Social media is one of the most effective tools you can have in your marketing repertoire. It boasts a global audience of daily users, allowing you to potentially reach an endless stream of potential customers with the right content. Best of all, it can be effectively utilized free of charge.
However, a lot of preparation and work is required before your business can start benefitting from social media.
The above sentence is particularly pertinent in the year 2020. More outlets than ever are on social media, firing out daily posts in the hope of striking viral gold. Due to the growth in competition, it’s increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd.
If you are struggling to build your presence on the likes of Twitter and Facebook, this guide is here to provide assistance. Here’s how you can begin to market your business with social media successfully.
Understand your audience
The process all begins by analyzing your audience. What content do they desire? What will generate comments, likes, and shares?
It’s important to have a central focus on your target market. Getting engagements from other users helps to spread the word, but the goal is to take your social media followers and turn them into customers. That’s why the content needs to appeal to your audience.
To do this, opting to create a buyer persona can be especially beneficial. This way, you can craft personalized content that is ideal for your target market.
Furthermore, it can pay off to take a closer look at the competition. See what type of content they are creating on social media. What are they doing right? What’s missing the mark? Along with getting a clear picture of the type of content to use, it also helps you to understand what targets are realistic with your social media campaign.
Decide on your social media platforms
When someone says ‘social media,’ your mind will likely focus on the big three – Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Yet social media comprises many, many different outlets. Plus, if the demise of Myspace has shown the world anything, it’s that the popularity of a platform can come and go in an instant.
As for picking a social media platform, there is no right or wrong answer. With that said, certain options will work better in certain situations. For instance, visual imagery is ideal for Instagram. The same can also be said for Snapchat, which doubles up as a top choice for a younger demographic.
When picking a platform, consider the following picks:
- YouTube
- Snapchat
While it can be tempting to go with all of the above options, it is recommended to only go with two or three platforms. By doing this, you’re not spreading your resources too far, and you can focus on – and master – your chosen social media choices.
Create high-quality content
It goes without saying, admittedly, but you need to place an emphasis on producing high-quality digital content for your social media. Although this is easy to understand, it is hard to achieve.
Thankfully, the opportunities are virtually endless when creating content. Rather than sticking with standard text posts, consider the following ideas:
- Video content: Visual content is king when it comes to grabbing the attention of social media users. If people are quickly scrolling through their social media feeds, they can easily skip past a text-based post without even realizing it. A video, however, will get people to stop in their tracks and see what is about to play. Of course, the actual content needs to keep people watching and get sharing, so focus on producing videos that are informative, engaging, and free from fluff.
- Eye-catching images: In the same manner as video content, imagery is a great method for catching the eye of social media users. While this can simply be a quality snap of a product you offer, also think about producing striking graphic designs and infographics.
- Go live: According to research about video content on Facebook, users spend three times longer watching live videos compared to those prerecorded. This can often be attributed to the personal connection established with video. Although if you are to utilize live video, don’t go into it randomly. Have some sort of plan, whether this is a demonstration or Q&A session.
- Follow the trends: Creating content ahead of time is a wise strategy to take. Yet you should also be willing to follow the latest trends and implement this into your social media plan. People will be actively searching about trending topics, meaning your business could be in front of many new potential customers as a result.
- Make memes: Okay, it might not seem like the basis for high-quality content. However, memes can spread like wildfire if you get the right mix of humor and relevancy. Plus, to get it right, you will require quick-thinking and a healthy dose of creativity.
If you require any further inspiration, take a look at what others are doing with their social media strategies. Don’t simply focus on competitors – see what large brands are producing to go viral.
Manage your digital assets
When you have so much digital content flying around, it’s imperative you have a strong management system in place. This is where Digital Asset Management (DAM) comes into play.
It’s fair to say the benefits of DAM are numerous. You can keep all of your digital assets stored in one place, ready to use whenever needed. This is particularly useful for social media, which requires plenty of careful planning where you schedule your content ahead of time.
Evaluate the statistics
Once you have begun with your social media campaign, this is only the beginning. You need to keep a close eye on the results produced by your posts. What content is producing results? What’s struggling to gain any sort of engagement?
By analyzing the statistics, you can continually refine your social media content. Plus, with the way the world can change instantly, you need to keep watch on any significant trend shifts that affect your business.
