Did you know that more than 77% of marketers are using at least one social media platform to market their products and services?
About 90% of these marketers are satisfied with the results, and they affirm that social media marketing has helped to increase their brand’s visibility.
Regardless of the type of your business and your target clients, using popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as marketing tools can help to grow your brand and increase sales.
But how do you create a successful social media marketing campaign?
In this piece, we’ll share some time-tested tips on how you can use social media to appeal to your target audience, convert them into loyal clients, and pad your wallet. Here they are:
1. Set Realistic Goals
Before you come up with a social media campaign, you need to figure out what you want to achieve with the social media marketing.
Perhaps you want to use this marketing tool to increase brand awareness, improve sales, or maybe create a better pulse on the industry. Regardless of your goals, you should ensure they’re specific, realistic, and relevant to the objectives of your business.
Once you clarify your goals, it’s time to define your target clients and their needs.
2. Know Your Target Audience
Your social media campaign won’t be effective unless it’s specifically designed for the people you are targeting.
Therefore, you need to know your target audience: their age, hobbies, occupation, income, gender, and anything else that will make it easy for you to interact with them at a personal level.
Understanding your potential clients will ensure you come up with social media posts that appeal to them, and this is the first step towards a successful campaign.
3. Analyze Your Competition
There are high chances that your competitors already have a social media presence.
You need to analyze how your competitors are using social media and what they’re doing right (or wrong).
This analysis will not only guide your expectations but also help you to identify opportunities that you can use to outshine your competition.
4. Select the Best Platforms
You don’t have to be on all social media platforms–join the ones that matter to your business and your target audience.
Here are important questions that can help you to figure out which social media channels will work for you and which ones will not:
- Which social channel has most of your target clients?
- How much time can you devote to social media?
- What personnel and skills do you need for a successful campaign?
Once you gather answers to these questions, you’ll be able to identify social media channels that suit your needs.
5. Improve Your Existing Profiles
If you already have a social media presence, you need to take a step back and consider a few things about it.
Who is connecting with you on social media? How does your social presence compare to that of your competition? What’s working for you?
These tough questions will tell you if the social networks you have are right for your business or not.
6. Be Human
One of the worst mistakes you can make on social networks is presenting a faceless company with zero personality. Today, clients only do business with companies that connect with them at a personal level.
Talk to your followers as you would to your friends–don’t be afraid to use jokes, popular hashtags, social media Q&A sessions, and GIFs to promote mutual understanding.
Effective interactions will let them know there’s a human being behind your social feeds, and they’ll help you to build the much-needed connections.
7. Avoid Too Many Promotional Messages
According to a recent study, 51% of social media users unfollow and even block a company that shares too much irrelevant or promotional content. The same survey also reveals that 46% of users unfollow a page if it contains too many promotional posts.
Therefore, you want to ensure that your content is appropriate and does not contain too many promotional messages.
You should also nurture social media etiquette and create content that elicits engagement. Here are some content ideas to engage your audience and keep them interested:
- Quotes
- Polls
- Behind-the-scenes photos
- Fill-in-the-blank posts
- Infographics
- Social Contests
Although you can engage your imagination and creativity, you should ensure you post relevant content and avoid endless promotional messages.
8. Make Videos Part of Your Marketing Campaign
Did you know that around 500 million Facebook users watch videos every day? On Twitter, about 82% of the users also watch videos daily?
Incorporating videos into your social media marketing will attract target clients, increase your online presence, and initiate meaningful interactions.
But that’s not all.
The study also shows that videos will account for over 80% of internet traffic by 2020. Since audiovisuals are quite persuasive, 64% of clients are more likely to purchase a product or try a service after watching a video about the product or service.
Making videos part of your campaign will, therefore, help you to boost your sales and create a future-ready business.
9. Create an Editorial Calendar
Sharing content is essential, buts it’s equally necessary to have a content calendar with the dates and time at which you will publish or share your content on social media.
A content calendar will ensure you don’t post the same things over and over again. It’ll also enable you to create an ideal post for each platform without having to juggle between multiple sites.
When coming up with your content calendar, you should account for the time you’ll spend responding to your client’s questions and comments on your previous posts.
10. Test and Make Improvements
Evaluate your social media marketing strategy regularly. This will let you know what works and what doesn’t so that you can refine your campaign in real time.
You may also need to ask your followers, email subscribers, and website visitors what they think about your social media presence and use the feedback you get to improve your social media campaign.
Wrapping Up
Social media marketing is here to stay, and you should embrace it. Make sure you follow the tips highlighted above when creating a social media marketing campaign. They’ll help you to come up with an effective campaign and win more clients.
You can check out our social media for businesses section to read more posts about promoting your business on social media.
