Boost Your Business With These Social Media Marketing Strategies

Social media offers incredible opportunities for businesses to grow. It’s no longer an option: it’s mandatory. In the modern digital age, where customers expect instant results, social media is the quickest and easiest way to connect with your audience.

But getting to grips with social media can be intimidating. If you're feeling overwhelmed or failing to see results, it's time to take a step back and adapt your approach.

To help you out, here are eight essential social media marketing strategies that will help you boost your business.

1. Set Goals

Social media marketing is all about results, so it's important to set goals from the outset. What do you want to achieve?

Are you looking to reach a new audience, improve your brand awareness or increase engagement?

Whether your social media objective is to gain a larger fan base or to foster a more engaged community, clearly outlining your objectives is a crucial first step.

Do: Set SMART goals

SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-based) help you structure your goals, streamline your strategy and stay on track. This means defining specific, measurable objectives, measures for success, and deadlines.

Setting out specific, attainable goals is the first stage in developing a successful social media plan. You can't gauge performance or return on investment without some sort of target.

Don't: Think social media is a one-and-done deal

Once you've set your goals, it's important to remember that social media is an ongoing process. You'll need time, effort, and resources to achieve your objectives.

Moreover, you might have to tweak your goals as you progress, or adapt your strategy as your audience grows.

2. Pick Your Platforms

Once you've set your goals, it's time to consider which platforms you'll need to meet those goals.

There's no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to social media. Many businesses find that it's better to use multiple platforms for different purposes.

Each social media platform is unique and has its own audience, so it's a good idea to explore your options.

Limiting your options to a manageable number of platforms can help you maximize the efficiency with which you use your time.

Do: Pick the right platforms for your audience

Your social strategy should be built around your audience's interests and needs.

Are you trying to reach a younger audience? Then TikTok and Instagram might be good choices for you. If you're operating in a B2B sector, LinkedIn could be your best bet.

Find platforms where your audience is the most active, and where they're likely to have the most time to spend. This will simplify your efforts and save you time in the long run.

Don't: Use the same strategy on all platforms

Your social strategy should be tailored to each platform. This doesn't mean you need to come up with radically different posts or tone for every platform.

However, you do need to tailor your approach. For instance, the question of whether or not to use PPC advertising in place of organic search engine optimization is a common one. If you’re stuck between SEO vs PPC, the best approach is to understand their differences and then choose one accordingly for the social media platform. Your audience on each platform will have their own expectations, needs, and wants, so it's important to adapt your strategy accordingly.

3. Make a Content Schedule

Even more crucial than simply sharing exceptional content is having a strategy in place for when that material will be shared.

To keep your social media efforts organized, you should create a content schedule that details when and what you plan to share on all of your accounts.

You can schedule everything from blog posts and videos to photographs, links, and re-posts of user-generated material in one convenient location.

By scheduling your posts ahead of time, you can make sure they appear at optimal times.

Do: Use social media scheduling tools

Social media scheduling tools can make your life much easier. They let you schedule posts in advance, automate your social posting, and measure the success of each post.

Scheduling tools can also help you make the most of your time and take advantage of the best times to post. Opt for Free Hootsuite Alternatives to know which tools are in trend nowadays.

Don't: Post too often or too little

Social platforms often suggest optimal posting times, based on the length of your audience's attention spans.

However, there's no hard-and-fast rule when it comes to posting frequency. Ultimately, the important thing is to post at a frequency that suits your business's needs and your audience's habits.

Posting too much can overwhelm your audience while posting too little can prevent you from reaching your followers.

4. Respond to Comments

When you post content on social media, it's important to interact with your audience.

If you neglect to respond to comments or respond to them too late, you can lose the trust of your audience.

Try to respond as quickly as possible. Ideally, you should respond to every comment within 24 hours.

Do: Respond to negative comments

Negative comments can be intimidating, but it's important to respond to them.

If your customer is upset or unhappy with your service, responding with empathy and, if possible, a solution can turn a negative experience around.

Don't: Delete negative comments

Negative comments on social media can be uncomfortable, but it's best to leave them there.

By deleting negative comments, you're communicating to your audience that you don't value their opinions. This can have a negative impact on your brand and reputation.

