Social media is hot sauce for many businesses but 70% of them are doing social media marketing wrong. They hear people shouting, “You must have a social media presence,” but what it involves is not always spelt out correctly. When social media marketing is done the right way, it can help to increase sales and promote businesses.
Similar to traditional media such TV commercials, radio jingles, newspaper/magazine ads, billboards, if you send your message to the wrong audience, the results will be poor. Social media marketing should be effective and affordable. To execute a successful social media marketing campaign, these are some call to action steps to bear in mind:
- Understand how social media works – There are many social media marketing tips online and DIY paid courses, you can complete at your convenience. Some platforms, which offer tips and courses on social media marketing, are Hootsuite, Cousera, Udemy, Futurelearn and more. It is important you invest time in learning how social media marketing works for your business. Although the basics are the same across board, different businesses will have to alter their strategies a little bit, in order to get the attention of their target audience.
- Listen to your customers – Entrepreneurs should also use social media as an extension of their customer service. To know what your customers want, you must listen to what they have to say. Many customers share their opinions and views about your products/services on social media compared to sending emails and calling the customer service. Listening to your audience provides vital information that can help shape the growth of your business.
- Stick to automation for consistency – There are different types of automation for social media marketing. When businesses don’t manage the frequency of sending out promotional offers, they lose a large chunk of their customers. Social media should be used as a way to communicate with your audience and offer valuable information, not spam their inboxes with irrelevant mails. Hootsuite is a great automation software which offers a free plan and helps you to push out your content across all of the social media platforms effectively. You can schedule your posts in advance as this gives you more time to focus on replying and engaging with your social media followers.
- Creatively engage your audience – Many small business owners think social media marketing is posting a couple of time during the day but this is an inaccurate impression. Social media marketing is about actively engaging with your audience and turning them into satisfied customers. If all you do is just twice or thrice a day on social media, you will be missing a lot of opportunities to convert your followers to customers. Active engagement enables you to discover issues, which your customers might be facing, armed with this information; you can quickly resolve the issues before they spiral out of control.
- Track your results – It’s important to measure your progress and results if you want to run an effective social media campaign. You need to outline your goals with benchmarks that enable you to evaluate the success of your marketing campaigns. The data can be used to improve and further optimize your campaigns.
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