Just about every business is on social media nowadays, but just a small percentage of them practice social media marketing.
If your social media strategy entails liking posts and talking about your products, then you’re probably not doing any real marketing either.
Never, ever promote on social media
There are plenty of advertising opportunities within the context of online marketing. When it comes to social media, you can buy ads on Facebook and Twitter to extend your marketing reach.
That’s about the only time you should relate promotion to social media, though. The biggest mistake businesses make with respect to social media marketing is creating superficial, promotional posts.
Appearing on someone’s newsfeed is a privilege, and the best way to lose it is to push your brand when users just want to see their notifications and check up on friends. A recent Huffington Post article explains why promotional posts are ineffective on social media:
“People don’t come to social media to get hounded about special offers and brand messages. They come to be entertained, educated and informed. If you’re only using social media to shamelessly promote your brand, nobody is going to listen. Focus on lifestyle messages that tout your brand while still adding value to your customers’ lives, such as recipes and instructional videos.”
Users today are quick to unfollow and unsubscribe from companies that directly sell their products on social media.
Share engaging content with followers
An effective social media marketing strategy requires lots of activity. Before you start interacting with followers, though, you need a conversation starter.
This is where content comes into play. To build a brand on social media, you need to post and share quality content with followers on a consistent basis. This accomplishes several things, like increasing engagement, tallying up social signals, and bringing users to your website.
Stand out from the crowd
At this point, it’s well known that sharing content is essential for social media marketing success. Nowadays, you have to compete with other businesses who are trying to do the same exact thing.
A recent Business 2 Community article explains why most businesses just blend into the social media crowd. According to the article, you need to have a great strategy to stand out:
“To gain success, you need to stand different from the crowd. Being one of the crowds implies you have something entirely run-of-the-mill on your offering. Why would a brand hire you when it knows you are going to offer him a solution that thousand others can offer too? So take time and strategize how you are going to stand.
In regard to content creation, you have consider what your strengths are. If you’re particularly knowledgeable about some facet of your industry, then you should share your experiences with followers. This is a simple, yet effective way to differentiate your brand from competitors.
Incorporate analytics in your strategy
Analytics have always played an important role in social media marketing, and they more or less determine the way businesses approach their target audiences. Not using analytics immediately puts your company at a disadvantage relative to your competitors.
Some things, like measuring engagement and finding new users from your target audience, are almost impossible to accomplish without the help of analytics. But we encourage businesses to go beyond the minimal requirements and use analytics in creative ways. You can also integrate your analytics regarding different platforms to keep everything organized.
High activity isn’t always indicative of a good social media marketing campaign. It’s more important that you’re sharing the right types of content, interacting with followers, and evaluating your efforts quantitatively.
To talk more about social media marketing, or anything else, contact us today.
