Social Media marketing has emerged as a great tool to gain more audience. Every marketing campaign is focused on how much exposure or audience it will be able to get. Like old times every marketing platform was ranked on how much visibility it will be able to give to that specific product or brand i.e ads in the newspaper are significantly less expensive than the ones on TV because TV is able to give far more reach. The metric that is usually used to define the reach is called CPM(cost per thousand impressions) which is the cost that you need to pay to reach 1000 people.  The average CPM for social media is less than $3 while same would cost $28 on broadcast TV.

Not only social media marketing is cheap it also seems to be more effective according to CNBC, sports teams are getting more exposure on social media as compared to TV ads. If you factor in the cost associated with ads you will easily see that ROI(rate-of-return) on social media is significantly more.

We will share some great social media marketing tips to make your social media marketing strategy more effective. Whether you are new to social media or have a bit of experience these social media tips will definitely help you horn your skills.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Before we divulge into these social media tips and tricks first we need to understand what social media marketing basically is and how it works. Social media refers to as the combination of all the social networking sites i.e Facebook, Twitter and Reddit etc.

Today social proof is a real deal and it affects businesses and brands. Like when we want to try a new restaurant or a hotel, first thing that we see is what people are saying about them. The reviews for that establishment can be a deal breaker or deal maker. You are more likely to go to the place with 4-5 stars. Similarly when people see that your brand has more than 5000 followers or likes they automatically consider them as someone who knows what you are talking about.

Every social networking site is different from other but the underlying similarity is same on all of them which is they are free to access to general population and they are free to share their opinion. Now social media marketing is the use of these social networking sites to market your product or brand and gain more audience. As each of the social networking sites is different from other so each of them requires a bit of different approach but the ultimate goal is same to get more traffic.

10 Ultimate Social Media Marketing Tips

1. Create Impeccable Social Media Pages

The first thing that you need to have is perfect social media pages for your brand and company. Every social media page must have their own cover photos and display pics, You cant use same pictures as dimensions for each cover photo is different.

Have all the information filled out on every networking site that you are planning to use. Almost each social networking site has a description box while on twitter it is just 160 characters but other sites allow more details. make sure you elegantly describe your brand and your vision.

2. Post Steadily and Regularly

The most important tip is to post consistently and regularly. Each social media channel has a different mood and appeal like for Twitter, a single tweet a day might not be enough while on Instagram you might get away with posting twice or thrice a week. The key is that you need to have a plan for your posting and should stick to that schedule.

A simple way to make your schedule is by studying and analyzing your competition. At least post as much and with the same frequency as your competitors. Creating weekly or monthly excel sheet which mention days and post is a great way to stick to your schedule.

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Keep track of your audience and keep in mind their demography. Your post should satisfy the need of all of your audiences. Let's take the example of Apple, their followers can range from Creative content creators to Businessmen, now to cater both of them they have to do posting that matches the taste the of each of these groups. So while posting this should be in the back of your head that each post should be relevant to one specific group.

3. Get Going With Influencer Marketing

The next big thing in social media marketing is the use of influencers marketing. Influencer marketing means that someone from social media with the huge following mentions your product or service on the go. It does not need to be a full-fledged endorsement. The social media celebrity might just mention your product in a talk or a share. According to a latest influencer marketing statistics in 2020, brands are more investing in  social media influence marketing. While 60% of fashion brands are already using influencer marketing. There are people on social media that have millions of followers and they post reach is also in millions. Its a very fast way o get exposure. The great thing is that this kind of social media marketing is very targeted. Most of the time the follower of any specific social media celebrity would be from same demography e.g. fashion or fitness. If you can find a social media influencer from your niche, your product will reach only that audience which is a great thing.

I share everything with her, but there's no way I'm sharing my food! The McRib Finder for iMessage made our journey easy! @mcdonalds #ad

A post shared by Cody Johns (@codyjohns) on Dec 20, 2016 at 11:18am PST

Here is an example of influencer marketing done right. Macdonald employed Cody Johns to promote their product. Believe me, they have also used fitness models for influencer marketing to dilute the fact the fast food is not good for your health. Sometimes the marketing is done in a subtle way where the influencer might no directly say something about the product. The product is placed in their post, this is called creative product placement. When audience see that their favourite online celebrity is using this laptop for work or these trousers to workout, they unconsciously inclined towards that brand.

You might like to read: Top Social Media Influencers from Dubai

4. Join and Participate in Communities

Search for the groups and communities similar to your brand and niche and join them. There are Facebook groups and Google+ groups for almost all the niches. Participate in them and share your insights on the topic this will help you establish your brand as an authority. People will interact with you and if they like what you have to say they might help you build audience and backlinks.

