The world has gone digital. Do not get left behind.

Digital World

Customer today are online and social, it’s important for marketers to keep track with social marketing to reap the rewards. With the rise of the massive marketing tools among the channels from free to paid, we rounded up the most effective techniques for you to embrace social marketing and get results with your strategies. Let’s see how you can use social media to generate sales and traffic from your social media platforms.

A lot of businesses have however not used the full force of social media’s power. Most businesses want to do more, but haven’t had the time or are uncertain of how best to get started to use social media to increase traffic, convert leads, nurture those leads toward a sale and delight their customers.

Avoid “Ready, Fire, Aim”

Companies should avoid the “ready, aim, fire” approach to social media. Companies who take the “ready, fire, aim” approach, get lousy results and then sour on social media.

Run giveaways to drive traffic

Social media giveaways is a proven way for businesses to interact with their fans, build a strong community, and gain more leads and turn them into sales.

Use stories to sell more

Instagram Stories allow users to post multiple pictures and videos that will disappear after 24 hours. Brands can take advantages of this feature to improve engagement, brand awareness, and post more content without overwhelming followers’ feed.

Your own content is king

Before building a social media strategy, you need to have great content on your website. Content that is helpful and of interest to your ideal customers just when they want it. Content includes blogs, videos, ebooks, webinars, etc. 

Without your own content as the foundation of your social media strategy, you’ll be throwing bait to the fish without it being connected to your fishing line. With your own content you are much more likely to succeed. Social media can vastly extend the reach of your site’s content, get it shared and draw more traffic back to your site. So before firing away with a social media effort, here are the five things to ensure you’ll have proper aim and profitable results:

1. Research your buyer persona

Think about your ideal customers who don’t know your company. What information would they find helpful that you can provide? Keep in mind that they are much more interested in themselves and their problems or aspirations than your company and it’s products. Which social media platforms do they tend to use? Gain a presence on those social media networks where your ideal customers already gather.

Does your buyer persona use one of the big social media networks or perhaps a niche site targeted at people in the same industry or with a similar interest? You may not need to be on as many social media platforms as you think. Why do they use the social media platforms that they do use – business or pleasure? What sort of content do they tend to consume and share?

2. Optimize your profiles

Each social media platform is a window into your brand, and should represent your companies image and values. Include your company’s logo and get all the related graphics and dimensions correct for each platform. Just like with your website, use keywords to get your social media profile found via search. Search engines crawl most social media networks. Always include a link to your site to make it easier for visitors to find you.

3. Build reach

Reach is a measure of potential audience size. It’s not just how many follower you have, but how many followers your followers have. That’s why you’ll want to start following and connecting with prospects, customers and thought leaders. Keep in mind, however, that your social media presence is only as good as your engagement and your content.

Let’s talk about “engagement.” Have you ever been to a cocktail party and met a guy who only talked about himself and never showed any interest in you? Don’t be that guy on social media. Follow the 80/20 rule: share helpful, interesting content at least 80% of the time. Post pictures, videos, ebooks, blog posts, contests and questions. The other 20% of your social media posts can direct people to offers and other more promotional content.

4. Customize your content for each Social media platform

No matter how great your content is, when it’s distributed on social media it’s only meaningful within the context of where it appears. Have you ever seen a Twitter post with hashtags that has been posted to LinkedIn? Or perhaps a tweet that was cut off because it was autoposted from other platforms? It demonstrates laziness. For each social media platform, present your message in the context of the platform on which you’re communicating. Here are examples of the types of customization you should do for some of the major social media networks.

Twitter – Think of Twitter as a conversation. Keep your tweets short, engaging and easily shareable. Use hashtags to connect with an audience or tap in to relevant trends. Also, don’t start a tweet with an @ symbol because it will only be seen by mutual followers of the sender and receiver, thus diminishing your reach and as with so much of social media, make it visual. Tweets with pictures have 50% higher click through rates.

Facebook – This is where you can show more personality than just about any other social media network. From a frame of mind, visitors to Facebook generally want to have fun and be entertained. This is not the place for serious content. There’s no limit on the number of characters, but try to keep it as short as possible. Use as many visuals as possible (make sure they are properly sized for Facebook).

LinkedIn – Looking to find and share serious content? This is your network. It’s fine to provide more in-depth content here. You can post content to your company page and to relevant LinkedIn groups. When posting to groups, it’s best to listen first to the questions and conversations before offering up your content.

Instagram – Great for posting images and videos. All about visually pleasing content. Keep your captions short and sweet. Use relevant hashtags.

5. Analyze to refine

What can be measured can be improved! That’s how you will know if your content and social media strategy is on the right track in support of your business goals.

Some basic metrics to monitor include:

– How many visits are you getting from social media?

– How many leads are you generating from social media?

– Which of those leads became customers?

More important than the number of social media followers you are gaining is their level of engagement:

– How shareable is your content?

– Which posts are getting the most clicks?

– Which posts are generating the most engagement. Look at shares and comments.

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