Do you know social media the way a professional marketer should? It’s hard to determine your skill level with trends and technology consistently advancing. The new generation can adapt to a new skill overnight, while some are stuck in 1995. The era of creating a Facebook profile, uploading large albums, and tagging your friends is over.
Keeping up with trends may seem like a chore but can be beneficial if you want to market yourself or your business.
Any form of marketing is considered marketing. It is up to you to decide if you will put your efforts into good or bad marketing. Luckily some professionals can help take your social media a notch higher like Practina. It is a social media marketing platform that helps businesses improve their social presence and succeed.
Understanding what to post, what not to post, when to post, and how to post are essential to a strong marketing strategy. This quick guide can help you get the most out of social media and boost business.
1. Strategize
The very first thing you’ll want to do is to come up with a strategy. A business without a marketing strategy is like a chicken running headless – all over the place. It helps determine your goals as a business, how to achieve them, and monitor when you can expect to see results.
The best way to create an effective strategy is first to list what your business wants to achieve. Are you looking to drive in more website traffic or want more people to visit a particular location? Setting goals will help you build the foundation of your strategy. Do you have a unique feature you’d like to advertise? Focus on a few main aspects of your business you want your customers to know.
You must then explore the best ways to go about achieving these goals. For example, do you need to hire someone to take photos and videos of your products/services? Or do you require an extra hand when it comes to creating content? You must also keep in mind that each business requires different types of content.
Once you know how to take action, you can focus on the logistics of executing the strategy.
2. Plan
Creating a plan will save you a lot of time and help you to maintain efforts. You should make a plan to allocate time toward executing your marketing strategy. Taking out at least an hour a day to go over the details of your business’ marketing plan will make it easy to recognize progress.
Along with this, you’ll be able to stay up to date with what’s happening in the world of social media. You can easily track any changes, new trends, or progress. Your plan will assist you in understanding the effectiveness of your strategy and how to continue updating it.
3. Quality Content
According to the famous influencer @garyvee, “Content is king, but context is God.” Posting aimless photos of your business might have more of a negative effect on your audience than a positive one. Or it might go completely unnoticed.
Posting quality content consistently is one of the essential parts of successfully marketing your business. Here’s what to aim for when creating content:
- Engaging – Content that involves your audience or intrigues them is more likely to receive a higher response. People will want to like, comment, or share your post. For example, asking your audience an opinionated question can increase your post’s engagement rate.
- Relatable – Is your content relatable for your target audience? For example, posting just about the ingredients you use at your bakery may not be as relatable as how you bake your cookies. Viewers can gain more information from the baking process instead of looking at one ingredient. Relatable content will always succeed.
- Attractive – When all else fails, an aesthetically pleasing photo or video will always capture your viewer’s attention. There are all kinds of social media users. Some prefer visuals while others prefer context, but an attractive post will interest all types of audiences.
4. Set Up a Content Bank
Part of creating a social media marketing plan will result in setting up a content bank. As a business owner, you can save countless hours by pre-creating content you plan to post. It’s an excellent way to decide the order of your posts, and scheduling them beforehand will remove the worry of missing a post.
5. Choose the Right Platforms
A profile on each social media platform is not necessary. By determining your target demographic, you’ll be able to select a few outlets to market your business. For example, marketing on LinkedIn wouldn’t be ideal if you own a nightclub business. LinkedIn users are typically older and more business opportunity oriented, whereas Instagram consists of many young adults constantly looking for new social events.
Catering your efforts to a few platforms will save time and allow you to put more effort into your content.
6. Be Ready to Change
Just like technology, social media is constantly changing. New trends make their way almost every couple of weeks, and users are quick to follow them. Staying updated is important because following an outdated trend is an embarrassing and ineffective marketing tactic.
Social media platforms regularly keep introducing new features and updates that you should adapt. It can help create new ways of marketing and keep your business relevant amongst its competitors.
7. Use Hashtags
Hashtags group similar posts and help people come across them effortlessly. They bring awareness to your content and increase the chances of people noticing your business.
Using too many hashtags might be ineffective as users tend to ignore content irrelevant to the hashtag. However, using the right hashtags will have a positive effect.
8. Track Your Analytics
Tracking your analytics is a marketing tip that will go a long way. You can view your marketing strategy from a different lens where you can see the progress and failures of your efforts.
Your social media content analytics will include the engagement rate, how many accounts you’ve reached, and the number of views and likes. You can also track many other aspects depending on the social media networks you are using.
It’s beneficial to view if your account is gaining new followers, which means more people like your content. Receiving a higher engagement rate helps understand what marketing campaign is effective. With this knowledge, you can plan your future campaigns and strategies accordingly.
9. Keep an Eye on Your Competition
Keeping an eye on your competitors will give you an idea of what type of content brings in a positive response and what fails. This way, you’ll be able to avoid making the same mistakes and can improve your content quality.
By hopping on a trend or introducing a unique feature before your competitors, you will drive more attention to your business. It’ll build a good reputation for your company and attract more customers.
10. Brainstorm
Always brainstorm new ideas, marketing tactics, and ways to be creative. This will set you apart from other businesses and will continue to help your company flourish. Doing unique things or thinking outside the box will help you stand out, and viewers will begin to notice your profile more than usual.
By consistently brainstorming new ideas, your business will remain relevant amongst social media users and help you find unique ways of turning viewers into customers.
Moving Forward
Most business owners keep busy and look for social media tools that can manage their social media marketing. Some sign up with multiple platforms that individually help either keep track of analytics, create content or allow you to track new followers.
Practina is a social media marketing tool that provides businesses with a complete package. Here is an overview of the features Practina has to offer:
- Creates original content – Practina creates content specifically tailored to your business and its goals. By using the images/videos you provide, Practina can transform your content into professional posts that cater to your target audience.
- Scheduler – Practina schedules your content for you to keep audiences engaged.
- Creates Ads – Practina’s AI technology targets customers interested in your products/services by creating customized Google Ads and Facebook Ads and Instagram.
- Analytics – You don’t need to download a separate app to track your analytics. Practina will do it for you and provide you with a report. You can view the ups and downs of your marketing campaigns with the help of Practina’s tracker.
These ten steps will help you achieve your business goals and higher levels of success. Practina is an excellent tool that makes the entire process easier.
