Social media marketing is one giant puzzle. You think you’ve got it all figured out until another piece comes out of nowhere. Suddenly, that time and effort you put into one aspect of your marketing efforts are completely off.
This is why you need a great strategy in place. To build one, you need to understand social media best practices. Making half-hearted generalizations about what will work for your social media marketing strategy is not only a misstep — it’s also a huge waste of time .
But don’t worry, we’re here to help. If you take these five critical social media best practices into consideration, you’ll be well on your way to having a social media presence that will convert clicks into cash for your business Strategies to Write Interesting Content .
Know Your Target Audience
A lot of businesses make the mistake of thinking they know their audience. In reality, a lot of businesses don’t do their homework. Worse yet, they cast a massive net and say “our product and/or service is for everybody.”
This type of approach to your target audience only signifies laziness. You haven’t put in the legwork to find out anything about your audience and who they are as individuals. In social media marketing, knowing who you’re creating content for is everything. A business that has no idea who their audience is will create tone-deaf social media posts that don’t connect. They’re simply taking their best guess when it comes to the content they should be creating.
If you get more specific and craft audience personas — your social media marketing efforts suddenly have some science behind them. You’ll have a deep understanding of who your audience is as individuals and you’ll be able to create social media posts based on that information.
Choose Your Social Media Platforms Wisely
Now that you have a better idea of who your audience is and what kind of content they enjoy, it’s time to decide where the majority of your social media marketing efforts should be going. While it’s a good idea to have your pillar platforms covered (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram) — find out which one your audience is most in tune with.
Think about it: a 16-year-old who loves sneakers probably won’t be on LinkedIn. They’ll probably stick to Instagram or Facebook instead. Knowing that, if you’re a company that sells sneakers, having a strong LinkedIn presence is pointless. Put your time and effort into creating content for social media platforms that your audience frequents.
Set Your Social Media Schedule
Having a posting schedule is integral to the success of any social media marketing strategy. This is how you build brand authority and gain followers on a consistent basis. If you’re sporadically posting at random times, your audience will never have a chance to connect with your business enough to care.
Using Social Media Scheduling Tools can be a huge help in that regard. Not only do they save you time, but you can also extract valuable performance metrics (which we’ll talk about later). Lucky for businesses, there’s plenty of great platforms on the market including Ghostit and Hootsuite.
Engage With Your Audience on Social Media
Social media is a direct line of communication with your audience. From a customer’s perspective, it’s their opportunity to get answers to questions as quickly as possible. If you aren’t doing that as a business, it’s a missed opportunity. Whenever you get an inquiry through a social media platform, positive or negative, make sure you answer it as soon as you can.
This shows that you take customers seriously and are willing to help. This can go a long way in building your business as a reputable and trustworthy brand. People will also publicly see that you answer quickly on social media. They’ll be more keen to ask questions and even share more general comments about your product or service. All of these interactions help build your brand name in your respective industry.
Measure Social Media Metrics
You need data to back up everything you do in social media marketing. If you don’t know your audience or what channels they’re using — you might as well play darts until you land on your next post idea.
One of the biggest innovations that have been brought to the forefront through different social media marketing software is machine learning. It basically means your computer is smart enough to figure things out on its own. There’s a lot more to it, but that’s the abridged version. Machine learning is also what allows a platform like Ghostit to accurately target the right marketing channels and audience for your business.
