Nearly every brand is on social media, and if you’re not – you should be. But with so many brands active on all of today’s social channels, how can you stand out among the masses?
In order to make an impression on their followers, many companies are turning to social media marketing campaigns. These campaigns help to increase social media engagement as well as increase brand awareness. Unfortunately, not all campaigns are successful, and can result in wasted time and money.
To help you achieve success with your social media campaign, we’ve put together a list of top tips you can use to garner great results. Here they are:
Set Clear Goals
The first step to any social media campaign is to determine what it is you’re wanting to achieve. Are you wanting to promote a new product and have a certain number of users preorder before it launches? Do you want to gain more followers? You need to focus in on your objective so you can create an action plan of how you can achieve it.
Offer the Right Prize
Nowadays, everyone expects to get something in return for doing something. Make sure the prize you’re offering for your campaign is suitable for your target audience, and not just something big and flashy. The prize should align with your brand, and the value of it should match the level of effort it takes to enter.
For example, if you’re asking users to submit a homemade video, that prize would be larger in value than the prize for asking them to retweet something.
Choose Your Channels and Study Them
Not every campaign with bolster success on every social channel, so be sure you’re selecting the right one. Determine who you’ll be targeting, and select your channel based on your audience’s demographics. If you’re targeting stay-at-home moms in their thirties, you’ll find more success on platforms like Facebook and Pinterest rather than LinkedIn, so you’ll know where to hit the hardest.
When you know what channels you plan to target, take care to utilize SEO practices. Many social platforms can be indexed by Google, so make sure you’re targeting the appropriate keywords and search terms.
Promote Your Campaign
It’s been said that 75% of campaign success comes from promotion, so not actively promoting your campaign can cause severe impact. Promote your social media campaign actively across all your channels. Just because it’s a Facebook campaign doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to talk about it on Instagram or your website. Not all users check all their social media regularly, so the more you can put your campaign out there the more success you’ll achieve.
Engage with Your Participants and Share Their Content
It’s incredibly important to engage with the participants of your campaign. Liking and commenting on their interactions with your campaign with make them feel valued, and encourage others who haven’t entered or participated to do so.
Apart from liking submissions, you can also share users’ content, if applicable. If you’re encouraging users to submit a photo for your campaign, select some of the best ones and use them yourself (with permission, of course). Feature them on your social channels, post about them on your blog, or utilize them in some other way.
Analyze Your Success
After your campaign has ended, measure your success and evaluate your progress. You may find you were much more successful than anticipated, or than your campaign didn’t quite hit the mark. Regardless, you’ll be able to determine what worked, what didn’t work, and uncover important information you can use for your next campaign.
Author Bio: Jason Howard is a blog writer for Cynexis media and has many years of experience in writing quality article for social media marketing and web design.
Social media marketing is one of the most efficient ways to improve your business’ online presence, sales, and branding. Many entrepreneurs in various industries have already invested in social media and they can already see the positive effect of it towards their businesses. The abundance of small businesses and start-ups shared articles online can testify how popular and cost-effective this strategy is.
For marketers, the potential to grow their business with the help of these social networks is endless. However, the problem is some people, most often the budding entrepreneurs, struggle and get confused on how to handle different social media platforms. Instead of gaining more followers and attracting new customers, the opposite happens.
Managing social media for your business may seem difficult to do but it doesn’t have to be that way. It can become really simple if you learn how to put your customers in the center of your business’ campaign. You do not have to invest too much time on your social networking sites, while getting better profit. Want to know how? Check out these easy-to-learn social media tips that even newbies can follow:
Follow verified accounts to get a follow back.
Managing a social media account is like walking into a party. You can’t connect with people easily if you don’t initiate conversation first. In social media, you reach out to people and engage with them.
To increase your popularity on any social platform, here are the steps that you must do:
- Recognize the relevant verified accounts.
- Follow people who have verified accounts to build your network.