Another thing that can be done is to create your own community or group. This will be the case when your niche does not have an existing groups or groups are there but they are not very active. Creating your own group can give an extra edge of moderation that you can utilize to start a discussion and monitor it as it goes forward.

Some ideas for creating groups are:

• A business group of your locality or city.
• A group of the people from your own niche and industry i.e if you own an online clothing store then creating a fashion awareness group is a great idea.

One thing to keep in mind while creating and managing a group is that this is not direct marketing tool and you should not use it in that sense but your mindset should be of branding. Try to project your company philosophy and approach rather than sharing your products and asking people to buy them. Keeping your group active is another thing to look out for. Some activities that you can do to engage more people is to create polls and ask questions.

5. Find More Exposure on Twitter

The number of followers is important if your brand is new but after some time it becomes less relevant. The more important factor the people who engage. It is far more effective to have 1000 active followers that participate rather than 10,000, who does not have participated at all.

Twitter is being used by over 330 Million Monthly users and you can attract some of them to your brand that can result in leads. Just having a Twitter page for your brand is not enough. The first thing that needs to be done if your brand is new on twitter is to gain more followers because if produce great content and share it on Twitter where there no one to see it, that's an exercise in futile. You rather than focusing on the content first thing is to focus on the exposure. The good ideas is to have 5 - 10 good posts than gain as much followers as you can. Now getting more followers is easy but getting more followers from your particular niche is quite difficult. There are some tricks that you can use to get to the people who have the same interest as your brand.

The first thing to utilize lists of known twitter influencers. Follow a person which is from your niche.Usually, they categorize their followers on the basis of interest i.e A person from Digital Marketing have separate lists for SEO Experts, Growth Hackers and Bloggers. Now go into their lists and you will most likely hit the jackpot of like-minded people, follow them and they will probably follow you back.

Another thing that you can do is to use an online tool like Twellow. Which you can use to mine for the followers. Twellow lets you create a free profile and then search for millions of users that are categorized according to their interests. From there you can follow them. Twellow also saves your profile in its database that can ultimately be seen by other Twitter users when they search. Twiends is another tool which lets you create your profile and then it adds your profile to their browseable interest-based directory.

You can also relevant hashtags while twitting so that when people search for that keyword they also find you and follow you.  As tweets with hashtags get more exposure.

6. Be Active

As mentioned earlier just having pages on social media sites is not enough, you need to post and interact with other people. Being active is the key to an effective social media marketing strategy. Just posting links is not enough. Try to create two-way posts in which you ask users for their opinion or you can ask a question. This way your audience will see that you care about your brand. Answers people concerns in best possible manner and never use loose talk even if the questioner is deliberately trying to post offensive stuff. Starting a conversation is the key, share a blog post and then ask people opinion on it. You will be surprised how quickly you will get the response. Once the conversation is going other users will gradually become part of it.

Also, tag and mention other people especially if the post is somehow related to them in that way they might share it on their feed as well. Specifically, tag those people in your post that is mentioned in your article or link that you are sharing.

Sharing your day to day activities from your company is another great way to interact and build trust. That way people will know that you have actual people working for you and have actual office space. There are a lot of companies that exist just on the web and they have no actual presence, you want to stand your brand out of that line and make people believe that there are actual human beings behind this brand.

Using branded hashtags is also another way to get the talk going. If your products are being used by people ask them to show they are enjoying it with the branded hashtag.

This is one great example of using a branded hashtag campaign. Coca-Cola launched this campaign and they got a very positive response. The hashtag created the brand name and the activity.

You Might Like to Read About: Guide to Digital Marketing in Dubai

7. Make it Appealing

Why? the big question. Why should people follow you on twitter or Instagram or like your Facebook, LinkedIn page? You should give the answer to this question to your target audience. Make your brand appealing and also your social media pages. Try to create some sort of exclusivity for each of your social media platform.

• You share exclusive offers only to your twitter followers
• You share exclusive back the scene glimpse of your company on Instagram
• You share well research and detailed analysis only on LinkedIn
• You give gift coupons only on your Facebook page

These are just some examples that you can use to gain more audience. This sense of exclusivity will exponentially increase your followers. This is also a great way for you to analyze what social media marketing plan is working for you and what is not. You can take decisions to precisely curate your next steps. Make sure you share these offers exclusively on that social media page not everywhere. If you share same things on your website and blogs than there is no value for that offer.

Creating a contest or giveaways is a great tool to get more exposure and audience. The method is simple, have a giveaway contest for one of your product on social media page i.e a shirt or a free lunch. Create some conditions to be part of that contest. The conditions can also be used to gain more followers i.e.

