2017’s Trendiest Social Media Marketing Tips

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Get Your Small Business in the Spotlight with These Social Media Marketing Tips!

The words social media marketing are ‘buzzwords’ for a reason. The world of traditional paid advertising is dead-and-gone and in its wake is a vastly different alternative—social media marketing. Many business owners fail to realize that unless your advertising to the scale of a Superbowl game, you’re better off focusing on content marketing that is cheaper to disseminate and resonates distinctively with your target audience. The platform to do this is social media. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat etc., are the portals of branding. If you’re new to the game, these social media marketing tips can help you boost your brand’s online presence without burning a hole in your wallet.

Why Optimize With Social Media Marketing?

Using social media marketing tips to self-promote is a segment of entrepreneurialism. Using scarce resources and some very creative ingenuity to leverage your success are the skills needed to conquer in the social media arena.

There are a few reasons using social media to advertise is the way to go.

First off, many consumers believe an organization that lacks social media presence is illegitimate. Also, social media marketing can be done cheaply, if not completely free. The idea of content marketing is to connect with consumers in an organic way. Generating content that social media users have elemental interests in will grow your audience and vicariously your customer base.

Not only is this form of marketing cost-efficient, shop owners can see engagement in real-time. If you pay to run an ad in a local paper, you’ll only be provided with vague details on how many eyes might glance over the ad. With the right social media marketing tips, you will know exactly how much engagement your posts are receiving. This allows you to tweak marketing as you go. With trial-and-error methods that become refined over time, you’ll know what your consumer demographics respond to and vice versa.

  • 95% of online adults aged 18-34 are most likely following a brand via social networking.
  • 71% of consumers who have a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others.
  • There are 1.65 billion active mobile social accounts globally with 1 million new active mobile social users added every day.
  • Visual Content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.

*Data provided by MarketingSherpa, Ambassador, We Are Social, and Hubspot.

How to Launch a Social Media Marketing Campaign

As a small business, you should have a business plan written. With a strong vision supported with an outline—business plan—success is that much easier to attain. A segment of your business plan should be devoted to potential social media marketing. All relevant information on your consumer demographics and target audience need to reviewed to craft a specific marketing plan.

What does your customer look like, and what are your goals for reaching them?

For instance, say you’re a pet franchise that wants to target consumers between the ages of 27-58 with an annual household income of at least $89k. You want to use social media to gain more customers. What kind of social media platforms do individuals that meet these criteria use? Figuring out where your potential social media followers are is the first step. The big three are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But if you find that most of your customers are more likely to be on LinkedIn than begin building there. Remember, it is much easier to go to them than to get them to come to you.

Next, you’ll need to start developing content. Since social media users are scrolling primarily for entertainment, front-load your initial posts with this in mind. A good tactic is to differentiate your content. Not every post should directly promote the brand, just as not every post should be light hearted content. Marketers advise posting quality content. Meaning, if your blog is helpful and informative, it will organically increase readership. If your Tweets help customers more people will ‘follow’ you.

Visual content is the most prevailing form of content. Tweets with an image are 150% more likely to be retweeted than their textual counterpart. Facebook posts with images are engaged with 2.3 times more than those without. Since most people are using mobile devices to scroll, videos are going to continue to be huge in 2017 too.

Automating your social media accounts is vitally important. When all of your social media accounts are publishing on the same schedule this preserves your brand’s narrative. Using automation software like HootSuite, Bugger, Hubspot, or SproutSocial will synchronize your postings. Succinctness will save you time. You can front-load the majority of your social media posts ahead of time and schedule them to automatically post on a schedule.

“Keeping Up’ On Social

One of the best social media marketing tips is to use an analytic tool like Facebook Insights. Using an analytic tool will ensure your posting is getting the engagement and response you want. This way you can pay for some small amplification on posts you want to be viewed en masse and pay nothing for the ‘just-for-fun’ postings.

Using an analytic is helpful, but focus your goals on your business needs—not irrelevant metrics. Receiving shares, likes, and retweets are great, but if you’re attempting to get more people to come into your bagel shop in Philly, and someone from Florida is liking your posts, it doesn’t do your business much good. It’s fine to get a huge amount of social media support but use performance data to track the support that will strengthen your business.

Network out to similar channels. Find other local businesses on social media and follow and re-share their posts. Experts in your field are also great accounts to follow. Cross-promoting in your industry will boost your following and establish meaningful social connections. Engagement is a two-way street. If someone tweets at your business’s Twitter account, write back!

One of the last social media marketing tips that will come in handy is using shareable icons. These icons are otherwise known as ‘a call to action,’ You may see them in the header and footer of website pages. They are icons that encourage users to share content through their personal social media accounts. This is how things go viral! The more people looking at your business’s content, the more people are sharing that content.

We hope you found this article helpful!

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