- Try to follow other relevant users, even if you do not know them.
- Share their content, mention them on your status updates and interact with them.
After doing all these, be patient and wait for them to follow you back. Eventually, you will be able to build a connection with not all but some. Nonetheless, don’t go on a following spree and be reminded of the follow-to-follower ratio that you have to keep, particularly in Twitter, or else you could get suspended.
Optimize images to get attention.
According to a new research, images could be the “holy grail” of social media engagement because it is easier to consume than text. Optimize the image you post on your profiles to get more followers and attention. You can use catchy or interesting images that can entice your audience’s curiosity.
Make sure that you check the size of your featured photo or status update photos. Basically, you’ll reproduce the photo in different sizes. To make your life easier, lay out your subjects in the center of the image. Leave 40-50 pixels at the side of your photo, and 10-20 pixels at the bottom. With this, your images will be properly presented as if it is specifically made for the page.
Know the best time to post to boost audience reach.
Analyze your audience and find out which is the best time to post updates. Analyzing is a bit challenging because you have to determine your follower’s attitude. Once you figure it out, your business’ social media accounts will get better engagement, traffic, and share rate. Remember user habits vary on every social media platform. Typically, the best time to post on Facebook is during 2PM -6PM when users are about to leave their workplace. Meanwhile, Twitter gets a better reach during 1PM-3PM.
Moreover, check what day users typically go online. Facebook peaks during Wednesday while Twitter has a lot of users during Monday- Thursday. During Friday, LinkedIn users don’t often log in and use their accounts. In Pinterest, users often log in during Friday afternoon and the weekend.
If you are not available to post during these specific time, you can schedule it via social media management tools like Buffer and Hootsuite.
Image Source: SurePayroll
Ask questions to encourage engagement.
Words are powerful and it can drive people to action. In blogs, most marketers apply call-to-action statements in the form of questions, encouraging people to leave a comment or share their thoughts. This is also true when it comes to social media. Asking questions moves people to share their answers or opinions thus stretching your engagement rate. Questions also help foster better communication between you and your followers.
Try an emoji to make status standout.
Many companies haven’t tried incorporating emojis or special icons on their social updates. They think that it lessens the ‘professional look’ of their accounts. But your choice of keeping it too rigid makes you miss a huge opportunity to boost your likability. Emojis act as a visual hook, just like an image, but with a subtle effect. Still, it makes a post standout among the pile of feeds. Also, these icons can make your company less intimidating, and more friendly towards people.
Add hashtags to manage posts properly.
Hashtags were first used in Twitter. But because of its effectiveness in managing tweets and improving searchability, it was then adapted by Facebook, Google+ and other social networks. When properly used, it can increase your followers, improve reputation and find information. Hashtags do not only make social media management painless, it also helps marketing your product or services more effective.
Post informative content to improve shareability.
The core of a great social media is not the number of followers, nor the rate of user engagement. It is all about the content you share. If you have great content, people will start to follow you. Remember to mix up the types of content you post. It can be news, blogs, photos, quotes, videos and more. Be sure that it is something informative so that people will share it among friends.
Note that 50% of your social media content should not be about your site, share content from other sources as well. It is not just about you, it is about what your followers will find interesting and helpful.
These tips are easy to follow, not to mention effective when properly used. Don’t get intimidated with the buttons, and features of the social sites interface. Just put your followers and fans in the center of your marketing strategies, and all will lay perfectly to your advantage.
About the Author:
Maddy Bertelsen writes for different newsletters. She is currently working for Superiorpapers while also taking her graduate studies. She dreams of becoming a famous novelist someday.
When it comes to marketing your business, the internet has never played a more valuable role. Nowadays, when someone is looking for a product or a service, typically, the first place they go is the search engine. Having a good web presence is essential for businesses, and internet marketing should be a significant piece of your marketing budget. Included in internet marketing, though, is social media marketing, which has become just as important as ranking high in search engine results.
