Social Media is the heart of any brand campaign. You can’t build a brand without building a Social Media Presence.
With millions of users using Social Media, it is one the easiest ways to reach your target audience and create awareness and hype about your products or services. Can you believe that 57% of the world’s population is on Social Media? All you need to work on is gaining their attention.
It is not enough to just be active on Social Media, in order to make the most of what social media platforms have to offer, you need a build a methodological social media strategy. It is no easy feat to build a social media presence, and gain visibility, engagement and following.
However, if you play your cards right, you can be a social media phenomenon! In this article, we will discuss ways in which you can boost your social media campaign. Do give us a shoutout once you’ve successfully built your social media empire. ( As you surely will if you follow these tips! ).
Here are some Social Media Marketing Tips to Skyrocket Your Traffic
1. Set SMART Goals
Goals. The difference between success and struggle. If you work without a goal in mind, you will end up diverting from your path, losing motivation and just feeling lost in general. That’s why for achieving anything worthwhile in life, you need to set solid tangible goals.
As a brand, being on social media just because it is trendy isn’t a good enough reason. Your aim should be to utilize social media to increase your brand’s popularity, boost conversion rates on your website and build an image for yourself.
Brands should establish goals that are straightforward, measurable, attainable, and suitable and aim to realise them in set time frames.
For instance, a good goal can be to increase your YouTube subscriber count by 1/3rd by the end of the quarter.
The concept of SMART goals is as old as the internet perhaps. Let’s refresh what SMART goals are all about:
- Specific: Specifically recognise the social media outlet you want to analyse and a metric that you can use for your analysis
- Measurable: Measure the results. For example, you can use Instagram Analysis to see how your page metrics have improved in the stipulated time.
- Achievable: It is easy to write extraordinary goals but in reality, all that leads to is a disappointment. If you set unrealistic goals, you are only setting up yourself for failure. So set Achievable goals.
- Relevant: Your Goals should be aligned with your Brand’s message. For example, if you are a social media influencer, increasing your engagement is relevant to your goals. However, for E-Commerce websites, a jump in conversion rates is more relevant.
- Time-bound: Time-specific goals allow you to set tangible targets that track your progress.
2. Learn About Your Target Audience
Social media has millions of users. Not every one of those people is going to be interested in your content. You need to curate your Social Media Marketing strategy in such a way that you reach the people who will actually be interested in what you have to say.
How can you identify your audience? Ask yourselves what the audience will bring to you. For instance, if you are looking for a collaboration to highlight your Social Media presence, your target audience might constitute influencers in your niche who can promote your products and services. Similarly, if you are looking to sell custom shoes on your Instagram shop, your targeted audience might be youngsters and college students.
The following criterion is a good guide to finding your target audience:
- The social media site you are posting on
- The time you post
- The kind of content you create
- The voice of your brand
- The way your profile looks to visitors
Some brands get frustrated because their social media content despite being good doesn’t get enough traction. This is because their content is aimed at a general audience or public rather than a defined target audience.
3. Select Your Social Media Platforms Wisely
There are many many social media platforms. It is not necessary for you to be active on each of them to build a good social media presence. It is rather more important to be impactful on the platforms that you do use. It is much much better to post great content on 2-3 platforms that post poor quality content across 10 platforms.
You should focus on building a strong presence on one media platform and that way, you can utilize that on your other platforms as well.
Research the preferred platforms amongst the audience of your niche. Also, remember to choose a platform that aligns with your goals and that you are comfortable using.
4. Seek Relationships, Not Just Followers
Quality over Quantity. While it may be presumptuous to say your followers are your friends, the saying still stands. A few good friends who support you are better than 100s of friends when no one shows up when you need them.
Your Social Media followers are people who trust you and you should always make sure that you respect and honour the trust they have placed in you by posting authentic, relevant content. Don’t treat your followers as a vanity count, they are real people and in today’s age of instant connectivity, you should not miss the chance of forming good relationships online.
Always respond to your comments and pay attention to the needs of your audience. Be authentic. Look out for collaborations with like-minded pages. Reply to DMs and mentions. This way social media can be a mutual relationship between you and your followers.
5. Set Up a Social Media Content Calendar
Posting consistently is perhaps the most important aspect of a successful Social Media Strategy.
All popular channels have a fixed posting schedule. When you’re managing multiple social media channels, the timelines can get confusing. You are also prone to human error and might forget to post someday. A calendar is a good way to keep yourself accountable and keep track of your progress.
If you’re still not convinced, we have made a list of the ways an Editorial Calendar can be beneficial to your Social Media Marketing Strategy:
- You can tweak your posts for individual platforms without having to bounce between the sites.
- You can time your posts to optimize engagement. This way your efforts will not go in vain.
- You can see what content you’ve already posted and thereby, a social media calendar is useful to avoid repetitive content.
6. Use the Art of Storytelling
People are always drawn to stories. A good story can boost your social media campaign as much as a well-crafted post. Why do people love stories? Stories are inspirational and relatable. They make us feel connected and give us hope.
For instance, this Cadbury Advertisement appeal to our emotional strings. Cadbury’s creative and unique story-telling abilities have played a huge role in establishing as a part of every occasion.
Similarly, Tinder Instagram posts stories of couples that met through the app. These stories are often happy and emotional and they make their audience feel like they can also find love on the app.
So if you do it right, story-telling can be a game-changer!
7. Automate the Right Way
Do smart work over hard work. Posting manually across multiple social media platforms is a hassle and you are more likely to make mistakes doing so. But don’t worry because Social Media Tools are here for your rescue!
