Social media is definitely a game changer. What used to be a simple means of staying connected with family and friends has become a powerful platform for a range of purposes.
For businesses that want to increase brand awareness, conduct reliable market studies, net in more customers, and achieve other important objectives, their presence in social media can be extremely valuable.
If you’re hoping to boost your business’s performance through your social media activities, you must keep in mind that not all practices are ideal. Aside from this, there are strategies that perform better than others and should be given more attention.
Five Simple and Effective Strategies
Listed below are five of the best strategies identified by digital marketing experts that businesses should be implementing.
1. Interact with your followers
When you share information on social media sites, you need to be fully prepared to answer questions, express gratitude, and start a real dialogue with your followers. Your positive messages, along with the responses from your followers, are your social media building blocks.
This is a prime strategy for business marketing. In addition, these exchanges can also provide feedback to help you serve your target market better.
A good way to get the ball rolling is to pose a question. For example, at the end of a post invite comments about readers’ own experiences.
2. Use eye-popping visuals.
Online users naturally gravitate toward posts that come with beautiful and original visuals. Images and videos can lead to increased traffic and exponential content sharing.
Therefore, when you post news and other types of information on social media, make sure that they come with impressive visual elements.
- If you have photography skills, take your own. Unique and quality images have more appeal than stock photos with recognisable styles
- Nevertheless, there are many sources of free or low cost images
- Infographics are attention-grabbers. Canva is becoming increasingly popular but there are also other infographics tools which can work better for different layouts and content types.
3. Use hashtags — and use them properly.
The problem is, many people do not know how to use hashtags to their advantage.
If you want your hashtags to count, the principles are simple. Make sure your hashtags are
- Short
- Relevant to your audience.
4. Proofread your posts
Clearly establish your industry authority not only by delivering posts that are useful, but by being attentive to grammar, punctuation and spelling. Suggestions:
- Use the spelling and grammar tools available in a word processor program before posting
- Check that your links work properly after you upload the page.
5. Post regularly
Nothing turns off social media followers more than accounts that seem inactive. One by one, they will un-follow.
It’s important to keep their interest locked in by regularly, if not frequently, sharing news and other types of information about the business and industry. At the same time, all posts should be relevant and useful, especially if you’re targeting local followers.
Audience annoyances
Finishing off are two of the fastest ways to extinguish goodwill and upset the audience that you’ve painstakingly built up. They are common mistakes, and things to try to avoid.
1. Creating controversy
While some viral campaigns do have inflammatory elements, they often create unease or even adverse reactions. Stepping over the line means risking your credibility and the reputation for integrity that you’re trying to build.
2. Over-promoting
People soon tire of constant promotion, just as they tire of endless advertising. You can take advantage of social media to occasionally tell an interesting story about a product or user, but if it’s too often or too pushy you will lose followers.
The aim is to provide insights – the story behind the story – rather than directly promoting products or services.
Going forward
Giving your focus to the most effective strategies is the quickest way to results and getting more sharers. They, in turn, will help build your circle of followers and readers.
As you implement your strategies you can keep an eye on website statistics to see whether the visitor time on your blog page has increased. You would also hope to see fewer page exits and more click-throughs to other parts of your site.