Businesses have been using Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to build up their brands. There are new social media outlets like Pinterest that have been increasing in popularity as well. You may think that just having a page on these networks and posting something every few months is enough. However, it’s important to stay engaged with your followers (and potential customers) on these websites. It’s also important to post engaging content that will make people want to follow your page. Here are a few tips on using social media to effectively market your business.
1. Post Content that is Interesting, Entertaining, and Valuable
You don’t want to just be selling your products and services all day. People won’t want to follow your page if you aren’t posting anything of value. Are there interesting videos you could make and post? Do you have informative and cool infographics to create and share? There are a lot of ways that you can get creative and think outside the box. You want to post content that will encourage users to “like” your posts, post comments, and share with their friends. This is the way social media becomes extremely valuable to your brand.
2. Keep an Eye on Your Competitors
Make sure you know what your competitors are doing. How are they engaging customers and followers? If one of your competitors posts a really entertaining video, for example, you may want to think of creative ways to compete with them. Let your competitors inspire you and give you ideas.
3. Consistency is Key
Make sure you aren’t posting too much, too little, or too sporadically. A great way to ensure you are posting in a consistent manner is to actually schedule posts using programs like Hootsuite that allow you to manage multiple social media accounts at once. Your followers don’t want to see your updates jamming their news feeds, but you also want to make sure you post enough for people not to forget about you. You may want to try something like “the question of the day” to keep your followers engaged.
4. Stay Involved
Don’t just post your own content and call it a day. Tweet back to your customers. Reach out to new people on Google+. Post to other pages on Facebook. Be involved in your online community, and engage your followers in interesting conversations. This will make people want to follow your page, which will help you get your brand out there in a memorable way.
Having a great social media presence can be just as beneficial as ranking high in search engines. If people are having fun on your page, they will be more likely to purchase your products or services. So keep these tips in mind and have fun with it! Social media marketing can be enjoyable if you want it to be.
About Author:
Sara Crawford is a freelance writer from Atlanta, Georgia. She frequently blogs for SolutionBuilt, a digital marketing company in Atlanta.
If you would have had an inkling of social media’s vast success only a few short years ago, then the odds are good that you would have put stock in companies like Facebook and Twitter and would be wildly rich now. The truth is that few saw this social media invasion coming. And what’s more: Even in 2010, when the large social networks were already thoroughly established, many still believed they were simple come-and-go trend sites.
Maybe a site like MySpace gives precedent for believing that social media is a fad you can afford to pass up, but that’s much more the exception than the rule. Facebook has gained more and more steam after every passing year, consistently revamping the site to give users what they want while offering marketers what they need.
Facebook is a start-up brand’s dream. Low-cost, wide-reaching marketing that’s not only easy to figure out and to implement, but the features here are wholly customizable and allow for your brand to create a new niche rather than just standing out in an existing one. So if you haven’t taken your brand to Facebook yet, now’s a great time to get started.
Let’s look at some of the top benefits a brand can experience by creating a social media presence.
Top 5 Benefits from using Social Media
Easy Engagement
When you’re advertising using Facebook and other popular social media sites, engaging with your audience becomes much easier. This is especially true as time passes and marketer-friendly updates are released in droves. For instance, you can take a simplistic Facebook Page Post on your Timeline and turn this into an incredibly effective, specifically targeted ad by choosing an option like “Promoted Post.” You can use campaign splitting features in third-party apps to reach out to a much larger market while simultaneously narrowing the scope (as in who sees the ad). And the medium is ideal for engagement; “liking,” sharing, commenting, taking something viral, creating memes and infographics out of material – high-quality, relevant material is gobbled up by social users.
Coordination and Cooperation
Say that you wanted to set up a brand-sponsored gathering, event or something similar to get your name out there. This is the modern-day version of the “grand opening” perhaps. Well, social networking allows you to coordinate this in real time and down to the last, finest detail. It also reaches exponentially more people than an ad in a newspaper or a pamphlet could ever reach. Then there’s the cooperation aspect of social media. Whether you’re working together with another business to target more customers, or if your fans are helping you get your brand out there through sharing, social networking connects you to a useful community.
