The Top 6 Tips to Maximize your Social Media Growth (for Businesses)

If you are reading this, you might be looking for new, innovative ways to change how your business (or the business you work for) does social. As we all know, social media has become a part of the way we communicate and market today's products and services. How do you use social media? Lead generation? Brand awareness? Or simply as a means to drive conversions? No matter your situation, these tips will provide guidance for you in developing your company's social strategy.

1.) Have a social media strategy

Having a clear, concise plan of action for your organization's incorporation of social media into its overall marketing strategy is crucial. This is the backbone to all strategic action, especially when it comes to how social media is to be integrated. What are the end goals of putting efforts into a social media presence? To better communicate with your audiences? To gain new customers and brand advocates? Or simply to have more people learn about what you offer? First step in this hefty task is to identify these key metrics, then build around them! Sit down with your organization's decision makers and think, "How can we use social media most effectively to achieve set goals?"

2.) Choose tools/software that are appropriately scalable

Depending on your company's needs, there are tools and software that fit you appropriately. If you are only a 1-person show, then an enterprise level tools is probably not the one for you. For smaller businesses that only manager a few social accounts, tools such as Hootsuite, Later, Grapevine, and HubSpot could fill your need.

3.) Follow competitor accounts

By following competitors accounts, you give yourself an opportunity to see what your competitor is sharing on their social media platforms. This will help you get a better analysis what your competitor is trying to market and you can tailor your platforms to compete with your competitors. 

4.) Make shareable, interactive content

When trying to promote your company on social media, you want to engage with your audience. Customers are more willing to follow your accounts if you have fun and interactive material that they can relate to. These posts can be in the forms of polls, surveys, Q and A’s, giveaways, live-streams, or others. You want to create content that your viewers would be excited to show to their family, friends, coworkers, etc… This is called the halo-effect of social media impressions. How this works is when your post is shown to ten people and is presented in a way that is interesting, they will show it to five more people. This ripple effect helps gain traction for your platform.

5.) Mixed strategy of organic and paid content

When you break down the actual day-to-day strategy of how your organization will operate social media, a good tactic is having a balanced mix between organic and paid content. Paid content is good for acquiring new interest, but it adds up in cost. When paired with organic content, paid content can be used sparingly. Having one promoted post for every two or three organic posts can not only save money, but the viewers of the paid content will often become viewers of organic content, depending on the platform. For example, on Instagram, when the recipient of an advertisement from a brand is directed to the profile, it is more effective to lead them to a content-rich page. Using organic to enrich the overall content on a page is cost-effective and ends up being worth the time that it takes to upkeep it.

6.) Track week over week analytics

When posting on social media platforms, it is crucial to track week over week analytics to measure the performance of your posts. Why weekly? Seven days is an ample amount of time to get enough data to start seeing trends. Additionally, it is a short enough time to catch any issues that need adjusted before too much damage has been done. Once you find the issues within the results, regroup, and figure out what was the root issue to the problem. (for example, poor ad performance could be a result of targeting the wrong demographics) Once the root issue has been identified, brainstorm new strategies to correct the problem. Weekly analytics can be exported from the platform you are operating on and stored in a database or document to then analyze long-term trends.

?These six tactics are a great foundation to build your organization’s social media goals and deliverables. Let me know what tactics your company/department uses! Please reach out if you have any questions or want further advice, and feel free to share this article with anyone you would benefit from reading this content!