Navigating the Social Landscape: Effective Social Media Marketing Tactics
As online platforms continue to grip mass audiences, companies are still learning how to navigate the digital marketing plane effectively. A form of digital marketing that is continuing to earn merit with companies is social media marketing. Social media platforms allow you to connect, communicate and engage with your target audiences at a lower cost and with better analytics than traditional mediums.
To leverage the advantages social media marketing offers your company, you’ll need to focus efforts on the most efficient ways of using the platforms. This means measuring the results of specific tactics with the effort required to carry them out.
Content Distribution and Redistribution
Leveraging your social media as an outlet to share new content is a cost-efficient way to communicate your message to audiences who are already interested in your company. Sharing your content on social media acts as a boost for your content. Where audiences wouldn’t have otherwise known of a new addition to your website or the latest blog from an executive, they can now be fully up-to-date. The use of social media to disseminate new information can act as an effective way to drive traffic to your website. Businesses have seen an increase in exposure and over half report increased sales because of their social media account.
Although social media is an effective way to spread original content, you won’t always have new content to share. Content that is always relevant, or evergreen posts, will help keep your account active because you can post monthly and still engage with customers. According to a Global Web Index study, 37 percent of consumers follow their favorite brands on social media. Providing consumers with regular content generates continued interest in your page.
Content Calendars
To effectively and clearly relay your new content or redistribute past content to audiences, you should organize what you want to say and when you want to say it beforehand. Assembling a content calendar is a potent way to make sure all your messaging is uniformed and related to the overall objectives of your social media marketing plan. A content calendar is most commonly a monthly schedule of all the messaging and images or graphics your company will post within a given month. Incorporating a content calendar into your monthly reports keeps the company organized and prevents your writers from becoming overwhelmed. Once your company has decided on a marketing plan that incorporates social, a content calendar can assure organization and minimize confusion on posts that should be written. Once that’s developed, it’s all about dissemination.
A recent study found 94 percent of B2B marketers use LinkedIn as part of their content strategy. Other popular platforms include Twitter at 87 percent and Facebook at 84 percent. Knowing how to spread continuous and appealing content on your social sites is essential in maintaining a positive social presence. Content calendars help take out some of the guesswork that comes with navigating the social sphere.
Maximize Data Analysis
As people interact with your content through different social media platforms, they leave behind a demographic and psychographic fingerprint. Utilizing the analytical software on social sites like Facebook will give you a more in-depth look at the groups of people most interested in your company and why they’re responsive. Tapping into the full information available through these analytical tools can help your company increase engagement with followers. By targeting its messaging to people who already expressed an interest in products similar to theirs, a marketing software company increased the leads they generated through social media by 47 percent in 2016.
Being able to target directly to people who have shown enthusiasm in your company or fit your target demographic will save you money on advertising to mass audiences that don’t fit the characteristics of your desired consumer. Analytics for social sites can include:
- Location (country, state, city and zip code)
- Age
- Precise interests — likes of similar pages and connections with your company based on their friends
- Education level
- Industry
Using these tools to their fullest potential gives you a comprehensive report of the types of people interested in your company and what these people are like. You can then use these same social media analytics to target your message specifically to people who fit this category. It saves your company the time and money of advertising to people who don’t fit your target audience. Tapping into these and other data points provided by social sites also allows your company to see which messages inspire engagement and mutually beneficial behavior between you and your client. Receiving positive reactions to one post will signify that you should continue publishing similar content.
Creating a positive online presence for a company is difficult to do organically. Incorporating these tactics into your social media marketing plan can help you achieve an online reputation that reflects your offline one. As you develop your next social media marketing plan, consult a local digital marketing professional to help with planning and creating content that accurately communicates and ultimately achieves your social media goals.
Social media is a cost-efficient marketing tool — make sure your company is using these platforms effectively. Appleton Creative is an award-winning, full-service Orlando marketing and advertising agency that specializes in social media and digital marketing. Appleton works with local, national and international clients to deliver inbound marketing strategies and custom online ads to put your business ahead of the competition. At Appleton, we want to learn about your business, empower your marketing team and be your creative resource. Your SEO and social media goals are worth a conversation: contact us at 407-246-0092.
