EFFECTIVE MARKETING FOR SOCIAL MEDIA – PROVEN METHODS

Social media is an important platform for increasing sales and brand awareness, but its complexity is often underestimated, causing efforts to fail even with high investments.

To avoid the common pitfalls, it’s especially important for small business owners to develop a well-thought-out social media marketing strategy. Learn more in this article.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is the use of platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and others to promote a brand, product or service by engaging with your audience, building relationships and driving business growth.

How Social Media Helps Your Business?

In 2023, there will be around 4.89 billion social media users worldwide. That’s a huge leap compared to a few years ago. On average, they spend 2 hours and 30 minutes a day on social media applications.

The numbers prove that social media is one of the most effective marketing channels for businesses today. But how exactly can social media help your business?

• Effective Marketing Strategies – Social media helps companies generate leads, boost traffic, improve SERP rankings, increase brand awareness, build loyalty, and gain customer and competitor insights, compared to traditional platforms like billboards or newspapers.
• Generate sales – Social media features like Facebook Marketplace and TikTok Shop help businesses generate sales. They are effective because you can target your advertising to a interested audience.
• Improve customer service – Social media lets your business answer questions, reply to comments, and respond to chat. It also helps you gather useful data that helps with strategizing better social media marketing.
• Learn about your competitors – You can observe your competitors’ campaigns and see what works for them and what doesn’t. Use the findings to prepare a better social media marketing strategy for your company.
• Business progress and insight – Social media analytics tools allow you to track the development of your account. Useful data such as the engagement rate, click-through rate or video views help you to create a better marketing plan.

How to Plan Effective Strategy for Marketing With Social Media?

Using the right social media marketing strategy is key to achieving business goals. While approaches vary, most businesses focus on creating engaging content, targeting the right audience, analyzing performance, and maintaining consistent interaction to build brand awareness and drive growth:

Step 1: Set Your Marketing For Social Media Goals

Set realistic, strategic goals for your progress on social media, be it increasing brand awareness, visitor numbers or sales. You can use these goals to guide your strategy and make decisions about the type of content, the frequency of posts and the best platforms for your business.

Step 2: Research and Understand Your Audience

Target specific social media followers and audiences likely to engage with your promotions. For example, if you sell makeup, avoid targeting football fans, as it’s irrelevant. Additionally, tailor your platform choice to your audience—younger users may be on Instagram, while middle-aged audiences are often on Facebook.

You can create customer avatars to help with your research. Use your existing customers and list their:

1. Their demographic – (Age, gender, income level, geographic location, family structure, religion, ethnicity, occupation, and education level)
2. Their interests – (Example: What kind of page or site they like or interact with, where they normally hang out on the internet)
3. Their goals – Why do they need your product or service?
4. The challenges – What are the problems they face that your product or service can help solve?
5. Role in purchasing – Can they afford what you are promoting?

If you don’t have customers, research keywords and analyze competitor pages with high engagement. Identify profiles of users who have left positive comments (likely buyers) and create about 10 customer avatars. Compare them to find commonalities and then use these insights to develop your strategy. Platforms like Facebook can help you gather relevant information.

For example, you sell acne cream. The similarities you found in your customer avatars are:

1. They are all engaged
2. Most of them are preparing for a wedding ceremony
3. They are actively interacting with bridal-related pages

The data will help you plan your strategy effectively and focus on relevant content, such as bridal-themed posts, rather than wasting time on unrelated topics. Understanding your target audience is key to shaping your social media marketing strategy and choosing the best platform for your goals.

Step 3: Spy on Your Competitors

Analysing your competitors’ social media strategies— – e.g. their campaigns, content and target groups — will help you plan better. Look at their comment sections to understand your customers’ expectations, challenges and feedback. Recognise their weaknesses, such as a strong Facebook presence but a weak TikTok presence, and focus on platforms where you have an edge, such as TikTok, to attract potential customers.

Step 4: Create Engaging Content

To stand out from your competitors, you need to create unique and highly interesting content. Content is different from that of your competitors in the same industry.

How to Create Engaging Content?

Refer to Step 2 and Step 3 above. Your analysis of your audience will help you create content that responds to that analysis.

For example, you provide digital marketing services. You find out that most of your potential target groups are businessperson. And most of them love to do business networking in their spare time.

Using the example above, you can create content on the topic of business networking. This will most likely get them to interact with your content.

Identify Current Trends

Incorporate trending topics into your content to boost engagement and visibility. For example, using trending hashtags or sounds on TikTok can help your videos land on the For You Page (FYP), increasing comments, shares, and likes.

Read our complete guide on How to Get FYP on TikTok.

You can also use tools like Google Trends, to see what’s trending on YouTube, or popular hashtags on Instagram.

Step 5: Plan and Schedule Your Content

Planning in advance when and what your content will be about will save you a lot of time. It will also help you to analyse possible mistakes that could occur in your strategy.

You can use a content calendar to help organize your content. You can include:

1. Type of content you want to post (e.g., blog post, image, video, etc.)
2. When do you want to post (date)
3. Preferred social media platform.
4. Content copywriting and additional information
5. Contents associated with important dates like holidays

How Often Should You Post?