• Ask them to first share this post on their own feed or timeline
• Ask them to tag two of their friends
• Ask them to say one sentence about the brand or company

This will not only give you more exposure but will also build trust. Keep in mind to share the results of your contest and congratulate the winner. Also publically share whenever that person avails that offer. When he/she receives your giveaway product ask them to send you a pic with that product and share that pic on your brand page. Align your contests and giveaways with public holidays and events i.e Valentines Day or Christmas holidays.

8. Give Social Media Page Links

You have a good amount of traffic coming to your site daily, you can stir this traffic to your social media pages. Give links to your social media pages on your website and blog posts. Make sure your social links are clearly visible.  Almost every social media site gives their official buttons and badges that you can add to your site.

You can also include the links to your top social media pages in your email signature. This a great way to share your social media pages. The people who read your emails are usually interested in your brand that's why they are contacting you. When they see the link in the signature they will most likely react to it.

If you have a large number of followers on one account you can ask them to join your other social media page. This way you can instantly get a huge bump in your audience on other platforms as well. Keep in mind not to be pushy about that and ask them politely i.e send a tweet like "are you on Instagram, follow us there as well."

9. Use Paid Social Media Advertisement

Almost all social media platforms now offer paid advertising options which you can use to instantly get more audience. As mentioned earlier the CPM for online advertisement is much lower than other channels. Utilizing these pain advertisement can really make a difference if you do it right. Facebook brands have seen a decline in their organic user engagement and it is still going down. Things that you need to consider before going out and paying for advertisement are your ad spend, content selection, targeting frequency and audience demographics.

The first and most important step is to strategically set your goals or what you want to achieve by paying for social media advertisement. Usually, online brands have one or more of these goals

• Increase in online visibility
• Increase in traffic to their site
• Increase in engagement
• More leads and sales

If your brand is new and you want to build more awareness than your aim should be getting more online visibility. So that people talk about you and know what your brand values are and what unique services are you offering. Your brand is already well established and getting a good amount of traffic, then you should focus on getting more leads and more sales from your social pages.

When you decided on your goals the next step is to select the platform that you are going to use. The key here is to see the taste and niche of your brand. Some brands are highly visual on Instagram like clothing and jewellery while other have more audience on Linkedin i.e software service. So go with a platform that is more prone to your niche. Facebook allows you to narrow your reach to a very very specific audience you can utilize it but don't overdo it because that will limit your ads visibility. Try to find a middle ground and stick with it.

Research suggested that people don't like stale paid promotion most of the time. Try to blend your posts with ads. That is a great way to increase your brand visibility. Include A/B testing into your social media marketing plan. Which basically means that you give different headlines to same ads. Then you see the response of those catchphrases. This is more useful when you incorporate it with quality content. The headline or the catchphrases might able to get the attention of the user to click on the ad but if the target content is not good enough that will be a waste of ad revenue.

10. Keep Track

If you are not measuring your performance how can you measure the effectiveness of your plan? A survey was done by Convince & Convert showed more than 40% of brands were not measuring their social media marketing ROI. So keep an eagle eye on your posts and the resulted engagement that you get with the different type of social sharing. The most straightforward thing to see is the number of your followers and likes that you are getting. If your audience is growing steadily and consistently that's a good sign. Other things that need to keep an eye are

• Social media post engagement
• Post Reach
• Post Impressions
• Post views
• Post Likes and Comments

Whenever you change some posting method, deeply analyze its effect some time a negative post can give you far more engagement than a positive one. You might want to play with that as well but don't go over the board with this just see how your audience reacts to it. This all comes down to one simple thing that is experimentation and calculation. Experiment with the posting and calculate the effectiveness of your social media marketing plan. Almost all the social media site like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram gives you a brief overview of the analytics of all of your post. Where you can see the reach of your post and the level of engagement that you are getting.

Keeping track of your competitors must also be part of your analysis. If you do not have enough resources to do your own research you can use your competitors research instead. If done intelligently you can get away with this trick. The steps are simple just follow what they are doing i.e if they are offering some special discount you should also offer same or better discount. If they are working on video promotions and you see positive audience engagement, your next project should be your own promotional video. As mentioned earlier you should do it intelligently, the audience must not get the sense that you are completely copying other. Try to blend your own taste into posts.

Conclusion

Now you have quite a good amount of knowledge with above mentioned social media marketing tips. This is the time to create your own social media marketing strategy and implement it. Every plan is only effective if you stick with it. Be flexible and keep in mind that you might need to change and tweak as you go on.