Social media marketing strategies: Have you ever been on an expressway, about to hit your destination, only to realize that the map was guiding you wrong? You can’t contain your fury at that desperate moment and kick the bonnet hard!
Now imagine such misery during your marketing campaign. When you think your campaign will bear fruits, you realize you were backing the wrong horse all along. It is particularly true in the case of social media marketing. Unlike conventional sources, this form of outreach is subject to fluctuations.
Increasing Social Media Consumption
From choosing the right channels to curating the content strategy, analysis paralysis is a serious issue for marketers today.
According to ClickZ, Internet users make up 57% of the global population. On average, people spend 6 hours and 42 minutes online each day. By 2021, a projected 73% of all ecommerce sales will happen via mobile.
It opens a plethora of avenues to conduct smart social media marketing. Surviving in the cut-throat competition where the attention span of the audience is continuously shrinking is not easy. Marketers need to adjust their strategies, make their campaigns less intrusive, and more appealing.
According to an AdWeek finding, over one-third of CMOs believe that the digital arena will consume 75% of marketing expenditure in the next five years.
Given the number, it is imperative for marketing prodigies out there to jog their creative instincts.
Changing algorithms impact your social media game
Besides the users craving a wholesome social experience, there is also a factor of changing algorithms to account for.
An algorithm is a set of mathematical rules determining how a group of data behaves. The social media algorithms are a way of sorting posts in a user’s feed based on relevance rather than the published time.
Currently, more than three billion people are using social media each day. There are also a ton of new trends that affect how users engage on these platforms.
Facebook, for instance, has been aggressively tackling spam on the platform. In the first three months of 2018, it discarded more than 500 million false accounts. It created a significant impact on the brand followers as they found the numbers decreasing dramatically.
The point here is, you must optimize content for each social media platform according to the new updates that can help you get more Facebook Likes. If used cleverly, these platforms are a massively improve ROI and traffic.
Best Social Media Tactics you need today
You need a set of strategies to ensure your social media strategy does not appear too pushy or too fake. Following are five tactics that should be the cornerstones of your approach to keeping it relevant:
Master the art of story-telling
Today, we see innovative story-telling being incorporated into brands’ marketing strategies. More and more people want to support a brand that has a meaningful mission.
Plus, in the wake of algorithms demoting promotional or link-heavy brands, the story-telling posts have a better chance of popping up in your followers’ feed.
Popular Instagram accounts like Humans of New York work exclusively based on emotional, story-telling content. Infusing the same methods, you can give voice to the deserving people out there. It will illuminate prospects about your humanistic approach and encourage them to back you up.
Not all your content should be about promoting your products. A good social media marketing strategies is to mix promotional content with posts on issues that are affecting people. For example, BN3TH, a men underwear brand, posted this to emphasize the importance of tree plantation:
Talking about issues and showing empathy and care in your content generates an emotional connection with the customers as they see that the brand cares about their problems and not only promotes its products.
Repurpose your best content
Repurposing old content is a time-saver. It gives a second chance to your content as you utilize it to create something entirely new and original.
Each brand needs a ton of content to fill up their social media. They require multiple posts for every platform. When you repurpose old content, it gives you a chance to get the most out of your social media marketing strategies.
You can adopt strategies like throwback posts, turning a blog into a podcast, or use quotes from a blog post to create an image. This way, a single form of content can account for dozens of posts across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, all at once.
Work with Micro-Influencers
There is no single opinion on how many followers a micro-influencer has. Some say it must be a number between 1 to 10 thousand.
Meanwhile, others consider people with 500 000 followers as micro-influencers. Ideally, you should pick an influencer who is directly or indirectly related to your niche.
It is plausible to incline towards celebrities having a massive following. Of course, they tend to bring more traffic. However, when it comes to trusting an influencer, this is not the case.
According to findings by Izea, people trust smaller influencers more than they trust big influencers or celebrities. In fact, influencers with a lower number of followers have a high engagement rate.
A key to making sure your influencer marketing strategy becomes fruitful is – research. Get an ideal influencer for your product and ask them to promote the product in a way that it appears natural to their followers.
You should make sure that the person looks sincere while promoting your brand. A genuine, heartfelt review from micro-influencer would make them an advocate of your brand whom people trust.
Go Live
Live streaming platforms like Instagram Live and Facebook Live are a fantastic way to build a connection with your audience. Facebook alone holds the potential to reach 1.71 billion monthly active users.
Going live is an excellent way to engage with your audiences. It allows people to experience what your business does and react in real-time. Each video content must be consistent with the brand’s image and give the viewers a reason to watch. It means your video should serve value, add to their info, and it must be engaging.
Parting Thoughts
Businesses are continually searching for the latest methods when it comes to engaging with their followers. Following the tide, you must work out a strategic blend that aligns with your brand image and helps you amplify your overall public reach.
If you are a social media maven, aiming to be on the frontlines of new marketing trends, work on your PR and engagement. Hopefully, after this talk, you will be well on creating a dynamic and powerful social media campaign.
