Planning and implementing an effective social media strategy could mean the difference between staggeringly slow growth and swiftly achieving your business goals. There is little doubt that social media marketing is one of the best ways to reach your target audience. However, the average business owner does not know how to properly leverage social media to gain more followers and increase conversions. Read our top 5 techniques and learn how to use social media marketing to increase brand awareness, boost traffic to your website, and increase revenue.
Effective Social Media Marketing Techniques
1. Build a Community
When your followers know that there is a real person behind your brand, not merely an automated bot, their relationship to your brand changes. There’s no better way to do this than to actually interact with your customers through social media. By helping other people relate to your brand with original comments, messages, and emotions, you will create an online space where your fans will expect to feel heard and listened to. Creating this presence online is the key building block in creating effective online engagement. Remember, social media is all about creating a brand-specific community online by maintaining your social media presence.
Posting frequently and maintaining consistent online communication will encourage your followers to communicate with you and share your content. Just be sure to take active steps to ensure that your communication is constantly fresh and interesting. Every week, ask your followers questions. This not only helps build your community, but can give you great insight and feedback from your followers. You should also share noteworthy and relevant information instead of always attempting to sell your products or services. This will show your audience that you care about something other than your own business and that you are in touch with industry trends.
2. Run Cross-Channel Campaigns
Today, many businesses run cross-channel campaigns to further engage with their customers across all of their social media channels. An effective cross-channel campaign should tell a compelling story in ways that are appropriate for the social channel being used. For example, Instagram posts should include engaging photography that highlights your products, services, or culture. Facebook, in contrast, is a better medium for sharing videos. Linkedin and Twitter are better media for publishing blogs and articles. Every post should also include a link back to a campaign-specific landing page where your audience can go to get more information about the campaign and your business. Finally, your campaign should have a catchy name that people will remember with relevant, shareable hashtags.
3. Implement Live Streaming
With the introduction of live streaming features on many online platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, it has never been easier to connect directly with your audience. With live streaming, you can talk to your audience in real time, share what’s new, and discuss or demonstrate new products and services being offered. Furthermore, live streaming is a fun and easy way to engage with your customers while creating memorable and shareable content.
4. Improve Your Customer Service
It’s no surprise customers appreciate responsive and sincere customer service, yet many organizations treat it as a time-consuming expense rather than a strategic marketing investment. By using social media as an outlet for communicating with customers, you can answer questions, resolve complaints, build customer loyalty, and demonstrate to customers that you care. In addition, because everything online in permanent, your effort shows: thoughtful responses will inevitably be seen by other customers and, soon, your brand will become known for its delightful customer service.
5. Schedule Status Updates
Many business owners struggle to post to their social media accounts on a regular basis. Unfortunately, this causes many brands to potentially never gain the visibility they were hoping for through social media marketing. A useful way around this pitfall is to use a content calendar to plan content in advance. By determining what social media content you’re going to post and when you’re going to post it, you can then schedule your posts using a social media management tool, like Hootsuite (see below). This allows you to stick to a consistent posting schedule, save time, and ensure that you’re constantly posting fresh content.
Aside: What You Should Know About Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a popular social media management program that was created in 2008. Using Hootsuite, you can enhance your social media management through an interactive dashboard that supports integrations for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and other popular platforms. This allows you to post and schedule content for all of your social media channels all from one place. Hootsuite also offers a wide selection of services and online educational classes designed to help businesses manage their social media accounts. From scheduling posts to tracking your return on investment (ROI), it has never been easier to measure your conversions and create a successful social media marketing campaign.
Consult With a Digital Marketing Company
As social media platforms continue to gain popularity at rapid speed, there is no better time to develop an effective social media strategy. Social media marketing can benefit your business by increasing brand awareness, online visibility, and traffic to your website. Of course, it is not always easy to create and implement social media strategies on your own. To ensure a successful outcome, consider working with the social media experts at 321 Web Marketing. The experienced digital marketing company can help you develop and execute an effective social media marketing campaign that works for your business. Contact 321 Web Marketing today to learn more.