Social media marketing is serious business. Especially if you’re a business owner, entrepreneur or marketer because the right social media marketing strategy has the power to literally transform a business sales and can help you generate more leads, customer and revenue. But like all things what you get out is what you put in which is the very essence of these social media marketing guide
Social Media use to be a tool for fun and personal connection in that past but there are those of us who have learned how to harness the true power of social media and have actually put it to good use in their businesses.
I’d breakdown some of the most important things you need to consider in other to leverage the true power of social media for your business.
Social media marketing tip#1: Start With a Plan
Before you begin creating social media marketing campaigns, consider your business’s goals. Starting a social media marketing campaign without a social strategy in mind is like wandering around a forest without a map—you might have fun, but you’ll probably get lost.
Here are some questions to ask when defining your social media marketing goals:
What are you hoping to achieve through social media marketing?
Who is your target audience?
How to identify your target audience
Where would your target audience hang out and how would they use social media?
Social media marketing tip#2: Pick the right platform
Social media engagement is all about picking the right platform. You need to decide where you’re going to focus your time, energy and resources because when it comes to social media, there is no shortage of available platform. New ones are being introduced all the time but you can’t be everywhere, you can’t do everything. If you do, you spread yourself way too thin and would have no business growth simply because your market isn’t there. So if no one is there that you want to reach why would you want to waste your time being there. No one cares how hyped up your marketing campaign is, how captivating it is, if your target market isn’t there, you shouldn’t either.
Tips to picking the right platform for your social media marketing
Social media marketing tip#3: Focus on your customer’s pain points
This goes hand in hand with making sure you’re in the right place because again if you’re in the wrong place they are not even gonna find you and if you’re talking about content they don’t care about of course they are not gonna engage with it. Now how do you know the kind of content your audience cares about, well with a little bit of research, whether you talk to them, read through some of their comments, or analyse your type of customers and the service that you provide and start to connect the dots. The key thing is, you have to focus your content on two different areas- first their miracles
Miracles are things like their wants, dreams, goals, desires and aspirations and everything they are going after
Secondly- their Miseries
Miseries are their fears, their pains, their problems and everything they try to move away from.
And when your content is all about their miracles and misery they’d listen because you’re speaking directly to them. This makes you relevant, relatable and interesting and a whole lot more useful to them. Which brings us to the next tip
Social media marketing tip#4: Make yourself useful.
There is a whole lot of content getting into the Internet every single day. This is why to stand out and be relevant to your ideal target market, you have to create content that is useful and relevant to them.
But how do you do this?
Well, you’ve got one or two paths you can take to this or a mystical combination of both.
The first of which is, you can seek to educate them. This means giving away as much valuable information as you possibly can.
On the other hand, you can entertain them. Provide value through entertainment.
And lastly, you can try to do both, and the key way to do it is to be as empathetic as possible. Put yourself into your customer’s or audience’s shoes. Look at your content from their perspective and ask yourself, what’s in it for me? I.e why should they care? Why would they watch, listen or read what I am putting out?
Social media marketing tip# 5: Use the art of storytelling!
Numbers and stats may be good to back up a point and prove something to somebody. However, until there is a reason for a person to be interested in knowing those figures they are nothing but an annoying waste of media space. In fact, on a number of occasions, people are actually too lazy to even read the number in front of them. What truly captures their attention and makes them engage with your brand is an interesting story. People connect with stories so tell your followers one!
People want solutions. To be entertained. To hear a good or funny story… bonus points if it’s relevant to their current circumstances.
Make sure you add a personal touch to your Social Media Marketing strategy. It is important to show your customers that there is an actual human or even a team of humans behind the polished digital account. Not only will it help them to relate more to your business, but will also bring more trust to it. You are real! You understand them!
Social media marketing Tip #6: Don’t spam with hashtags.
A lot of Social Media Marketing courses still insist on using hashtags for promotion, but the reality is that the days of excessive use of hashtags are long gone. Not only will that not help you with engagement but will also feel kinda spammy.
Lastly, If your free info is valuable — they would always imagine how valuable your paid material would be.
If peoples motives are pre-dominantly self-serving. You can scratch that itch for them. Your social media presence shouldn’t be salesy. It should actually be about how your work and experiences helps your audience.
People want solutions. To be entertained. To hear a good or funny story… Is it relevant to their current circumstances?.
In the past. Information needed to be paid for. There were industry secrets shared among a selected few. Nowadays, Information is free. The competition to promote free stuff is huge…
I can use the internet to learn the guitar, sharpen my surf skills, get an education on proper nutrition habits and exercise routines. What this means is that, the people who teach all-the-above freely bring value to the world. And tend to have more attention drawn to them.