International Intermingling
It’s hard for an American brand to reach out internationally unless the brand is large, wealthy and popular. On-location businesses will have to experience massive growth within their intended niche before branching out. This isn’t the case with social media. You can target people from all around the globe easily and effectively by using campaign splitting tactics, narrowing features, attractive apps for opt-ins, and an endless range of materials to draw people to your brand.
Centralization of Marketing
If Facebook was as far as you took your social media marketing, that may be as far as you would have to take it. And with so many apps, plug-ins, protocols, and streamlined third-party apps that run alongside and coordinate with your page, the marketing structure of your entire brand could be handled neatly and quickly from one centralized location. This increases productivity, which trickles down into increasing your brand’s effectiveness.
Expense vs. ROI
Everyone wants a hefty return of investment through ads on Facebook. No businessperson invests without expecting high ROI. With Facebook, this is made possible not only due to the lower advertising costs, but also the fact that you can supplement your paid advertising through many organic methods. Your return on investment can skyrocket by simply using solid branding principles.
Keep in mind that all the above benefits hold true for the future. As more updates are released and as more trends are followed through on mega networks like Facebook, everything from engagement and cooperation to international targeting and ROI will increase in effectiveness.
We’re only seeing the beginning stages of what social media is going to become. A brand taking advantage of this platform stands to benefit tremendously if only that brand takes the social networking approach seriously.
Author Bio: Craig Robinson, Editor at Qwaya.com – a Facebook campaign tool. Besides writing about marketing on Facebook, Craig also writes about social context and customer engagement online.
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Welcome to social media! As a business owner, you have probably resisted social media market as long as possible. After all, it was hard to see any marketing value in a network with members who either have Bieber Fever or an insistence on regaling everyone with tales of their latest keg stand.
Nevertheless, you have arrived. Therefore, we won’t waste time by praising the smart decision you have made. Instead, we’ll jump right into what you may already be doing wrong. Here are a few mistakes newbie – and veteran – social media marketers make.
Thinking social media is just like all your other marketing campaigns.
Social media is an entirely different beast. You can’t approach it like you would anything else. You are probably used to putting your message out there and letting the public gobble it up. However, one-way communication won’t work on social media – no matter how clever and insightful your message is. Interact with your followers. Ask some questions. Respond to their comments. Otherwise, if you aren’t engaging with your followers, you might as well be yelling into space.
Giving up.
Building an audience takes time. Seeing a return on your investment takes even more time. After all,Romewasn’t built in a day. So many business owners dive into social media with high expectations, only to give up because they are impatient. You might think it is a bummer to only have 100 followers. But think of this:
- Who says those 100 followers aren’t worthy of engaging, unique content?
- Gradually, you’ll add more followers. Wouldn’t it be great if those new fans could look back and benefit from a well-established history of activity?
Being ignorant of your audience demographics.
Take time to determine your target audience. Then, dive head first into the social media platform that has the highest concentration of that audience. Otherwise, you’ll be selling to an audience that doesn’t want or need your product. You probably won’t change their mind; therefore, you’ll be wasting your precious resources alienating people who were never your audience to begin with.
Not being honest with yourself.
Pay very close attention to what we are going to say. You just joined a social network. That means you must be social. Get it? If you don’t like interacting with other people, why bother with social media?! If you can’t drum up the enthusiasm to interact with total strangers, hire someone who is passionate about interpersonal communication.
Good luck with your latest marketing endeavor. Sure, there will be days when you just can’t stand to see one more post about talented young celebrities who don’t know anything about hard work. But for the most part, your B2B efforts in social media should be pleasant!
Guest blogger Jason Becker works in online marketing. He has recently helped his clients at Trim Nutrition market HCG shots via facebook and twitter.