5 Tips to Improve Your Social Media Marketing
Most business owners know that they should be on social media, but what is less commonly known is WHY and, even more importantly, HOW to effectively use social media to reach your audience.
Sound like you? Good! You’ve come to the right place. Let’s dive in.
Why your brand needs to be on social media
1. Brand awareness
More than ever customers are turning to social media to find brands, products, and services. If you aren’t on social media, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to be discovered by new people, people who are looking for a solution to their problems, a solution that you provide! See where we’re going with this? Social media is a must to increase brand awareness and connect with new audiences. We know that you offer an amazing problem-solver for your customers, so show it off.
2. Customer loyalty
It is by building relationships with your customers and providing them with valuable content that they begin to feel connected and loyal to your brand and business. Having a great product isn’t always enough to get customers to stick around, you must have a great brand and provide a great experience as well - both of which can be developed on social media.
3. Customer service and accessibility
As we mentioned above, your customers are turning to social media to connect with brands. If they have a question about your product or service, there’s a good chance they are heading to the platform of their choice to try to find the answer. And if you’re not there, that could mean lost business. As businesses, we must be accessible to our audiences. We must be discoverable. We must be where our audience is. And we must be available to answer their questions and provide them with our amazing solutions.
4. Drive traffic and conversions
With ever-evolving shopping features, social media is becoming an even more powerful tool for businesses. One single post can generate hundreds of sales and thousands of dollars in revenue - we’ve seen it happen! And not just for the big brands with the big budgets. All it takes is an effective strategy and a willingness to commit to creating quality content for your customers.
Improve your social media marketing with these five tips:
Tip #1: Start with a strategy
All great social media marketing starts with strategy. A strong strategy will help you determine who your audience is, where you can find them online, and how best to connect with them. Armed with this information, you’ll learn the best platforms, posting frequency, and content pillars for your brand.
Strategies don’t have to be complicated, but they do have to be detailed and well-researched. For more tips, check out our blog: 5 Tips for Creating Effective Marketing Strategies.
Tip #2: Humanize your brand
Think of it this way, your audience might find it hard to connect personally with a logo. However, a familiar face behind your brand helps to build trust with your audience. And that’s what we all want right?
Also, social media content that has a human element consistently performs better, getting higher engagement and conversion rates.
Consider sharing more about your story, how and why you started the business, and what your mission is. But the human element doesn’t only have to come from the business owner, it can also look like featuring your employees in the content, showing behind the scenes, or working with influencers and content creators.
The main thing to remember is that people connect with people. It is not B2B or B2C; it’s H2H - Human to Human. Let’s all try to be a little more human online.
Tip #3: Track and analyze your metrics
Tracking, analyzing, and understanding your metrics is a vital component of any successful marketing strategy. It’s no different on social media.
How will you know what you should continue to do if you don’t know what has worked (and not worked) in the past?
But some of it can definitely be confusing if you aren’t familiar. So, here is a quick break down of some of the key metrics you can track:
Reach = The total number of individual people that viewed your content
Impressions = The total number of times your content was viewed
Profile Visits = The number of visitors that clicked on your handle to view your profile
Engagements = Likes, comments, shares, and saves
Average Engagement Rate = The percentage of followers that interact with your content on average. Your engagement rate can be calculated by averaging your total engagements from your last 10 posts and dividing that by your number of followers.
Each month you should:
Review your content
Determine what performed well based on these metrics
Decide what areas need improvement
Create content better tailored to your audience
Tip #4: Get feedback from your audience
One of the amazing things about social media is that the communication is a two-way street. We aren’t just blasting marketing messages at our audience and hoping something sticks. We can actually get real time feedback from our ideal customers.
Not sure what your audience wants to see? Ask them. Unsure if your customers would be interested in a new product idea? Ask them. Want to get to know your audience better? Ask them.
See a trend here? With social media, you can ask your audience questions and get super helpful feedback to improve not only your social media content, but also your products and/or services.
Tip #5: Incorporate video
With the prevalence of TikTok and the quick growth of Instagram reels, video content is easier than ever to create and incorporate into your social media strategy.
AND it’s also more important than ever. You may have heard the social media buzz when the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, stated that “Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app.” This caused quite a stir! But he later came back to clarify that what he meant is that Instagram is no longer JUST a photo sharing app. It is a mixed media entertainment platform.
Sorry to break it to you, but if you want to connect with your audience and grow on the platform, you will need to begin incorporating video into your content. As much as we all hate change, it is necessary to evolve.
Now, don’t freak out. Not every single post needs to be a video. Photos can still be a huge part of your content strategy, but try starting with one video each week. You can test, learn, and adapt from there based on what your audience is responding to.
Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools in your arsenal - IF you use it effectively. And now, with these five tips in mind, you can! Media Shop Collective is here to support your social media marketing needs. Ask us how!