Social media marketing should not be complicated. However, this can be tricky when social media keeps changing. New trends, platform features, tools…the list goes on. Sometimes we even fall into the trap of “posting things for the sake of posting.” OR we do the complete opposite and drop off of the face of the social media world!
Here are 6 Tips for Simple and Successful Social Media Marketing:
1.Get Down to Business and Identify Your GOALS.
Do you feel like there’s just not enough time in the day? Goals help us focus our time and energy, and this is why we must start here. The amazing thing about setting goals, is watching the progress and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Write down your goals and be specific.
For example: If your goal is to have more of a presence on Facebook, maybe your goal is to get 10 new followers a month.
Setting goals is a huge time saver; by the end of the month you will be able to identify whether or not you reached your goals and perhaps what needs to be changed.
2. Know Your Audience
A great way to narrow down your target market is to create a ‘customer persona’. What age range do they fall in? Lifestyle characteristics? Gender? Where are they located? What problems do they face? The more details you can gather, the closer you are to knowing who you are talking to when you post on social media and the easier it is to create content for them. Once you’ve narrowed down who your audience is, you can focus on WHERE your audience is in the social world.
3.Decide what social media platforms work best for your business
So many platforms, so little time. As a business owner, we get the feeling that we need to be everywhere on social media. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, Linkedin? – “Sure why not!”
You may think that being everywhere, reaches more people…but the question is, does it reach YOUR people? Being present on every social platform will make it harder to manage all of them effectively.
Pick a few platforms that your target audience is on, and put your efforts and time into those platforms. In the beginning, it may only be one platform and that’s okay! Master one platform at a time to relieve the pressure of managing multiple channels. Once you’ve created a solid platform you can take it to the next level and focus on the next platform.
4. Focus on Quality over Quantity
It all comes down to the impact your brand makes and how does it make people feel. Posting relevant and authentic information a few times a week is better than posting extraneous information, which is confusing or doesn’t provide any value to your customers, 3 times a day.
Let’s be honest, there is nothing worse than seeing “fluffy” posts in our news feeds. If your audience is not engaging and interacting with your posts, your content will be pushed to the bottom of the social algorithm. This means that the next time you post, it will reach even fewer people.
THINK before you post!
5. Automate Posting on Social Channels
Imagine if you could get the best number of posts out for each platform and at the times that work best for your target market? Well..it’s 100% possible!
Social tools like Buffer and Hootsuite allow you to manage and schedule content to social media from a single dashboard, effectively saving you up to 5-6 hours each week! You can also repurpose content so that both old and new followers see your content, and spread it across platforms (this is a good way to alleviate the pressure of always creating new content).
6. Review Your Analytics
A majority of social media platforms have analytics that you can look at to see what type of content performs best (on your business page).
Not only do you want to track what type of content performs best, you want to track what time of the day your content performs best. Tracking timing metrics will help you pinpoint the best times to post your content and help identify gaps you need to fill.
Once you figure out what your audience likes and what they engage with the most, you can be more consistent with the type of content you put out.