Every December, small business owners everywhere gather around their desks to review their goals from months past and how they measured up. Over the course of a year, a small business owner can endure many changes in his or her business. This is specifically evident in a social media marketing strategy. This happens primarily from an inability to predict the changes in social media platforms versus a small business owner’s inability to pivot with these changes, fast enough. When it comes to planning our new year social media marketing strategies, it is important that learn from the past. We must apply what worked, leaving room for improvement where possible.
We know that social media marketing takes time to learn, research, and execute for it to not only be effective but for it to produce the results we desire. Every business’s marketing strategy varies due to the desires goals and any set of objectives. The more exposure and engagement you get from social media, the more potential leads you will gain and in turn, can convert these leads. Focus on social media platforms that complement your brand and what you have to offer. Your business must not be left with the trends because your competitors will be sprinting ahead in the new year.
5 Valuable Social Media Marketing Tips to Guide You
Through the effective use of social media marketing, your business can build better relationships with consumers and establish a greater market share. The reason for being in business is to build a relationship with your customers and cater to their needs, rather than being sales pushy and losing them as a potential customer. Their loyalty will drive you to take your business to newer and better heights. Let’s take a look at some of the few tips we feel you should focus on for the new year.
1 | Create a Quality Social Media Marketing Plan
Your entire social media marketing plan is built on your customer persona. You must have a clear understanding of who you are ultimately talking to and who will benefit from what product or service your business has to offer. Along with knowing who your audience is, you also need to know where to find them and not every platform is right for every business or individual.
From there, your next focus should be is to have a detailed description of what your brand looks like. This will include your brand’s vision, mission, and voice. Keeping your message and appearance consistent between all online platforms will increase your brand awareness. A quality social media marketing plan varies for every business. Knowing your customer’s pain points will help you focus on listening to you them.
2 | Focus on Your Presence on Social Media
Start by organizing your thoughts by creating a social media/ editorial calendar to outline your vision for publishing your online content. This will allow you to see the bigger picture and break up images, articles, motivational quotes, etc. without recycling your material too soon.
Focus your efforts on showing up consistently with new, relevant, and engaging content. Take note of how your content is being perceived, engaged with and shared on social media. Always make sure that you or your team responds to any comments online.
3 | Implement Live Video Content
Video posts are dominating social media right now. We see a huge reach in industries across the board. Get ahead of the game by often practicing to get yourself comfortable with being in front of the camera because this will take your content to the next level.
There are many social media platforms that offer video streams from creating instant stories to hosting live events. Live or prerecorded videos are a great way to connect with your audience, by showing before and after results of a product in use or service you offer. It is great for adding testimonials or showing a how-to video showing the exact steps it takes to complete a task.
4 | Pay Attention to the Data
Unfortunately, just because you have created and posted this amazing content, doesn’t always mean it is doing well. There are many areas that you need to spread your focus across when it comes to analytic data. When looking at these reports, some of what you are testing is what time of day is your audience the most active. When and where you are getting the most likes, shares, and engagement. Images also play a huge role in engagement.
Relevant, branded images keep your business at the forefront of their mind. Fortunately, there are many analytic tools out there that will help guide your efforts to succeed. These tools will allow you to create real-time reports which can measure the in-depth performance of all of your social media profiles. Gather all of this data monthly and research every angle to help you optimize your strategy ever so slightly until you reach the perfect peak of performance.
5 | Increase Your Sales
Small business owners should look beyond simply growing their follower base via social media, a task that can be easily accomplished by increasing their engagement. Instead, the vast majority of successful small business owners understand the importance of lead generation and even an increase in sales. This is where social shopping comes into play; a term used to describe the creation of a shopping experience available on social media sites.
Many platforms will give you access to set-up a shopping cart to allow customers to buy directly from your profile. This is most evident via Facebook Business Pages where you can with the hopes of them sharing their purchase on their platforms. Make their buying process as seamless as possible.
The vast majority of successful small business owners understand the importance of lead generation and even an increase in sales.Click To TweetGive People a Reason to Follow You
At SoVerve Marketing Group, we make it a point to discuss the importance of weaving content that tells a story into every single post you deliver through a social media channel. Personalizing your strategy will become one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal of approaches to how you communicate with your audience. Understanding this will allow you to take a very different approach to your social media marketing strategy for each new year!
You see, as our businesses change and pivot, so will our strategies. These change from quarter to quarter and from year to year, therefore giving your audience a compelling reason to follow you is of utmost importance. Tell your story. Give your audience a reason to want to purchase from you. Make that argument clear through each new post by presenting past or present experiences, and even pain points that you have solved that are relevant to the topic at hand. This is the easiest way to generate interest in your platforms and how you will, in turn, attract the right audience.