Nearly 80% of businesses are already using social media to reach customers online. With a strong social media marketing strategy, you can build your online presence. You can generate brand awareness, leads, sales, and more.
Without a social media presence, however, consumers might not realize your brand exists. They might choose one of your competitors instead.
Don’t let that happen! Instead, use these 15 social media tips to start building a brand presence on social media.
With these tips, you can draw an audience of followers, keep them engaged, and set your business up for success. Start wow-ing your target audience online. Improve your digital marketing strategy with these social media tips today!
1. Research Your Customers
Before anything else, take a moment to research your target audience. If you don’t know who your customers are, you won’t appeal to their interests.
They’ll likely follow one of your competitors on social media instead.
Before that can happen, learn as much as you can about your customers. Try to focus on a niche audience. Niche marketing will make it easier for you to connect with your target audience.
You might need to segment a broad audience into smaller buyer personas. You can differentiate your customers based on demographics and psychographics. You can use your website’s Google Analytics to determine their:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Language
- Education
- Household income
- Marital status
- Buying behaviors
- Pain points
- Hobbies
- Interests
Picture your customers as real people. What problems are they experiencing that your product or service can solve? What questions do they ask while online?
Consider gathering keyword research, too. What keywords do your customers use during a Google search?
You can use your research to better inform your social media content creation strategy. Then, you’ll have an easier time appealing to your customers based on their interests.
Over 50% of consumers will switch brands if a company doesn’t personalize communications. About 45% won’t spend time with branded content that isn’t relevant to their interests. You can use your research to personalize your social media content.
Personalization could influence buying behaviors. In fact, 80% of people are more likely to shop from brands that offer personalized experiences.
Keep your target audience in mind as you use the rest of these social media tips.
2. Consider Your Competitors
As you start gathering research to develop your social media marketing strategy, consider your competitors, too.
What posts are your competitors creating for their own social media marketing strategy? How often do they post online? You should also consider:
- When (date/time) they post
- The language they use in their captions
- How much engagement they generate
- Which of their posts are most popular
- What types of posts (images, videos, Stories, etc.) they create
Researching your competitors can help you learn more from their successes and mistakes.
For example, look at the posts that are generating the most engagement. Consider creating similar posts or covering similar topics.
Don’t mimic what your competitors are using. Instead, make sure to create a distinct digital marketing strategy. Otherwise, you’ll struggle to differentiate yourself from other businesses online.
3. Establish Your Goals
Before you start posting on social media, take a moment to consider your goals. What do you want to accomplish through social media marketing? Beyond building your social media presence, you might want to:
- Boost brand awareness and recognition
- Build a strong following
- Boost brand trust and loyalty
- Generate more likes and social shares
- Direct people to your company website
- Boost online leads and sales
- Direct more people to your blog posts
- Establish yourself as a thought leader in the industry
- Improve your ROI
Different social media posts can help you accomplish different goals. You might want to consider using different platforms, too.
For example, you can use LinkedIn to reach business professionals online. Share helpful tips or infographics to position yourself as a thought leader. If you want to boost sales, show off your products or services.
Establishing your goals will help you better develop your online marketing strategy.
4. Create High-Quality Images
If you want to boost your social media presence this year, you need to stand out from the crowd. Focus on posting unique, high-quality images online. Avoid posting dull stock images.
High-quality images can attract more people to your products and services.
Try creating more video content this year. Video content is now the number one form of media used in content marketing strategies. You can use video content to engage and inform your audience.
Try to post more live videos this year, too. Answer any questions your customers have during a video session. You can engage customers in real-time and start generating more followers.
5. Use Storytelling
As you start posting on social media, use storytelling to boost your brand. Storytelling can help you connect with your audience.
For example, you can show off your latest products or give consumers a behind-the-scenes look into your process. Try to offer content your customers can’t find anywhere else. The exclusivity could help you generate more followers.
6. Maintain Brand Consistency and Authenticity
As you use these social media tips, make sure to keep your brand consistent. Brand consistency will help awareness and recognition grow. Your brand includes your:
- Vision statement
- Mission statement
- Color palette
- Font styles
- Imagery styles
- Voice
- Tone
- Personality
Using the same color palette could help people remember your brand.
Make sure to keep your brand authentic, too. Authenticity will help brand trust and loyalty grow.
Remain open, honest, and transparent with customers online.
7. Invite Guests
Consider inviting guests to take over your social media account for the day. For example, you can have an employee take over your account. Perhaps you want a client to take over for the day.
Creating a “day-in-the-life” series can help engage your audience. It’s also a great way to leverage someone else’s existing audience. You can build your social media presence and start gaining new followers.
8. Evaluate Your Hashtags
Using the right hashtags in your posts can help expand your reach online. Your posts could appear in front of consumers when they search those hashtags.
Use your competitor and audience research to develop a list of hashtags. Make sure the hashtags you use in each post are relevant to the content. Try to avoid broad or vague hashtags.
Instead, choose hashtags that are relevant to your target audience, industry, and content.
9. Take Your Location
Do you want to reach more local consumers through your online marketing strategy? Consider tagging your location in your posts.
Consumers who look for posts based on your location will have an easier time seeing your content. They might recognize where you’re posting from, too!
10. Follow and Engage
You can use the follow-for-follow method to build your social media presence, too.
Start following more accounts. Try focusing on people who already reach your target audience. Look for influencers as well.
Then, send them a direct message encouraging them to follow you in return. You can build a following, which can support your digital marketing strategy in the future.
11. Adjust Your Schedule
You might need to evaluate when you’re posting your social media content.
Take a look at your analytics. What day and time do you generate the most engagement?
Pinpointing the perfect post times can take a little trial and error. Keep adjusting your post times to find that sweet spot!
12. Consider Your Captions
Take a look at the captions you’re creating. Are they engaging? Do they suit your brand voice and tone?
Consider adding call to actions to your captions. For example, you can encourage people to “double tap if you agree.” Prompt them to tag their friends in the comments, too.
Adjusting your captions could help you boost engagement. As people start tagging their friends, you can build your presence, too.
13. Track the Trends
As you use these social media marketing tips, keep track of trends that pop up throughout the year.
For example, more businesses are posting user-generated content (UGC). As consumers start posting about your business, share their posts! You can show on-the-fence consumers that people like them love your content.
Otherwise, learn how to build social proof on instagram to boost brand trust.
Consider hosting more contests this year, too. Encourage people to tag their friends to participate. Then, you can boost your social media presence and reach more customers.
14. Use Social Listening
Social listening will help you determine when people are discussing your brand. Make sure to respond to any questions people have about your business.
Answering their questions could help consumers feel more comfortable about your offerings.
15. Analyze and Optimize
Once you start improving your social media marketing strategy, analyze your results. Which posts are helping you generate more followers? Which posts gain the most engagement?
Optimize your social media strategy to generate even more results in the future!
Like for Like: 15 Tips for Building a Strong Social Media Presence
Don’t let your social media marketing strategy fall flat this year. Instead, use these tips to build a strong social media presence. With these tips, you can expand your reach and generate a strong following.
Then, you can remain top-of-mind and draw more people to your business!
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