Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest are a daily part of life for countless consumers. According to recent surveys, the average person spends at least two hours and 25 minutes locked into their favorite social media accounts. This gives businesses a great opportunity to engage customers in places they visit every day. Here are some social media marketing tips to help you expand your reach, grow your audience, and create positive sentiment for your brand.

1. Create a cohesive strategy.

Effective social media marketing is a constant effort requiring consistent evaluation and tactical tweaks. If you’re looking to get more from your current efforts, it’s a good idea to invest in some sort of social media management service.

This will make it easy to schedule posts, track your social analytics, monitor mentions, and sync posts on every social media account. By syncing your content, you can make your message more pervasive and introduce followers with several accounts to your brand.

2. Know your audience.

It’s not enough to make regular posts to social media; you need to engage your audience in compelling ways. To do that, you have to understand your audience inside and out. If you can’t pinpoint their needs and wants, you will have a very difficult time creating a successful social media strategy.

How can you gain a clearer understanding of your audience?

• Create surveys to help you assess their pain points.
• Dig deep into their demographics.
• Participate in conversations on chats and forums that include your target audience.
• Respond to comments on your social media channels.
• Collect feedback using one of the many available user feedback tools.

Once you understand your target audience, you’re better equipped to engage them in meaningful ways. Modern consumers want to deal with companies who care – not faceless brands.

3. Understand the network.

Depending on the social platform you’re posting on, you’ll need to understand the purposes of each network. Otherwise, you risk alienating the audience by engaging in inappropriate ways.

For instance, because the following platforms are designed for specific purposes, their audiences will only be receptive to relevant content:

• LinkedIn – A professional network that’s ideal for B2B audiences. Includes LinkedIn Pulse, a content distribution and publishing platform.
• Facebook – Particularly good for entertainment/news style content. Although FB Pages can struggle to perform, FB Groups are great for connecting with your target audience.
• Instagram – Great for highly visual content. Short videos and static images work very well, but it’s not as effective at driving traffic back to your business’s blog.
• Pinterest – Another highly visual platform, Pinterest can be highly effective at funneling traffic back to your blog.

Once you understand the varying networks, you can create strategies for leveraging the ones that mesh best with your business.

4. Carefully craft your content.

Every single piece of content you post on social media must be purposeful and carefully thought-out. If you’re posting just to post – you’re doing it all wrong.

The way you craft your message should vary based on the social network you’re using. That said, there are some universal guidelines for posting captivating copy:

• Use proven copywriting techniques.
• Directly address your audience.
• Use intriguing, witty or snappy hooks to start each of your social media posts.
• Change things up with varying content types (Ask questions, link to videos, infographics, blog posts, etc).
• Write a description for every link you post. Never limit your post to a simple headline.

If you refine and perfect your social media content, you will see much better engagement rates, which lead to more followers, more leads and increased sales.

5. Use short videos.

Social media success rests in your ability to condense compelling information into easily digestible snippets that are long enough to hold a viewer’s attention but brief enough to leave them wanting more. Video is an effective tool to hook your target audience. Compared to a long-winded paragraph, it is very easy to consume.

Just like your text posts, however, it’s important to be purposeful with your videos. To make them work, you need to deliver relevant content to your audience. No matter which social platform you use, always have a clear goal for your video. You should also place clear indicators of each video’s intention at the beginning to help snag the audience’s attention before they have a chance to scroll away.

It’s not enough to simply market a quality product or service. Modern businesses have to get social. Sympler can help you deftly navigate one of the industry’s trickiest marketing channels with proven social media marketing tactics that get measurable results. Contact our team of attentive experts to learn more.