October 5, 2024 by Shinefy
Social Media Marketing: A beginner's guide on how to boost your brand on social media
With just about every person on the planet having a profile on a social media platform, taking advantage of audiences on social media platforms is an opportunity that marketers cannot miss out on.
Businesses, irrespective of the niche, are busy perfecting their social media marketing plan to get quality traffic, rigorous customer engagement, and drive sales.
But is being on social media enough? Of course not.
To help you get started, here are a couple of social media marketing tips for beginners that will help you promote audience engagement, introduce efficiencies into your workflow, and help generate more leads and sales.
1. Set up Goals
What will you aim at if you have no target? Your goal will be the driving force of your social media marketing strategy.
Having a marketing goal like increased engagement, more clicks, conversions, etc. is one of the most important driving forces behind your brand decisions. That's why setting up goals is essential. It's also important that your marketing goals align with that of the organization.
Here are some things that you need to focus on:
Make sure that the goals are quantitative and measurable.
Make sure you follow a consistent timeline and adhere to a strict deadline.
Make sure that your marketing decisions are SMART. They need to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. These will help you support your long-term goals.
2. Set up a social media calendar
There is a saying: failing to plan is planning to fail.
A social media calendar will help you decide the message you want to convey to your audience. The calendar will also help determine the type of content you'll be posting on your brand's social media platform.
Content calendars also help distribute resources effectively, improve team collaboration and give a more in-depth understanding of what works and what doesn’t.
Developing a social media calendar makes it easier to plan and coordinate marketing campaigns, track what content has been promoted and when, and prevent mistakes. As a general rule, avoid posting without a highly strategized brand identity that specifically incorporates it.
So no matter what you do, you must have a solid social media content marketing plan in place.
3. Track and analyze your metrics/analytics
Diving deep into social media analytics is one of the most important steps to do when building your brand online. Most social media apps already track your metrics, as long as it is a business account. With the data and statistics, you can effectively analyze your strategy and continue to drive performance.
Analytics help you understand your audience and learn what generates more traffic. Without these, you can’t make accurate sales forecasts and perfect your products. You can effectively use social media data to drive performance.
Reviewing analytics emphasizes stats like follower growth, page views, number of posts, likes, shares, impressions, clicks, etc.
4. Research new content ideas
With social media feeds and timeless being saturated by millions of people, it is important to stand out from the crowd by creating good and quality content.
The most significant way anyone can enjoy success with its social media markeing campaign is by having a steady stream of high-quality, engaging, and diverse content.
Analyze your content's performance history to hone in on the topics your audience engages with most and use that to have a vision into new ideas.
Remember that new content doesn’t have to be text-heavy blogs, whitepapers, or case studies. Get creative with contests, giveaways, polls, and other tools that generate engagement and allow you to interact with and gain information on your target audience.
5. Understand yout audience
Without the support of your audience, your strategy will be in vain.
With social media, you can interact, engage, and develop your relationship with your audience. It will help you understand your audience, their needs, wants, likes, and dislikes. It is essential to define their questions, concerns, and problems. That way, they will help you figure out everything and you can create products or services that can fulfill what your audiences needs.
For most businesses, one of the biggest challenges is to connect with the right audience. To find your ideal audience, you need to figure out your target demographic and what social networks they use, and sooner or later, they will help you find the right social media platforms you need to focus on.
6. Choose the proper social media platform
When choosing a social media platform for your brand, you need to ask yourself questions like why are you using this certain platform? What kind of audience will see your content? Is there content unique to the platform you're choosing?
If you have the answers to these questions, then you'll find yourself with a social media platform for your marketing needs. Here are a few examples:
Facebook: A network for content related to news and entertainment
Instagram: A platform for visual content
Pinterest: A platform for static images that can help drive traffic to your blog
It is not necessary to be available on all social media platforms, but what matters is to create an impact on a few that you are present on.
Suppose your brand’s Instagram marketing strategy works the best. Then focus all your efforts on it instead of half-heartedly trying to establish your reach on other platforms equally. It is better to ace one platform than try to be the jack of them all.
It is not the quantity that matters; it’s the quality that counts. Putting out substandard content will only make things worse for you. Instead, research and plan your social media presence to align with your goals and appeal to your target audience.
Focus on the platforms that are preferred by your targeted demographic. This principle holds especially true when making social media marketing strategies for small businesses, as they can’t go around throwing resources on unfruitful activities.
7. Be consistent
Posting content regularly is always a good rule of thumb to follow. Regardless of your business size and what platform you are using, be conscious of keeping these aspects consistent:
Brand image
Brand message
Posting frequency
Hashtags
And if your business is just getting started on social media, sometimes quality is better than quantity. Don’t stretch yourself too thin. Dedicate to posting good content on 1-2 platforms, instead of being inconsistent across multiple platforms.
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