Social media marketing should be a cornerstone of your overall marketing strategy, but it can be difficult to know what you should be incorporating into your social media marketing plan. Sure, you know you’re supposed to be posting content and engaging with your customers, but you could use some easy wins in your corner. Here are five easy ways for you to make your social media marketing much more effective.
Use Targeted Ads
Facebook in particular allows you to apply various filters to your advertisements to help put them in front of potential customers. If you’re in the pet business, for example, you might want to target people who recently got a pet (just an example). You can set up particular ads to target particular demographics, reach out to people who just experienced a significant life event, or apply a myriad of other filters. While you’ll be spending some money on your marketing, you can be better assured that you’re delivering the appropriate ad to the right audience, which can really increase your conversion rates.
Build Out Your Graphics Library
Your digital assets are all the digital files you own and use for your marketing. One of the most valuable types of these assets are graphics and visuals. Since humans are such a visual species, incorporating visual elements into your social media marketing is a must if you want to make them stand out. For this, you’ll obviously need a great logo (if you don’t have one, you can design one for free here), but it can also include infographics you create, images you’ve taken and/or manipulated, and other items. Having a deep bench of graphics for your marketing team to pull from can be a great way to put together effective ads.
Consider the Timing
Did you know that certain posts do better at certain times of the day? It’s true! While many studies cited online are often outdated, your audience is probably more likely to be on social media at certain times of the day. Maybe you schedule new posts to drop during lunch, or after supper, or on the weekends. No matter the time, at least considering this factor (and monitoring your posts to see when they do better), is a key to success. And the best part? Using a tool like Buffer makes it so you can schedule your posts in advance, and Buffer will put them out automatically!
Use a Social Listening Tool
If you have multiple social media platforms, managing all of them at the same time can be tricky. You could spend every day constantly opening apps and checking accounts, but that will get time-consuming very quickly. It’s a much better option to use a social media listening tool, like BuzzSumo, to help you keep an eye on any time your brand is mentioned. It’s even got a free version, which can save you money over some of the more expensive premium tools out there.
Discover the Content Your Audience Wants
If your customer base isn’t interested in your content, your social media marketing campaign is going to suffer. Figuring that out isn’t necessarily simple, but it’s not rocket science either. For instance, you can run a poll on your social media pages simply asking your audience what type of content they want. You can also use the analytics on whatever social media platform you’re using to determine what they interact with more, or you can use an analytics tool like Google Analytics. Finally, you can learn from others in your industry to see what type of content their posting. Just make sure you pick a successful company to model your campaign off!
