What are the best digital marketing strategies?

In the past few years, the online world has witnessed the growing importance of Social Media as a very important digital marketing tool that can give maximum exposure and greater marketing mileage for any brand, product or service. It has gone from being a mere fad or yet another simple platform where content can be published – and evolved into one of the most powerful marketing and advertising tools and strategies.

1. Increase Online Presence in More Social Media Networks

It seems like yesterday but social media giant Facebook is already turning 10 this 2014. Growing into maturity, Facebook is still the most dominant force in social media with up to 757 million Daily Active Users (DAUs equivalent to 1.23 billion Monthly Active Users according to official reports from the social network). While the platform is the primary arena for social media marketing activities, it should not be your sole social playing ground.

2. Tailor Your Content According to Specific Social Media Platform

Many business owners and digital marketers make the error of posting the same kind of content through all the social networks they belong to. By doing so, business fail in delivering the unique user experience social media users are looking for from each particular platform. Each social network is focused on a particular demographic and social user category, so broadcasting the same type of content to all simply will not deliver the results you want.

3. Tell Stories instead of Selling Stuff

While social media is still a digital marketing tool, using this platform to sell your products directly right in front of users’ face will bring more harm than good to your brand or business. People love stories and they go to social media networks to read stories, be amazed with interesting features, and learn new things from uploads and shares. To use social media as an effective, you must learn how to tell a story first before you can even sell stuff.

4. Create and Share More Pics, Graphics and Video Content

When Facebook introduced a new feature that allowed Instagram videos to be introduced, the social network experienced up to 5 million video uploads during the first 24 hours right after their announcement. That’s the power of video and other visual elements and learning how to harness the power of these tools and elements can give you maximum exposure for your business. Now, micro-video is slowly gaining ground providing yet another form of content that will change the social media sphere.

5. Conduct Contests and Promotional Activities

One of the most effective strategies for social media in general is to get your targeted audiences directly involved in activities. Conducting contests and other promotional activities are perfect ways for driving their interests and soliciting their participation. You can be as creative as you can be in the type of contests you can conduct, but making use of the sharing and other viral components available in your social network can bring even more exposure for your brand or business as more and more online users join in.

6. Post More Educational Content

Research from Social Media B2B indicate that businesses who make use of social media strategies for content marketing like maintaining blogs generate up to 67% more leads than companies who do not have a social media presence. Through social media marketing, they can gain more of their targeted audiences’ trust and to do so they need to provide educational content that their readers will find very useful for whatever purposes or need they have.

7. Give Out a Lot of Freebies

It is better to give than to receive, the age-old adage would say, and it still works even if we’re talking about the online world. While giving certain percentages off from your regular prices and other discounts will prove valuable for your targeted audiences, the probability of them becoming loyal customers while your business exists can go much higher if you give lots of free stuff on a regular basis.

8. Put Extra Focus on Mobile Social Media Marketing

In an official press release from Facebook, the social media giant announced that there was an average of 556 million Mobile Daily Active Users, indicating a year-over-year increase of 49%. This is translated into 945 million Mobile Monthly Active Users, registering a 39% year-over-year increase in users. This is just an indication of the power of mobile social media marketing which should prompt digital marketers to create more content and location based advertising targeting mobile social media users.

9. Respond to ALL Comments, Suggestions, Inquiries and Complaints

Social media users comments, suggests, inquire or even complain on business pages and social media profiles. They do this and expect you or your social media manager to give them some form of response or acknowledgement. Convince and Convert reported that this is what social media users expect and up to 42% demand that they be responded within a short span of 60 minutes.

10. Practice Social Listening

Lastly, digital marketers should know how to listen, social listening that is. They should know the issues, keywords and key topics that their targeted audiences are talking about, so they can provide the right kind, up-to-date and very relevant content that their audiences are excited and very interested to know about. There are social listening software and other social analytical tools for this purpose that can gather and analyze data coming from the social media sphere. From the data gathered, you can gain valuable insight that will guide you towards the next steps in your social media marketing campaign.

Social media marketing is one of the most dynamic and fastest growing digital marketing channels there is. Social networks are maturing to their full potential and digital marketers should learn how to grow and harness what these social networks can bring that can deliver better brand awareness and maximum exposure for their business. Start with a little tweet, and upload, or a post – and let it grow exponentially from there.