There is no clear answer as it depends on your content, but quality is more important than quantity. Many organisations post regularly just to fill their calendar, creating content of little value. Instead, focus on publishing high-quality content a few times a week.

Step 6: Provide Value and Solutions to Your Audience

Social media is not just about selling, it’s a place where you provide useful information or materials that convey value and solutions to your audience.

According to Forbes, “Providing your followers with quality content that they’ll find valuable is a surefire way of gaining their trust and interest”.

People do not buy products or services. They buy solutions to their problems. So if you focus on creating content that offers them value and solutions, you will surely attract high engagement and potential buyers.

Step 7: Choose The Right Social Media Platform

Select social media platforms according to the target group. For example, if you are targeting young people, you should focus on TikTok instead of Facebook.

If your target audience is made up of professionals, you should focus on LinkedIn and Facebook rather than Instagram or TikTok.

You can always start with one platform and then add others. Once you get the hang of it, you will know which platform is best for your campaign.

Step 8: Try Paid Social Media Marketing (Advertising)

Paid social media marketing targets users based on demographics, behaviours and interests, ensuring your content reaches those most likely to engage. Whether for brand awareness, engagement or sales, it helps deliver your content to the right audience.

Step 9: Engage With The Community

Participate in all social mentions to show that you care about and value your customers. Use chatbots for general questions but also offer the opportunity to speak to an employee. Satisfied customers are those whose questions are fully answered.

Step 10: Track Your Performance

No social media strategy guarantees 100% success, but analysing your campaigns is crucial. It shows what works — based on conversions, engagement or views — and what doesn’t. This allows you to focus on effective content and save time and budget.

What to Analyse For Your Social Media Performance?

Here are the metrics you need to track:

1. Engagement – How many clicks, comments, or likes do you get on your post.
2. Reach – Number of social media accounts that have your content on their feed.
3. Impressions – How many times does your content goes through the social media feed.
4. Views – The number of social media accounts that viewed your video.
5. Shares – How many people share your content on their profile.
6. Reposts – How many people repost your content on their profile.
7. Profile Visits – How many social media accounts visit your profile page.
8. Followers – How many followers do you have.
9. Mentions – How many times do other social media users mention your profile in their content.

You can use the built-in analytics tool provided by the social media platform itself. You can also use a tool like Google Analytics to monitor your social media strategy’s success.

Best Social Media Platforms For Businesses

Here’s a brief overview of social media platforms that you may use for your social media marketing:

Reference:

1. Baby Boomers: Anyone born from 1046 to 1964
2. Generation X: Anyone born from 1965 to 1980
3. Millennials: Anyone born from 1981 to 1996
4. Generation Z: Anyone born from 1997 to 2012
5. Generation Alpha: Anyone born between 2010 to 2020s

Facebook

The largest social media platform to date with almost 3 billion users. It is also one of the largest local business directories. It is best suited for a paid and organic campaign.

• Active users: 2 billion active daily users worldwide
• Audience: Mostly Generation X and Millennials
• Best for: Brand awareness and advertising

Instagram

Instagram is the second most popular social platform with almost 1.5 billion users. Known for reels, stories and IGTV, it is ideal for businesses in the fashion, food, beauty and travel sectors.

• Active users: 1 billion monthly active users
• Target audience: Millennials
• Best suited for: High-quality images and videos, advertising

TikTok

TikTok, the third most used social platform, is characterised by organic engagement. Its algorithm can help companies achieve viral success, but the content must be entertaining.

• Active users: 1 billion active monthly users worldwide
• Target audience: Generation Z and millennials
• Best suited for: Short videos, entertainment, brand awareness

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is famous for professionals. It’s the perfect platform to find talent and promote your business. B2B networking is also practised here, and the likelihood of meeting influencers, managers or CEOs is high.

Users can create profiles such as CVs, making it easier to connect with vacancies and opportunities.

• Active users: 774 million active users worldwide
• Target group: Baby boomers, generation X and millennials
• Best suited for: B2B, business development and professional networking

X (Previously Known as Twitter)

X is a good starting point for most businesses. It is a great platform to engage in conversation between your business and your customers.

• Active users: 211 million daily active users worldwide
• Audience: Mostly Millennials
• Best for: Customer service, community management, and public relations

Youtube

YouTube is the best platform for long content, especially videos. YouTube users tend to stay longer on the platform to watch the video content. It has become a substitute for traditional television programmes. YouTube is therefore the best platform to host your videos.

• Active users: 315 million daily active users worldwide
• Target groups: Baby boomers, generation X, millennials (most of them) and generation Z
• Best suited for: Long-form videos, entertainment and educational videos

Are You Ready To Level Up Your Social Media Marketing Strategy?

Remember that not all social media marketing strategies guarantee 100% success. However, if you use the right methods, your business has a greater chance of achieving your social media marketing goals.

Check out my digital marketing service if you need assistance with managing your social media needs.