Over the past year, we have seen a shift in the way brands promote their products or services on social media marketing.
Social media popularity continues to grow and reached over 3.6 billion social media users globally in 2020. Many of whom are now looking to utilize a variety of new trends in 2021. That means that now more than ever. Businesses need to utilize new social media marketing to grow and ultimately become more successful.
Below we compiled expert social media marketing best practices you should watch and leverage in 2021.
Goals and Objectives
A solid plan, objectives, and goals. Imperative if you want to jumpstart your marketing strategy.
Your goal is to get something out of being on social media. Is it to drive new sales? To create awareness? to launch a product into the public eye? Know what you want to achieve and work out how you are going to get it.
When you set your goals, make them attainable and break them down into smaller action steps.
To set attainable goals to slay your social media strategy:
- Use numbers (such as reach 5000 Instagram followers)
- Always set a deadline
- Be specific and make your goals, SMART
- Make your goals in line with your entire social media marketing strategy
That means setting specific targets and consistently monitoring your performance.
Social Media Marketing Audience
Connecting and engaging with your audience is crucial. In today’s social media marketing, if you want to turn a profit.
Knowing detailed information about the kind of customer you are trying to attract via social media will help determine what, where, and when you post content. So before you do anything else, you need to identify the target audience for your brand or product.
How can you better understand your audience?
- Survey your audience to make a better grasp of pain points
- Look carefully at their demographics
- Take part in conversations on forums filled with your target audience
- Respond to comments on your blog, and comment on other blogs with the same target audience
- Reply to all comments or questions on your social media channels
- Collect feedback (using one of the many user feedback tools available)
Once you get a feel for your target audience, your better be equipped to help them what they want to deal with businesses that care not just about a faceless brand. These make this a vital step to creating your social media strategy.
Contests to Increase Awareness
Crafting a successful social media contest is one of the most alluring tactics you can use. It will increase your online visibility, your followers, and your engagement.
There are several social contests tools you can use to create an outstanding giveaway or sweepstakes.
The key to executing a successful contest is offering something of tremendous value. Something that’ll be irresistible to your audience.
Run a contest on social media marketing:
- Figure out your goals (do you want more Facebook page likes? Instagram followers? How many?)
- Decide what social media channel you’ll host the contest on
- Come up with a deadline for when it’ll end and when the winner will receive their prize
- Create the contest (look at different types and choose the right one for your audience)
- Promote it with all your might.
To get mind-blowing results, aim to have your audience do some of the heavy liftings. Set the contest up so they get extra entries for sharing the contest or completing similar tasks.
Such as “Pin on Pinterest”, “Share on Facebook”, or “Like my Facebook page”. You can also give them a unique link to share for extra entries. It’s genius. Your contest will run itself.
Craft Social Media Content Carefully
Every piece of content you post on social media should be carefully thought out. If you’re posting just to post something – you’re going about it all wrong. Depending on the social network you’re posting on, you’ll need to learn the various purposes of each network.
Examples:
- LinkedIn – A professional network that is perfect for B2B audiences. Also includes LinkedIn Pulse, a content publishing and distribution platform.
- Facebook – Almost everyone has a Facebook account. Particularly good for news/entertainment-related content. While Facebook Pages struggle to perform, Facebook Groups can be a great way of connecting with your ideal audience.
- Instagram – Perfect if your content is highly visual. Static images and short videos work incredibly well but it’s not as good at driving traffic back to your blog.
- Pinterest – Similar to Instagram, Pinterest is highly visual. Although it’s limited to static images, it can be highly effective at driving traffic back to your blog.
Once you learn about the varying networks, you can focus on which ones you think will mesh well with your business.
In general, there are ways to improve your online visibility over all the platforms.
Craft captivating copy on social media:
- Use copywriting techniques.
- Address your audience directly.
- Use snappy, witty, or intriguing hooks to begin your social media posts.
- Switch it up with different content types (Try linking to blog posts, videos, ask questions, etc).
- Always write a description on every link you post. Never just put the headline of the post.
If you perfect your social media content, you’ll see higher engagement rates, more followers, and generate more leads and sales.
Mind-blowing Images
It probably comes as no surprise that crafting mind-blowing images for social media should be a top priority.
