Elevate Your Business on Social Media With These 10 Tips

With over 3 billion people on social media, Social media marketing is one of the most crucial channels for businesses to get quality traffic, customer engagement and eventually driving sales.

Sounds inevitable to be on social media, doesn't it? 

Did you know that social media now a global rate of 49%? This means that almost half the world’s population is now on social media! Well, if you know to leverage your social media right, then there can be no better marketing platform out there.

Social media networks keeps on growing. developing an effective social media strategy nowadays is vital. Otherwise, you'll lose potential customers and audience that will eventually affect your outcome.

Here we go! Let’s break down the above-mentioned social media tips.

1. Use stories

"No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story,” once told Dan Kahneman. Stories matter! No, Your Stories Matter. Period.

It’s the stories that sell, not the product! We, humans, connect with stories, it is the emotional attachment that your brand builds with their audience. They inspire ideas and encourage interaction.

Here’s a perfect example of Airbnb, that will make you go all emotional. A super cool animation that is executed perfectly. Check out how they convey their message to belong anywhere here.

No, this is not the only way to tell a story. You can also tell your stories; success stories, your struggles, stories on how you overcome those struggles, your business' history and many more.

Also there are simpler stories that can move your audience. Share successive posts to relate the whole story from the beginning to the end. The blow-by-blow arouses excitement that is great to make your story compelling. 

Here’s an example of consistent tweet-after-tweet posts:

okay, blog post will probably be up monday. but it is coming!

— Hannah Queen (@honeyandjam)

2. Humanize Your brand

As much as all the digital innovations have made it easier to communicate, it's the emotion that we miss out on. By the term ‘humanize your brand’ we mean, go beyond the screeens of these digital devices. Show your audience what goes in your office, introduce them to your employees, show the humans behind your brand.

Remember that brand stories are not ads and sales pitches, they help the audience connect to your brand. Your stories tell them what you stand for, they display your culture as well as your values. 

For instance, share your plans for Friday, share the fun team building activities you have, let employees take over the social media for once and connect to the audience.

Take a look at the way SE Ranking does it on their - Facebook page.

3. Use Emoticons

There's a reason why emoticons exist, Right? It serves the purpose of conveying the emotion through digital facial expressions.  

Apt use of emotions is extremely important to convey the desired tone and emotion behind the message. The glitch with written texts is that, if not formatted correctly it can be easily misinterpreted.

You idiot ??

You idiot ??

Both the above phrases consist of the same words but with different emojis and hence convey a different message. 

It is as simple as adding a ??. It is the emoticons that get the readers more excited about your content. So, next time you write, feel free to go overboard with one of these, but don't overdo it.

4. Know your target audience

Without the support of your audience, your strategy will be in vain.

Drawing your social media strategy around your audience is a must. Your target audience will help you figure out everything; Right from the social media platforms you need to be on, to every ounce of content you’ll ever create.

Still wondering about why should your audience have all the spotlight?

Here’s why...

“If you want to create messages that resonate with your audience, you need to know what they care about.”

It is essential to define their questions, their concerns and their problems. For most businesses, one of the biggest challenges is to connect with the right audience. To find your ideal audience, you need to figure out who your target demographic is and what social networks they use.

5. Know Your Goals

How will you aim if you have no target? You need to know the 5 Whys behind your actions. Your goal will be the driving force of your social media strategy. Don't delay anymore, grab a paper and write down your goals!

But before you jump ahead, here are a few things you must keep in mind while goal setting:

? Be specific

? Set attainable goals

? Make sure that your goals are measurable

6. Select your platforms wisely

It's not necessary to be available on all the social media platforms, but what matters is to create an impact on a few that you are present on.

It's not quantity that matters, it is the quality that counts! Putting out substandard content will only make things worse for you. Instead, research and plan your social media presence that aligns with your goals and appeals to your target audience. Focus on the platforms that are preferred by your audience.

7. Build A Winning Game Plan For Social Media Marketing

Now that you already know your goals, It's time to make a game plan to achieve it.

The research reports suggests that marketers who create and document strategy are 538% more likely to achieve success.

This calls for action. Doesn’t it?

Developing a social media marketing strategy is the key to turn your vision into a reality. While you prepare your strategy, consider the social media platforms you’ll be posting on, make sure it appeals to your target audience and aligns with your goals.

Here are a few things to help you out with your social media strategy

• Make a list of upcoming events and special days
• Create a content theme to provide your audience with a unified experience
• Prepare a list of hashtags for different platforms
• Make sure it covers your primary events, features and campaigns

8. Set up a social media content calendar

There is a saying - failing to plan is planning to fail.

No matter what you do - without planning you are going to fail in social media marketing! So, use social media content calendars tools to organize and publish all your content timely and efficiently.

Content calendars also help to distribute resources effectively, improve team collaboration and give a more in-depth understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

The best thing about setting up a calendar is that it enables you to put up images, set timings for your posts and much more in advanced. Just create and update the publishing calendar once a week, build team sections and distribute the file to co-workers to get their comments before posting.

9. Use tools empower your strategy

Social media tools are going to be your savior. Imagine being on 8 different platforms and posting manually on each of them 3 times a day. Damn. That would be your worst nightmare. All you’ll possibly do is publish, and nothing more productive.

So, let’s leave the monotonous work on the tools, shall we?

Yup, that is possible! Try to automate as much of the activity as possible. For example, schedule your social media updates ahead of the time. You can maximize the built-in schedule post feature in Facebook and Twitter, but also you can use social media scheduling tools like Hootsuite to auto-post your updates to all your social accounts then evaluate the results with the analytics they provide.

So, the whole point of taking tools help is to plan ahead of time. Plan, create and schedule posts on your content calendar. Scheduling tools have inbuilt content calendar makes it easier for you to keep an eye on your posts.

Schedule your posts, tweets, along with hashtags and social media mentions all in one go for the month. Such an approach will save you time, helping you be more productive and focus on the overall strategy.

10. Acknowledge your mistakes

“Wear it like armour, and it can never be used to hurt you." - Tyrion Lannister, Game OF Thrones

We're all humans, we make mistakes. This is especially essential to accept in the fast-growing world of social media. Instead of being ignorant of your mistakes, accept and improve it. Work on them and tell your customers about it. They’ll love you hear that you worked on your mistakes to provide them with better services.

If you’ve made a grammar mistake or missed a comma, don’t delete the post. Probably, people liked your post, and they will notice your continuous re-posting.

Concerned about bigger mistakes?

For example: a product error or accidentally charging a customer’s credit card twice, you should immediately respond apologetically, and publish a post from your social media accounts telling how you’ve handled the error and customers will understand it.

For instance, I liked how Pamela Vaughan, from HubSpot, regulated her baby bump error. Instead of her personal Twitter account, she accidentally published a picture of her growing pregnant belly on HubSpot’s Twitter account that had over 340,000 followers. She wasn’t lost and knew the way to jump. She created an excellent blog post about her 15 minutes of shame on Twitter that got a lot of shares and comments.

Bottom Line

An effective social media strategy is an essential part of your overall marketing plan, and using unconventional ways to interact with your audience is what will allow you to improve your strategy.

Let us know how these useful these tips have been for you.

If you enjoyed reading this, share your experiences and insights through comments below.