Out of the over 3.6 billion global social media users, around 223 million of them live in the United States. With these numbers, it is not surprising that companies want to harness the power of social media.
Hiring social media marketing agencies can take out the stress of managing social media platforms on your own. But if you want to do it yourself, here are some social media techniques and strategies you need to practice to guarantee your efforts don’t go to waste.
Set Clear Goals
One of the first things you need to do is to set your goals. What do you want to achieve with your social media campaign? Do you want to increase sign-ups to your newsletter, or do you want to boost your sales? Setting your goals will help guide your campaign direction.
When coming up with your goals, make sure they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. Having goals like enhancing brand awareness and increasing sales are good, but you need to determine what it means to improve brand awareness and how much sales boost you want to gain.
Identify Your Audience
Running an effective social media campaign entails knowing your audience. You need to look into your analytics tools and understand who consumes the content you produce. Knowing your audience can help you create content tailor-fit for your target. It will make your content more effective in achieving your business goals.
You may want to look into the following factors:
- Age group
- Location
- Languages spoken
- Life status
Create a Plan
Once you have set your goals and identified your audience, it is time to make a social media plan. It involves determining what platforms you will post on and what content you are publishing.
The platform where you post depends on which channel your target audience frequents. For example, Facebook is a place you can consider to reach a general audience, but if you are targeting professionals, you are better off posting on LinkedIn. The ideal content is informative, relevant, and entertaining. With your target audience in mind, ask yourself what those three things mean for your prospects and try to tick all three boxes.
Audit Your Social Media Presence
Posting on every social media platform is not a good strategy. That is why social media agencies suggest developing an audit on your social media platforms. It means focusing on the sites giving you the best results and cutting out those severely underperforming.
To start auditing, you may look into:
- Where your audience is
- Which platforms give you more site visitors
- Which platforms can help you attain your goals
- Where your competitors are
Tweak the Content You Post
Reposting content on every platform you use is very convenient. But it can also come across as sloppy and lazy.
If you are going to use the same image or video, make sure to format it according to the platform. Additionally, rewrite the text that comes with the media. You do not need to revamp the whole message; you can make minor adjustments to make it look fresh. This little bit of extra attention can go a long way.
Space Your Posts
Posting regularly is different from bombarding peoples’ social media feeds. Over-posting can lead to annoyance rather than brand awareness. Worse yet, people’s knowledge of your brand will be that annoyance and frustration.
Space your posts accordingly to avoid this. Posting once a day is more than acceptable, but you can put five as your upper post limit. You can make the limited number of posts count by checking your page analytics, looking at the times when your audience is most online, and publishing content during those times.
Conclusion
Social media is a powerful platform for your business. You need to learn to harness the power and make it work for you. While you can use the above techniques for free, hiring a professional social media marketing agency can save you time, effort, and money.
CCG is a premier creative agency in California that offers a wide range of top-notch social media and digital marketing solutions. Team up with us today!