In this post, I’ll show you 13 social media marketing tips for business growth. It doesn’t matter if you’re a solopreneur, have a small business or you’re the head of a large business enterprise. These tips can function as a checklist to make sure you’ll succeed in growing your social media presence and monetize on it.
Good marketer goes where the attention is and right now it’s on social media. Check out these stats I got from Google.
All these people could be potential clients. So if you haven’t already. create a social media page for your business.
Benefits of being active on social media
Besides the volume of people there all kinds of other advantages to having your business on social media such as
- Increasing your brand awareness
- Improving your search engine rankings
- Stimulating brand loyalty
- Increase conversion rate
- and much more.
This why even though I normally don’t talk a lot about social media marketing I’d make a list consisting of 13 social media marketing tips that can help your business grow.
SMM Tip #1Set up goals
People often underestimate this step but it all begins with setting up goals. If you don’t know where you’re trying to end up you’ll get lost on the way especially with all the new shiny objects that pop up every day promoting you to get you where you want faster.
Know beforehand how many subscribers, followers, comments, likes do you want your social media accounts to have in a certain timespan.
You should not only have result-oriented goals but also process-oriented goals. You’re still dealing with people so you can’t control their actions. Work on what you can control and adjust at the hand of your result oriented goals.
SMM Tip #2 Select platforms according to your strengths
When I started out with my first website I already knew about the value of social media marketing but I didn’t know how to get the most out of a platform. I just made an account on every social media platform out there and started posting content on all of them.
What I realized was that I was better at communicating with people at certain platforms while on others I really sucked or I had to put in so much more time and time is one of the only things we can’t get back. Since then I applied the 20/80 rule. The 20/80 rule is a theory that says that 20% of your tasks gets you 80% of the results. So I started looking at which mediums and platforms brought me the most results and I cut the others out.
Not good at writing? why go on Medium.
Don’t like taking pictures? Why go on Pinterest
It will save you a lot of time when you just focus on your strengths and create content driven by that.
SMM Tip #3 Jab, jab, jab, jab, right hook
Yes! You can 10X your sales by using social media marketing but that doesn’t mean you post your offers all over the social platforms. You might see the value in everything you offer but not everybody else will see it immediately too. The chance is pretty high they’ll see it as spam and you might lose them as potential customers.
Before you offer a product or service begin with offering value first. Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this a lot and wrote two books about it called the thank you economy and jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, right hook. He compares marketing to boxing. You can’t just come in with the right hook you have to use your left and jab to set up the right hook so it will actually land.
In this scenario, the jabs are the value you bring beforehand with which you build trust and once you have that you have the right to ask something of the potential client.
SMM Tip #4 Make a content schedule
When it comes to social media marketing consistency is key. You’re building a relationship with your audience and every relationship no matter if it’s face to face or through a screen has some form of consistent communication. This is why I’d advise creating a content schedule.
Set a date for your ultimate deadline to figure out how much you have to communicate with your audience beforehand and start planning.
SMM Tip #5 Use social media tools
Social media marketing can take a lot of time because you’re basically running your own media company next to your own business. This is why I believe you should make things as easy as possible for yourself so you don’t exert too much unnecessary time and energy.
There are a lot of social media tools out there that can help you with managing your content from one place so you don’t have to go from platform to platform to post content. You can also use social media automation tools so you can set beforehand when certain content should be posted on your social media accounts.
Work hard but also work smart!
SMM Tip #6 Native Content
Every social media platform is different and the way you use them is also different. You can’t just make content and post it on every platform in the same way. You do that and the people watching it instinctively will think you just don’t get how it works here. This isn’t good for your brand and it isn’t good for sales.
This is why before you start posting all kind of content you should take the time and look at what everybody else is posting and in what form. You copy that and put your own spin to it to make it personal.
SMM Tip #7 Context is important
You can have a schedule and make posts beforehand but sometimes you’re going to have to make context-specific content. You can get a lot of eyes by doing that. If you can find out what events are highly relevant right now and in some way incorporate that in your content you can get a lot of attention.
It might be something like Christmas, national women’s day or something else that’s special. Become a master of tying your content to relevant events and you’ll have a huge audience that you offer products to in no time
SMM Tip #8 Difference between content for branding and sales
This is probably the biggest mistake I made a few years back. I read something about social media marketing and enthusiastically I started posting all kinds of videos. I did this for maybe 8 months in a row and for some reason I thought something was going to happen out of nowhere.
I didn’t realize that there is a difference between doing content marketing for brand awareness and doing it to get sales. I gave a lot of valuable information in those videos but I wasn’t leading the people that watched my videos to a situation in which I could actually offer them a product.
Every piece of content you put out should have a specific purpose. The moment you start making random content you’re wasting valuable time and energy.
SMM Tip #9 It’s all about building relationships. Get Personal
Like I’ve said before social media makes it possible to build a relationship with your audience but you have to get personal. This doesn’t mean you have to share your deepest darkest secret ( even though you can do that too ) but you can give them a peek inside what you’re doing so they get to understand what you or your business is all about.
Sales are based on trust and value by getting people to understand what you’re all about they’ll feel like they know you which is a powerful thing to have.
SMM Tip #10 Facebook groups
People need to be exposed to your content multiple times before you have enough trust to offer them products but if you don’t have a way to contact them it’s going to be hard to make a sale. This is why a lot of people create Facebook groups. You can post content in your facebook group and increase the chances of them getting to see your content multiple times.
SMM Tip #11 Engage with your community
There’s a lot of money to be made in active communities so nowadays you see a lot of people trying to create online communities but a lot of them fail. One of the biggest reason that is, is because they aren’t a part of their own community. They just post content and don’t reply when people have questions. It’s indeed a lot of work to engage with people in your community but it will increase the chances of your community succeeding. You’re the reason why they joined the community so give them what they want.
SMM Tip #12 Sponsered Ads
Social Media is really great but grow an audience nowadays takes a long time. Some social platforms limit the exposure you get which means if you want to scale you’re going to have to use paid advertisement. Just remember using sponsored ads is all about relevancy. Make sure whatever ad you’ll make fits seamlessly with the place you’re directing people to.
SMM Tip #13 Measure your results and tweak
I started out by talking about the importance of setting goals. This is why they are important because it makes it possible to measure your progress. To do social media marketing effectively you’re going to have to tweak your marketing a lot. Through testing, failing and pivoting you’ll slowly learn how to bring the most value you can and eventually will hit the sweet spot.
Got any questions? Learned something new? or have you tested some of these tips?
Let me know by leaving a comment below maybe we can brainstorm about some social media marketing ideas.
That’s all for now. See you at the next post!