You don’t need to be a graphic designer to design stunning graphics for your brand. You can utilize tools like Canva to craft alluring images to wow your audience. Your other option is to outsource. Many business owners and bloggers do this and it’s money well spent.
You’ll need to create graphics for:
- Cover photos for each social media platform you have
- Images for your opt-in freebies (you’ll want to post these on Facebook sometimes)
- Facebook and Twitter posts
- Instagram images (You can use copyright-free stock photos or create a graphic using Canva or PicMonkey.)
- Infographics
- Pinterest graphics
The dimensions for these will change over time. So do your research when creating these to find the right sizes for social media images. Every business’s images and graphics will differ, but you’ll want to make them cohesive with your brand and always eye-catching.
Advantage Video Content Strategy
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know how potent video content has become. Especially in social media marketing.
So, if you haven’t already, it’s time to jump on that bandwagon as soon as possible. There are loads of different ways to use video content in your social media strategy. But live videos (like Facebook Live Videos) appear to be all the rage right now.
Facebook live videos allow you to connect with your audience in an authentic way that isn’t possible in other content formats. Plus you can repurpose your live videos. People engage by asking questions. So you can show them you’re not just a brand, by interacting with them during and after your live video.
They’ll see you’re a business owner who cares and that will bring more results than anything. According to Facebook, you’ll see 6x the interaction and engagement with a live video. However, a combination of live videos and regularly recorded videos will be your best bet. You’ll have people flocking in your direction.
Key Promotion Strategy
You should create the most mind-blowing, quality content on the web. But if nobody gets eyes on it, you’re not going to see results. That’s where promotion comes in.
Let’s talked about automation tools; you must use them for the social media platforms you’ve chosen for your social media marketing strategy. That’ll maximize the number of people who see your content and it’ll help to skyrocket your website traffic and your income. Creating outstanding and diverse content for social media is crucial, but don’t overlook the promotion process.
This is a massive mistake that many bloggers and business owners make.
So what promotional work can you do to level up your strategy?
- Cross-promote between your other social profiles
- Collaborate with influencers in your industry
- Run a social media contest that encourages participants to follow you
- Leverage other platforms you have access to (for example, after someone subscribes to your email list, invite them to follow you on social media.)
- Take an SEO-driven approach to the content you publish on social networks (for example; use relevant hashtags on Instagram and use popular keywords in titles/descriptions on YouTube.)
Latest Trends and Changes
Staying ahead of the curve is essential in social media marketing.
It’s forever changing, and algorithms are being altered left, right, and center. Making it your job to stay on top of the latest trends and changes in social media. This includes reading up on current statistics for the social platforms you use, and social media statistics in general.
Here are some trends happening right now:
- Live video content is only climbing and is continuing to grow
- Instagram stories are a go-to tactic for businesses
- Messaging apps are on the rise as a way for consumers to speak to businesses
- Influencer marketing is all the rage
- Virtual reality in marketing is becoming more popular.
To make the most out of your social media marketing strategy it’s imperative to stay on top of these trends and any algorithm changes. Because we know what was trending a year ago is likely not now.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing Strategy
- Increased brand awareness
- Grow a larger audience
- Connect with your audience better
- Increased website traffic
- Generate more leads
- Make more sales and money
There’s no doubt about it – social media should be a vital component of your overall marketing efforts.
Just look at some of these eye-opening social media statistics:
- Facebook receives an estimated 4.4 billion+ visitors each month
- Pinterest? It’s home to over 300 million users
- 500 million+ accounts are active on Instagram daily
It’s a large pond to go fishing in for your target audience. Not participating in social media marketing would lead to an incomplete marketing strategy.
Wrapping It Up
A bonus tip is to encourage happy customers to leave reviews for you. Try doing this on Facebook as well as outside of social on your Google Business Page and services like Yelp. Reviews go a long way in establishing credibility and trust for your company. It usually takes an ask or a method to get users to find and post a review.
Social media offers massive opportunities to drive success, as well as being a minefield for potential disasters. Whatever level you operate at, we’re here to help. For every avenue into digital marketing, or whatever quandary your social media has you stumped with, our experts are ready to help drive you through any issues and towards the most favorable outcomes possible.