Automation is the future! Integrating Social Media with automation is the new thing of 2022.
While automation is helpful, it can not replicate the human experience. So, you can not just leave the social media strings on autopilot and expect good results.
For instance, automatic replies come across as insincere and tone-deaf.
Learn how to optimize automation to reduce your work in the right ways. Automation to post content on a schedule is one such example. However, when dealing with real-time customers, it is better to handle it one on one. There are a number of good software that you can include in your social media strategy like Semrush, Google Analytics, Heap Analytics, etc.
8. Use Emoticons
Emoticons speak when words fail. Sometimes, a well-placed emoticon is the difference between a playful comment and an arrogant one.
Emojis when rightly use can be helpful in accurately depicting the desired tone and emotion behind the message. When you can’t see someone’s facial expressions, it is easy to misinterpret what they are saying. For example, the below two sentences are worded the same yet they convey different emotions:
You are crazy! 😆
You are crazy! 😡
So don’t shy away from using emojis in your posts. A simple 🙂 or <3 can make your users feel more welcome and add a human touch to your posts.
9. Focus on Helping Over Selling
As we discussed earlier, your followers are not just numbers on a screen. They are real people with real lives.
And you can’t connect with real people if you constantly only looking to push your personal agenda onto them without understanding where they are coming from. Ofcourse as a brand, you should be promoting your products and services. However, your entire social media campaign should not be like a non-stop pestering advertisement. It is acceptable if you are an E-Commerce page, however, even so, you should focus on engagement with your audience, replying to queries and responding to reviews.
Always be in sync with your audience. For instance, if your audience seems to be interested in some topic, create a post about it. This will build trust with your audience. If you follow these steps, you will earn loyal lifelong customers.
10. Embrace Your Mistakes
Humans make mistakes. That’s just a fact. While as a brand you should try to be as precautious and careful as possible, it’s okay to make mistakes. However, what is not okay is being ignorant of your mistakes and not taking fast steps to rectify them.
For instance, if you share a post that contains incorrect information, take it down as soon as you are informed about it. Make sure to tell your audience that the information shared was incorrect. Your followers will respect you for owning up to your mistake and not letting misinformation spread.
When it comes to bigger mistakes like damaged products or failed payments, take prompt action and reach out to affected customers apologizing for the inconvenience.
11. Optimize Your Post Frequency
Audience from different demographics uses Social Media at different times. In order to reach your desired audience, you need to tune in to their schedule. For instance, if you creating content aimed at young adults, posting in the middle of business hours might not work in your best interests. You can figure out the optimum time zone by analysing your posts and through experience.
In the beginning, just find the best time to post. Once you have that clear, find a time-frequency to follow it with. According to many studies, the ideal time to post on different platforms varies as follows:
- Twitter: 12 pm, 6 pm
- Facebook: 9 am-7 pm
- LinkedIn: 7 am-8 am, 5 pm-6 pm
- Instagram: 2 am, 8 am-9 am, 5 pm
12. Treat Each Social Channel Uniquely
Each Social Media platform has a different algorithm and different audiences. You can’t copy-paste the same content on post it across all the platforms because while it may work for some, it won’t for others.
To bear fruit on your social media efforts, treat each Social Media channel uniquely keeping in mind their unique functionalities and uses.
For instance, Twitter is a great platform for real-time updates. You can make simple tweets to update your audience about new launches, dates, etc. Facebook is the perfect place to interact and build a community where you can discuss things and answer questions. Instagram is where you should be if your forte is visually appealing dynamic content.
Consider the demographic of your target audience and post accordingly on different platforms.
13. Share Quality Visual Content
Human beings are visual creatures. Especially when browsing on social media, people find it bothersome to read large bodies of texts and are more drawn to content that is visually attractive.
According to many studies on the same, it has been found that content that leverages visual medium (like banners on blogs, posters on tweets) performs almost 50% better.
Another reason to double down on visual content is that people retain it more. The Wyzowl study shows that people recall only 20% of what they read while they can recall up to 80% of what they see.
People share visual content more and react to it more enthusiastically.
14. Dive deep into Social Media Analytics
What part of your campaign is working and what needs more work? Should you switch back to your old style or continue with the new one?
These questions are difficult to answer without performing a detailed analysis of your Social Media Channels.
Analytics play a big role in helping you understand your audience and recognize content that generates more traffic and conversions. You can use this analysis to work and improve your social media marketing strategy.
The analysis includes data on follower growth, page views, engagements, likes, shares, impressions, clicks, etc. Use these analytics to rethink your strategy and constantly improvise!
15. Don’t Be Afraid to Pay
While Social Media is free to users, it is sadly not the case if you want to be a well-known content creator. While organic traffic still accounts for a huge portion of social media channels.
Facebook’s updated algorithm and new business feature being on Instagram are paving the way for more roles for advertisements in social media marketing.
Other than paid advertisements, paid collaborations with brands and influencers are also gaining popularity.
But don’t be afraid of spending some cash because the Rate of Interest (ROI) generated from these advertisements and collaborations will be more than worth it.
Conclusion
To conclude, a strong social media strategy is an integral part of any marketing campaign. Innovative ways to use Social Media can open many exciting doors for you and your brand. So, don’t be scared to experiment around and have fun!
Talking to your audience is easier than ever, thanks to social media. So, make the most of it because that is how you will foster long-lasting relationships with your audience.
You can track the success of your social media campaign through analytical tools and improvise accordingly. The main thing to keep in mind about a good social media strategy is that it is constantly adapting along with new trends and updates.
