Social media networks are a gold mine for companies looking to gain followers and sales. With billions of users across the world, many businesses look to advertise their products and services on social media networks like Facebook and even TikTok.
The problem is that a lot of businesses aren’t successful with social media. Surprisingly, 93 percent of businesses have trouble managing their accounts. The good news is that there are a bunch of secret social media tricks you can follow to boost your chances of success.
In this article, we’ll list 11 social media marketing tactics that will help you gain an edge over your competitors.
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Set KPIs from the Start of Your Strategy
Every marketing expert says to create goals at the start of a social media marketing strategy. After all, this is the best way to manage your profile and start networking with potential customers.
But, goals are intangible and hard to measure. How can you exactly complete a goal of “getting more Instagram followers” or “increase brand mentions on Twitter”?
Instead of setting goals, try creating key performance indicators (KPIs) instead. KPIs are more precise and specific. They’ll help you measure your progress as you continue your social media marketing campaign.
An example of a KPI you can set is gaining 20 new Instagram followers every day. Over time, you can gauge the progress of your campaign and make any necessary adjustments.
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Create a Buyer Persona
If you’re going to be successful on social media, you’ll need to pinpoint your target audience. Knowing the basic details of your target audience isn’t going to lead to a more successful campaign.
Instead, you’ll need to create a representation of what your ideal customer looks like. This will help you target potential customers more accurately. In marketing, this is called a buyer persona.
A buyer persona is a complete list of traits and characteristics of a standard customer. Here’s what a typical buyer persona will look like:
- Name: John Smith
- Profession: IT Manager
- Salary: $85,000
- Desire: Looking to buy security camera to protect new home
- Problem: Doesn’t have the time to shop around for different products
- Knowledge Level: An expert in technology and knows exactly what he wants
As you can see, a buyer persona gets real descriptive into what your ideal customer looks like. It also describes their motivations and demographics. Creating one will give your social media campaign a great boost.
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Run a Contest
The allure of free stuff is all too strong to ignore. Marketing experts have long used this psychology to attract new customers. On social media, you can do the same.
The key to running a captivating social media contest is offering an irresistible gift. When you have a gift in mind, make sure to follow these tips:
- Determine Your Ultimate Goal: Make sure you set a goal for your contest, whether you want more website visitors or Instagram followers
- Choose Your Social Media Network: Only choose one social media platform to host your contest
- Create the Conditions: Make sure to select a deadline for your contest and decide when the winner will receive their prize
- Develop a Landing Page: There are plenty of online tools that can help you create a landing page for your contest
- Start Promoting: Promote your contest on social media and your company’s email newsletter
Running a social media contest may sound like hard work, but the truth is that you can automate the whole process. You can award people who share your contest more entries.
This will give them a better chance of winning the contest and encourage them to spread the word.
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Choose the Right Social Media Network
It’s not uncommon to visit a website and see a full list of their social media profiles. In reality, it’s best to concentrate your marketing efforts on the most relevant social media platforms.
Before posting on a social media network, you should learn more about its purpose and best uses. Here are some notable examples:
- LinkedIn: This platform is geared toward B2B audiences, mainly professionals
- Facebook: One of the most well known social media platforms, you can use Facebook to reach your run-of-the-mill B2C audience
- Instagram: Instagram is a highly-visual community, but it’s not ideal in leading followers back to your website
- Pinterest: Pinterest is very similar to Instagram but is great for leading viewers back to your website
If you choose the right social media network, you’ll acquire more leads, generate more sales, and gain more followers.
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Provide Value Instead of Promotions
One of the costliest mistakes businesses make is posting tons of promotions on their social media profiles. This is a lazy attempt at using social media to sell products instead of providing value.
In fact, almost 58 percent of people find it annoying when businesses post too many promotions. If you want to avoid this, make sure to look at your social media profiles through the lens of your target audience.
If you’re using Facebook, do you really want to see dozens of irrelevant promotions? Take the time to create compelling content your audience wants to see.
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Create a Themed Content Calendar
If you’re going to scale your social media marketing campaign, you’ll first need to automate the tedious tasks. One tedious task is manually posting on social media every day.
The good news is that there are so many social media automation tools that allow users to schedule their social media posts. If you want to take this further, you can create different themes for each week on your social media profiles.
For example, you can plan to post trivia content on the first week of the month. You can post helpful infographics on the second week and fun facts on the third week of the month.
Creating different themes in your content calendar will help you keep your audience engaged. The more they stay engaged, the more likely they’ll follow your brand and convert.
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Take Advantage of Video Content
One of the fastest-growing data trends in digital marketing is video content. Modern social media users prefer to watch videos. This is usually because videos are more digestible and interactive than text content.
In fact, videos receive six times more engagements and interactions on Facebook. Incorporating video content in your social media strategy isn’t difficult.
All you need is a quality camera, whether you use your smartphone or buy a professional camera. If you’re creating longer videos, you can choose from a wide variety of video editing software online.
Some of them are completely free to use and come with diverse features to make your videos stand out.
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Don’t Use Too Many Hashtags
Hashtags are incredibly popular on social media networks like Twitter and Instagram. The problem is that some businesses will overflow their posts with hashtags.
This happens because these businesses want to make sure their posts show up in a variety of different user feeds. Using too many hashtags can be counterproductive to your social media strategy.
Instead, you should use 1-3 hashtags and make sure they’re extremely relevant to your business.
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Learn About Growing Social Media Trends
If you’re going to be invested in improving your social media profiles, you should learn more about how social media companies operate. Understanding their algorithms is a great place to start.
Each social media platform has its own algorithms for finding and exposing viral content. Before planning your next strategy, make sure to do some digging and find out how these algorithms can affect you. You can read more from Stormlikes about recent social media trends.
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Use Interactive Content on Instagram
Instagram is probably the most versatile social media platform in the world. It offers a full suite of great features such as:
- Instagram Live
- Instagram Stories
- IGTV
The platform even allows users to post quizzes for their audiences. If you want to join the hype, you can create interactive content using Instagram Stories.
Simply create a bunch of stories based on trivia questions related to your brand. You can also launch a Q&A using Instagram Stories. Giving people the opportunity to interact with your content can help improve brand awareness.
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Partner with Influencers
Millennials and Gen Zers tend to gravitate towards internet celebrities with large followings.
If you want to take your social media campaign to the next level, you should consider partnering with influencers in the same niche as your business.
Here are tips to help you get started:
- Only partner with influencers that represent the values your company stands for
- Try out an influencer on a trial basis before committing long-term
- Offer a compensation package that incentivizes the influencer to improve their performance
- Define your influencer marketing goals and stick to them
- Negotiate the terms of the partnership with the influencer’s manager
Influencer marketing can help expose your brand to new audiences and create brand synergy. Following these tips should help set you in the right direction.
Learn More Business Tips
As you can see, running successful social media profiles doesn’t have to be difficult. Although most businesses fail at it, you can use these tips to set your campaign in the right direction and generate high ROI.
Do you want to learn more effective business tips? If so, check out our blog for more helpful articles.