Social media marketing strategies are effective ways for businesses of any size to reach more potential customers and increase sales via creation of contents on social platforms.
These contents can be an audio, text, image or video. No matter the format, its purpose is to achieve your marketing goals and scale up your business.
You miss out of extra income if you are not using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to address with your customers.
It’s no longer a new thing on how social media has influenced our daily lives.
We have seen our it changes people perception of buying, and how entrepreneurs have used it to change sales for good.
Yet so many business owners find it difficult to achieve the result they want.
This is mostly because they don’t know what social media marketing strategy is the best to use.
Best Social Media Marketing Strategies
1 Get SMART About Your Goals
Getting your priorities right is the first social media strategy you must employ in your business marketing.
Major problem most businesses face today is that they lack SMART goals. They don’t know what they want.
They opt in social media and start publishing with no clear plan and methods. Don’t fall victim to this.
When I mentioned SMART, I mean you set goals that are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
SMART goals increase your productivity since they are intentionally and consciously written. You will likely achieve them in short period of time.
Sit down and write realistic goals you want to achieve on social media.
Set measurable goals you know you can work with. Don’t over exaggerate neither should you come too low.
About the durations?
Depending on the strategy, your social media marketing goals can be yearly, monthly, or weekly.
As for me, I prefer setting daily goals. It serves as a constant reminder, so I don’t lose focus.
2 Research your Audience
Building your social media marketing strategies on assumption won’t take you far.
Do you know your targeted audience? How much about them do you know?
Frequent guesswork in ecommerce businesses is a sign of bad omen that the business won’t be around for long.
Do your homework by getting to know your audience (customers) better. Answer the question below.
- What social media platforms are they most active?
- What are their interests and behavioural patterns?
- Why do they buy this particular product and not others?
- What is their preferred mode of shopping?
- Make analysis of your existing audience getting to know what they look like.
There are social media management tools like CrowdFireApp that provides you with access to analytics of those following you. You can use these tools to measure metrics and research your audience.
You should also take advantage of other analytics sources from Google and your email marketing provider.
3 Decide Your Most Relevant Metrics
The only way you will know you are a success with social media is to get it right with your digital marketing metrics.
A lot of businesses executing social media marketing strategies don’t have a yardstick to measure their success. So, they keep posting and posting till they get weary.
Social metrics should not be the same for every business. Your social metrics need work with your SMART goal.
Just because your competitor has huge number of followers doesn’t mean they are successful. It could be fake followers (bots).
I once saw a page with over 2-million-page followers. But I noticed their post hardly cross 50 comments even after 24 hours of publishing.
How can you explain that?
So, your number of followers should not be a yardstick to measure your success.
I prefer to use conversion. People can view and like but they hardly comment, share or click on your link.
Those are for me. You have to choose what matters to your business the most.
4 Choose Your Social Media Platforms
Different social media platforms attract different audience.
Facebook as an example attracts more of the everyday people (the masses) – the low- and middle-income earners.
Twitter attracts top personalities (politicians, celebrities, executives and more) and in the country and around the world.
Instagram attracts more of teenagers, youths and young adults because of its bold and attractive visual effects.
YouTube similar to Facebook attracts almost everyone but still majorly the masses.
Pinterest attracts more women than men. This in turn increase the chance of shopping. If you run a fashion and beauty business, you should be using Pinterest.
LinkedIn is a professional networking social media platform where employers and employees meet. It is not your regular chit-chat community but for serious business.
You don’t have to be on all platforms. Rather, I suggest you stick to social media platforms where your audience already are.
5 Be Consistent
The level of success you achieve with your social media marketing strategies is largely determined by how consistent you are.
You need be active multiple times per day. And not just being active but doing so at specific times a day.
So, if your strategy requires posting every 4 hours, stick to it.
But before you approve of what days and time you want to be posting, I want you to look at analytics result of your former post.
With that you know where to throw in your consistency with your social media marketing strategy
You know how often you should post and what content type work best on each social media platform.
Consistency help with achieving your social media marketing goal and build on long term.
6 Be Specific with your Message
Gone are the days of general statement. Gone are the days of , “This post is for everybody”.
Except on your personal social accounts, your post contents should revolve around your industry.
A business social accounts tweeting political matters is out of point. Keep the unrelated outside your business.
Rather than posting randomly, you can target specific persons whom you want to see it. This improves your engagement rate quick.
Your audience in return bless you with their likes, comments and shares. What else would you have asked for?
7 Follow Trends.
It’s true trends don’t last as they don’t ensure sustainability. But that would be for business.
I personally don’t recommend starting a business on trend – you will soon grow weary.
But now I am telling you to include trends and happenings as part of your social media marketing strategies.
Your social media post is not the end neither is it the totality of what brings you success. It’s a means to the end.
Trends helps you reach more people since it is what most persons are interested in at the time.
