this means coming up with unique content is more difficult, you can turn this to your advantage by observing their strategy for social media and gauging how effective it is.

When researching your competitors, try paying attention to their audiences along with the type of content they post and how they do it. If their strategy is compatible with your approach, you can incorporate some of their elements of success into your own, such as the frequency at which they post. But do be wary when doing this as you can’t (and shouldn’t) follow everything that your competitors do; being a copycat is a quick way to turn customers away from your business. 

Tip 9: Consider advertising 

Nowadays, shifts in social media mean that it is harder for organic posts to get noticed by users. For this reason, it can be beneficial to invest in some social media advertising for better visibility. 

Seeing as how digital everything has become, it’s unsurprising that many customers discover new brands mainly through the Internet. Along with retail websites and search engines, social media ads are one of the biggest channels for customers to find new businesses. This means  making your online presence known is super important – which advertising is perfect for.

For most social media platforms, you can consider paying for ads to help increase the reach and number of clicks your posts will get. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all have options for advertising, and this can be a cost-effective way of getting your posts out to a lot more people and growing your brand awareness. If paying a fee means attracting more people to your business in the long term, a little advertising can be a great investment!

Tip 10: Don’t be afraid to promote

Although having good content ideas is always essential, this won’t mean much if your content does not reach your audiences. If you are spending time and effort on creating quality content, go ahead and promote them for everyone to see! Don’t forget, getting more traffic and customers to your business is the main goal of social media marketing.

Unlike advertising on social media, promotional work can exist in many forms. For example, you can introduce a reward program, run contests, send promotional emails, and even utilize cross-promotion with your other platforms. However, try to maintain a balance between being promotional and conservative when doing so to avoid sounding too salesy. The last thing you would want is for all your promotional efforts to backfire.

At the end of the day, social media marketing has many facets to doing it right. With how dynamic and ever-changing it is, this just means that new strategies are always popping up on how you can successfully utilize social media in marketing your business. Even so, these tips above are some reliable pieces of advice you can count on when creating your social media marketing strategy. Considering how many businesses there are on social media, it really does pay to have an edge over your competitors.