On top of that, in some regulated industries, deleting negative social media comments could amount to a breach of the regulations. Consider implementing a social media archiving solution instead. These solutions allow you to view, archive, and export all social media content and stay compliant with relevant regulations.

5. Know Your Audience

Social media marketing isn't just about posting content. It's about connecting with your audience.

Take the time to get to know your audience and engage with them.

Fortunately, most of the information you need to shape your social media marketing plan around your audience is already out there. In other words, you need only know what to search for.

Do: Create customer personas

Customer personas will help you define your audience and tailor your content to meet their needs and expectations.

Think of customer personas as fictional characters based on actual customers. They provide you with a detailed snapshot of who your target audience is and what they want.

To build customer personas, start by documenting your target audience's age, gender, location, and educational background, as well as key details like their hobbies and interests.

Next, think about how you can extend this information. For example, who influences your target audience? What are their other interests?

Survey your customers, search public records, and use social media analytics to find additional information.

Don't: Forget that social media analytics matter

Social media analytics give you insights into the demographics of your audience.

For example, analytics can show you which social media platforms your audience uses, which content they prefer, and which platforms deliver the highest ROI.

6. Provide High-quality Content

Before you post content, ask yourself: is it valuable?

Content that hasn't been researched or written with your audience in mind won't help you reach your goals. Instead, focus on creating high-quality content.

You should aim to provide content types that are appropriate for the network and serve the network's intended function. You can create clips of high quality for different social media platforms to serve the intention of the network. You can also start podcasts and share snippets on social media platforms. One of the benefits of podcasting is that it is easy to get started and doesn't require you to invest too much money. It may take some time and experimentation to determine which types of material perform well on certain networks, so be ready to update this section periodically as you gather this information.

It may take some time and experimentation to determine which types of material perform well on certain networks, so be ready to update this section periodically as you gather this information.

Do: Find your unique voice

When it comes to creating high-quality content, your tone should be unique and authentic.

Your tone of voice should reflect your brand's personality and the tone of your communication. Your tone of voice should suit your target audience.

Don't: Focus on quantity over quality

While quantity matters, quality is even more important.

Quality content will help you reach your goals faster than low-quality content.

Followers don't engage with irrelevant, boring content. They want to engage with interesting, creative, and valuable content.

Provide your audience with content that helps them and improves their lives.

7. Research Your Competitors

The most successful social media marketing strategies are often inspired by your competitors.

By monitoring your competitors' activities, you can gain insights into how they're using social media, what their techniques are, and what attracts their audience to their content.

Do: use social monitoring tools

You can use social media monitoring tools to monitor the activity of your competitors.

These tools allow you to track mentions of your competitors and their brands, as well as their competitors' content.

By monitoring your competitors' activity, you can gain insights into how they're using social media, what their techniques are, and what attracts their audience to their content.

Don't: blindly copy your competitors

It's important to compare your social media strategies to your competitors, but not to copy them exactly.

Your social media marketing strategy should be unique to your business.

Instead, focus on analyzing how your competitors use social media and what attracts their audience to their content.

8. Reevaluate and Adjust Your Strategy

Social media marketing is a dynamic process, and your strategy needs to be adaptable.

As your business grows, and your audience changes, you may need to adjust your strategy.

After all, social media is constantly evolving.

Do: invest in social media analytics

Social media analytics tools can help you track your performance and identify opportunities to improve your strategy.

Tools like these give you insight into your social media ROI, help you identify content that's performing well, and help you identify opportunities to grow your audience.

Don't: ignore negative feedback

Even the best social media marketing strategies need to be maintained and updated.

That's why it's so important to listen to your audience.

When you receive negative feedback, respond to it. If somebody's upset about something, they'll often be willing to share their story.

Listening to your audience and responding to feedback helps you foster greater engagement with your audience, which will improve your business's reputation and lead to better business results.

Over to You

Social media marketing is one of the most effective ways to foster engagement and build relationships with your customers.

However, social media is a fast-moving industry, so it's important to always evaluate your strategy.

By following these eight essential social media marketing strategies you should be able to create an engaging social media plan that will boost your business.