Description: Social media represents one of the biggest combined audiences on the internet. To use these platforms, digital marketers need to be clever with their social media marketing tactics. We look at some ways to increase growth through social media marketing.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is the ‘Promised Land’ for many digital marketers. Never has it been easier to reach vast swathes of people in a matter of seconds. From the times when reaching people used to be the greatest challenge of marketing, we have come to a time when it’s possible at the swipe of a finger.
While the problem of reach may have been solved, engaging with the audience still remains a challenge. Social media marketing seeks to solve this problem and help leverage the reach of social media.
Make Sure Your Goals and Challenges Are Aligned
A goal should not be set just because it has to be. This represents one of the biggest mistakes companies make in social media marketing.
The goals of a social media marketing campaign should be set based upon the challenges being faced by the company. This may differ from company to company. For instance, company A is using social media just to maintain a healthy level of brand awareness and engagement with its audience. Another company B is looking to increase its mobile app downloads. It doesn’t make sense for B to copy the social media marketing techniques of A. Both have different challenges and thus different goals.
Social media marketing isn’t a ‘one shoe for all’ scenario. The strategy used for social media marketing by a company should reflect its challenges and goals.
Do check: How to improve social branding in 2020?
Know Your Audience
This is true for perhaps most marketing efforts. Social media marketing is hinged upon making a genuine connection with the target audience. This is not possible until digital marketers direct their efforts towards knowing their social media audience.
There are many free and paid tools which allow digital marketers to fully understand the make-up of their current and prospective audience. Using this data, digital marketers formulate an appropriate social media marketing plan which resonates with their respective audience.
There are different kinds of demographics of different social media channels too. Instagram has a far younger audience on average. LinkedIn is mostly populated by professional people. Knowing the general nature of an online channel also plays a key role in social media marketing.
Do check: How to target geographical audiences
Follow an Analytical Approach
Getting likes and followers is one thing, but the ultimate goal of social media marketing is to eventually help the company posting. Digital marketers need to establish certain metrics to evaluate the performance of a given social media marketing campaign.
Some of these metrics may include reach, engagement, link clicks (if any), post clicks and hashtag performance.
Depending on these metrics, digital marketers have to keep experimenting with their tactics. This can mean changing the time or channel of posting or working on improving the content posted.
Do check: 5 Social Media Trends for 2020
Know Your Competitors
Always have a pulse on what your competitors are doing. There are many tools online which help digital marketers keep track of competing firms and businesses.
This tip does not suggest digital marketers should copy their competitors. Competitors can help digital marketers measure their own performance, and know the different kinds of social media marketing strategies being deployed.
Post Fresh and Engaging Content
Social media marketing is incomplete without a core understanding of the type of content to be posted. There are many factors involved in this, from knowing the audience to the type of channel in questions. Images do well on Instagram and Facebook, but an insightful textual tweet on Twitter can work wonders. Reddit is more about discussing interesting trending topics and creating a closely-knit community.
Digital marketers should ideally work in tandem with content creators and creative directors to create the best possible content to post on social media. Social media marketing is primarily about using content to increase engagement and boost other deciding metrics.
About the Author – Gaurav Heera is a well-known content strategist and digital marketing entrepreneur. He currently heads operations at DelhiCourses.in, a place ranked #1 consistently for its digital marketing course in Delhi. The institute also offers courses in other fields such as cyber security, business analytics, and cloud computing.
