As marketers, it is important to stay current and reflect on marketing strategies in order to stay relevant and effective. Over the past decade, the use of social media has become a must-have for both small and large businesses alike. If your business is not already diving in the world of social media, now may be the time to invest some time and effort into it as social media can not only act as a platform to grow your business presence, but also it is a mostly free way to gain valuable data and insights about your customers. Social media for business is now no longer optional.
It may feel overwhelming thinking about all of the different strategies you can implement, but don’t worry. Here are 6 of the best social media practices for 2018 to guide you on your social journey:
1.Be Personable
A common mistake that a lot of people make as they use social media is only posting promotional posts. This is now considered a more traditional method of marketing that is not as effective anymore alone. Of course, promotional messages are still valid but don’t limit yourself! Marketers need to also be creating content that is more relevant for their audience. Now, we must build our marketing around gaining trust, engagement, and loyalty.
2.Use Video Content
No matter what social media platform you are on, whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other channel, video content is what will attract the most attention and the most likely to be shared. On a daily basis, Facebook has around 500 million people watching videos, 82% of Twitter’s audience watches video content, and YouTube has more than 5 billion video views. But do keep in mind that when using videos, make sure to grab your audience’s attention within the first 10 seconds and keep the video at an ideal length so your viewers don’t get bored. The ideal length of time for a video on Facebook is around 1 minute, for Instagram 30 seconds-1 minute, and for Youtube anything less than 4-5 minutes.
3.Explore Your Organic Reach
You don’t necessarily have to pay to reach your customers on social media. By exploring organic reach, you can see just how many people you can reach without paying a dime. While this method is decreasing as platforms such as Facebook are changing their algorithms, there are ways to improve organic reach. Social media is adopting its own sort of SEO, in that it puts your posts in a small pool of your followers and if that small pool engages with your content, then it will be introduced to a larger pool. The key to this is that the content needs to be engaging.
4.Test Out Paid Advertisements
Since organic reach is slowly decreasing across all social media platforms, it may be worthy of your business to invest in some paid advertisements. Facebook is well regarded for ad success and tools to specifically target your audience. You can always start off with a small budget devoted to paid ads and if you see results, start investing a little more.
5.Interact With Your Customers
It can feel overwhelming or stressful to think about creating content that is engaging and attention-grabbing. An easy way to garner attention is to simply interact with your consumers by responding to comments on social media. Your consumers will feel like they are being heard and associate your brand with caring for its customers.
6.Less Is More
Remember not to get too focused on creating as many social profiles as possible to reach more people. Being too widespread doesn’t mean your reach potential is higher. It will be too time consuming to think of engaging content across too many channels and to reply to comments. Pick one to three different channels and devote your time to making these as engaging as you can!
Every social network is unique and different from another, but with these tips you can learn how to be successful across all of them and how to get started today.
