Over the past few years, the role of social media in digital marketing has grown at an astronomical rate. And this channel shows no sign of becoming a less influential part of online business.
Companies and individuals widely use it to expand their reach, develop relationships with partners and influencers, and grab customers’ attention.
So how can you get the most out of social media? What is the best way to incorporate them into your overall marketing strategy?
How do you avoid big mistakes and measure the effectiveness of your social media strategy?
Major social media platforms
I’d choose X (Twitter) because the responses seem to be more immediate, and easier to connect with the community
Let’s take a look at other social media platforms and discover their main advantages.
- YouTube: Invest in a good camera, mic, and lights – then get creative. Storytelling with marketing = power!
- Facebook: It’s the platform people are most comfortable & familiar with.
- LinkedIn: For B2B business, LinkedIn drives to most actionable users to convert via the web.
- Instagram: For just about any niche that has anything to do with food, fashion and travel
- TikTok: Great for businesses that target younger generations. If you are about to start an online boutique, start a TikTok account right away.
As you can see, each social network matters. On our next questions will take a closer look at strategy development and find out how to get the best from every social platform.
How to use social media marketing?
No single marketing activity exists alone. If you’ve just started to think about adding social media integration into your marketing mix, I have bad news for you – you might miss out on a lot of opportunities. If you want to avoid this, we’ve got some tips and tricks that will help you to get more out of social media than with other marketing activities.
Social media helps with branding, content marketing, thought leadership, and so on!
I think that social media can help with a lot of marketing issues. Let’s take a closer look at each of them. First of all, let’s talk about content distribution. “Take advantage of all of your site’s content and use social media to share/viralize.”
I love sharing the content I write for a blog through social media, and seeing what channels work best for select content
A great thing about social media – you can share more than just up-to-date content. Different social platforms provide different opportunities to promote content that was published months ago. The key thing here – repurpose and reuse. Just don’t be too pushy!
Content marketing and social should go hand-in-hand. But remember the general 80/20 rule – don’t just share your own stuff.
This simple rule will also help you with relationship building – give credit to other authors and share opinion leaders’ content. It will help you to diversify your news feed and make new connections.
Social Media is great for building your rep as an expert & brand. The marketing mix should leverage that and not sell.
Social media will help you establish your brand name and increase its visibility. Along with valuable content and proactive positioning, social media is all you need to build credibility and further your influence.
All this hard work, first of all, requires consistency. Remember that constant effort and a well-developed plan can lead to success.
How to measure social media success?
First of all, before we discuss specific metrics, let’s talk about the measuring process in general.
- Identify relevant metrics
- Measure them
- Compare to business goals
It doesn’t matter how you measure your results, they only matter if you compare them to your business goals. There are a lot of metrics that can be tracked and a lot of tools that can provide you with this information. But don’t overload yourself with data! Projecting your business goals onto your social media strategy will help you determine the right ROI metrics.
ROI is different from business to business:
- For non-profits, ROI is about raising awareness.
- For B2C, ROI relies on connecting with consumers.
- For B2B, ROI may be about showing off your expertise and/or generating leads.
Yes, social media can be a powerful selling instrument, but thinking of it as a selling channel is a mistake.
You need to define what social ROI really is. Social media marketing is not a money, money-out venture.
The best way to measure social media ROI is to measure its impact on your brand awareness, your reputation, and your community building. You can use social media itself to measure social ROI by following conversations occurring around your brand. Social is great for building brand awareness and reputation – if you’re doing it right, these conversions will be positive.
Keep in mind that absolute numbers are not themselves significant – the truth will be revealed through comparison.
Likes/Followers are dead measurements. Need to measure engagement. Start with a posts/shares ratio.
Social media marketing mistakes
We prepared a huge list of the mistakes that marketers usually make on social media. Although the list is quite big, we’d recommend taking a closer look at these two:
- Using social as a direct sales channel. Follow/Unfollow to gain audience. 0 ability to prove what they are doing works!
- Posting without thinking. Posting too much. Posting too little. Not posting at all. Not measuring ROI.
The idea of social media as a selling instrument and inconsistent strategy won’t lead you to success. Here are the most common mistakes you can fix right away!
When and why should you invest in social media ads?
There is no such thing as paid versus organic. They go together hand to hand, but the balance of this happy union can be broken if you overuse one of the channels or don’t use it correctly. So when and why should you buy ads?
Buy ads early and start small. Find keywords & messaging that work before officially getting in the game.
If you’ve never bought an ad on social media before, a slow start can benefit your company more than a huge campaign. Finding the right keywords, finding the right voice for your content, and developing your message: it all takes time and a bit of experimentation
Pay for ads when I have a specific conversion of definite value. It’s easy to get a budget when ROI is obvious.
And of course, a paid campaign requires planning – it will save you time and money.
Your message can easily hit your target when you know who your audience is. Figuring this out is one of the most important parts of your research.
When your campaign is on the rail and you have a general idea of your positioning, audience, and message, then comes the time for a bit more experimentation. Once again, social media is great for content distribution, both paid and organic.
A paid campaign offers huge opportunities for message cross-promotion. Buy ads to promote specific initiatives (like sweepstakes), not to simply build followers.
For a global company, local presence is really important. First of all, it helps to use different messages for different locations and to use different approaches, depending on local distinctive features and characteristics. Second, going local helps you look more “human.” It shows that you are not just a huge, heartless corporation, but that you are ready to solve users’ problems, whatever they are.
Start with content. And involve users in the content creation process! We were talking about the benefits of paid search already. On a local level, advertising is irreplaceable, too.
Global or not, you can create ads 1:1 based on the targeting available. Global can still be personal/local.
Improve your level of engagement. Communication is the only way to show that you care.
Brands can’t fake locals on social. If you truly want a local/social presence, you need to have someone engaged in the community.
It’s no secret that taking a personal approach is more advantageous; the same is true for establishing a local presence.
Track local news and get to know the area. Any events or news that you can discover through local newsfeeds can help! Use hashtags to show that you are “in the know.”