Note: You should be careful of the trends you use. You don’t want to use trends that are illegal or abusive. It can destroy your brand.
8 Use Video Content
Have anyone told you video content is gaining more engagement? Social media users are consuming more videos today than they are doing with text.
This was made possible with the birth of Instagram tv, YouTube, Facebook Live, TikTok and more. These platforms are prioritizing video contents.
Reports shows content with videos has the highest shares than one with just text and image.
As you sit to plan your social media marketing strategy, don’t forget to add videos.
9 Engage with your Audience
People buy from people not businesses. Same applies to social media.
Don’t just post and forget. You are not a celebrity.
Once you post, keep an eye on your notifications so you can reply back if need be.
Social media users wants to know there is a real person behind the page.
If two or more person become interested and start talking about your brand, don’t shy away.
Follow up with the conversation or trend. Later on the same day, you can come in and add more values to the discussion.
If someone ask a question, please kindly reply. Social media is a two-way communication.
Same with you, you should also be asking question to engage better with your audience.
10 Work with Your Entire Team
You don’t have to be the only persons contributing to your social media marketing strategy.
Ask your team to assist you as you implement your strategies.
They can contribute in ways like posting on your behalf, liking your post, sharing your content and inviting their followers to follow your business pages.
Build your audience trust by letting them know there is a team working to make your social media marketing a success.
11 Measure & Analyse Results
This list of the best social media marketing strategies is not complete if I don’t mention this.
When you make a post and engage with audience, I recommend you analyse your results. This is the only way you can measure your progress.
When I started out in social media marketing, I used to be shy of checking my analytics. I don’t want to see zero likes and 5 views.
Later, I realised it is important. It is by studying your analytics you know what works and what does not.
You don’t want to keep working hard on the wrong thing.
Check your:
- Engagement for Facebook
- Retweets and mentions on Twitter
- Clicks and interactions on LinkedIn
- Engagement on Pinterest
- Comments and mentions on Instagram
- Do the check weekly, monthly and yearly for a successful social media marketing.
Social Media Marketing and Management Tools/Examples
It becomes hard to stay active with trends ad met up with customers’ expectation.
For your sake, I have listed social media marketing and management tools you will need to become a success.
1. CrowdFire
Crowdfire simplifies your social media management so you can have time for other things.
It helps you discover and schedule content, and manage all your social accounts from one place.
With CrowdFire, you can curate articles from across the web from thousands of sources.
CrowdFire Features:
- Article Curation
- Customize RSS Feed
- Image Curation
- Super – relevant articles
- Curate from your blog, or e-commerce store
- Publish everywhere (Facebook, Twitter and more)
- Schedule in advance
- Tailored Posts with Preview
- Automatic + Custom Best times to Post
- Queue Meter
- Advance Analytics
- Competitor Analysis
CrowdFire Benefits:
- Discover relevant content based on your topics of interest
Automatically discover articles and images your audience will love, so you can share them to all your social profiles and keep your timelines buzzing! - Publish content from your own blogs and sites
Keep an eye out for updates from your website, blog or online shops and create quick, beautiful posts for every update to easily share on all your social profiles! - Pre-schedule all of your content
Schedule all your posts in advance and publish them automatically at the best times or at times chosen by you, saving you tons of time and effort!
2. Buffer
Buffer is a simple social media marketing tools for management and authentic engagement.
You can use to tell your brand’s story and grow your customer base with its publishing, analytics, and engagement platform.
With Buffer, you can learn about the latest social media marketing strategies, so you can test & iterate.
3. HootSuite
Hootsuite is a social media management platform, created by Ryan Holmes in 2008.
The system’s user interface takes the form of a dashboard, and supports social network integrations for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Hootsuite allows you to measure multiple networks and profiles and measure your progress from a single dashboard.
Social Media Marketing FAQS
What are the different types of social media marketing?
- Facebook Marketing.
- Instagram Marketing.
- Twitter Marketing.
- Pinterest Marketing.
- LinkedIn Marketing.
- Snapchat Marketing.
How do Beginners start with social media marketing strategies?
- Choose your social media platform(s).
- Optimize your social media profiles.
- Connect your website and add social media buttons.
- Find and follow the influencers in your niche.
- Engage with audience for quick growth.
What skills are needed for social media marketing?
- Excellent Communication: The ability to pass message clear and clean.
- Creativity: Ability to think outside the box. (though there was never a box).
- Content Curation: Create unique contents for audience
- Quick to Learn: Study changes and adapt as fast as possible.
- Marketing: The ability to sell without selling.
Conclusion On Social Media Marketing Strategies and Tools
I have written this guide to provide you a comprehensive explanation of social media marketing works and the best strategies you can use.
This will help you make the perfect decision on your ecommerce businesses.
Social media is a network of over 4 billion users coming together to post, like, share and comment.
So, it has become an integral part of the modern ecommerce business. You can’t ignore it for business.
