5 Tips for Social Media Marketing
Social media is at the forefront of marketing and is proving to be one of the most powerful tools businesses can use to connect with their audience and grow their brand. Just posting to social channels isn’t going to cut it – you need the right approach for your business to have success. By focusing on a strong social media marketing strategy, creating meaningful content, maintaining consistency, and leveraging analytics, you can boost your online presence and effectively reach your target market. These 5 social media marketing tips can help to ensure you’re taking all the right steps.
Choose the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Business
Instagram. Facebook. LinkedIn. TikTok. The list of social media platforms these days seems to go on forever. Where to even begin thinking about which social media platforms you want your business to have a presence on can be the biggest obstacle to getting your social media marketing strategy started. One of the most important things to know when it comes to social media for businesses is that platforms are not one size fits all. Choosing the right social media platform for your business will take a bit of consideration. Knowing your audience will be a huge help in determining if it’s best for your brand to post fun and interactive videos on TikTok or more industry informative posts on LinkedIn.
Develop a Social Media Marketing Strategy
Social media for businesses requires a solid marketing strategy that helps you set a plan in place for each platform you choose to post to. This strategy should be aligned with your overall marketing strategy. It is important to understand that each platform requires targeted content to best generate engagement. When you’re starting to strategize and look at how best to approach each platform ask yourself these four questions:
- What are the benefits of using this platform?
- Who are we trying to reach?
- What is our brand message and tone?
- What type of content works best for each platform?
Answering these questions will help you to determine which social media platforms are best suited for your business and the service/product you’re offering. As mentioned above, social media platforms are not one size fits all. Some platforms may be better suited for your business than others and that’s completely okay! Your goal is to find where your target audience is hanging out and where you’ll be able to have meaningful engagements with them.
Craft Engaging Social Media Content
Recent research has shown that the average person spends about 2 hours and 20 minutes scrolling through social media platforms daily.[1] That seems like a lot of time to get your content in the face of your consumers, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. With users having hundreds of different accounts and brands coming across their feeds daily, researchers say you now have only about 3 seconds to capture your audience’s attention before they scroll on to the next post.[2] This is the reason why having engaging content is crucial. What is determined as “good content” is very subjective and is different for each platform. This is where your social media marketing strategy will start to come into play. You want to make sure that you’re creating content that is appropriate for each platform you’re posting to. Are your posts lighthearted and fun? Are they informative and thought-provoking? Ultimately you get to decide what kind of content is going to resonate with your audience best. Tapping into current trends is a great way to connect with your audience but make sure that what you’re posting still aligns with your brand. Content creation is a creative way for your brand voice to come through on your social channels and promote brand awareness.
Maintain Consistency in Social Media Posting
Social media is a long game, and you’re not going to see results overnight. It takes a lot of planning and intentional planning at that. Simply posting once or twice a week and not having a posting schedule won’t get you where you want to be. When it comes to social media for businesses and having an online brand presence, consistency is key. Creating a content calendar is a great way to make sure content is going out on a regular basis and to track how much content you have prepared so you’re not left scrambling. Beyond being consistent with posting, it’s important to maintain consistency with your messaging, imagery and hashtags. Using the same tone and style of messaging as well as imagery and hashtags helps to create a cohesive brand image across multiple platforms.
Leverage Social Media Analytics for Growth
Taking the time to track and understand your social media analytics is hugely important when it comes to building your online brand presence. This is the space where you’ll be able to see data that either backs up your posting habits or signals that there may need to be some changes in how you’re doing things. You’ll be able to see information such as when your audience is online, so you can adjust your posting times accordingly. Diving into data is also a great way to see the type of content that is resonating best with your viewers. Overall analytics are great tools that can help you to effectively analyze your social media marketing strategy and help you drive performance.
Final Thoughts
Social media marketing is here to stay, and it doesn’t have to be a daunting area that causes stress. Social media for businesses takes a lot of thought and effort if you’re going to do it right. Taking the time to build out a comprehensive social media marketing strategy will help you to improve your online performance and build a strong customer facing brand image. In most cases, you won’t find overnight success. But with time and persistence you can build your online presence and have meaningful interactions with your customers. These social media marketing tips will help you stay consistent, engage with your audience, and optimize your content to achieve long-term growth and visibility for your business. Need help navigating social media? Magnetic North can partner with your business to create a tailored strategy that drives engagement and results. Contact us today to get started!
digital marketing specialist
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Krengel
Sarah graduated from Arizona State University in 2021 with a degree in marketing. Through various internships and job experiences, Sarah discovered her passion for helping others with their marketing needs and enjoys bringing creativity and fresh ideas to every project, making the journey from concept to execution both dynamic and rewarding. In her free time, Sarah enjoys trying out new recipes, spending time out of the lake, and playing with her dog, Riley.