Social-media-marketing

The world of social media is constantly evolving and changing, making it super important to stay ahead of the trends and statistics.

With such rapid growth, it is easy to forget some of the key factors that go into making a social media campaign successful.

Many marketers and companies forget that the focus is not so much on having a big audience but more about measuring engagement, creating a community and building fans.

In fact, if you are looking to drive a successful social media campaign then here are 5 golden rules that you must adhere too:

1. Be A Team Player

Social media is all about socialising, not spamming people with content or requests to purchase something.

If you go back to the very beginning of social media, it was created as a way to communicate with people from all around the world. It is only after social media’s success that business started using it as a way to reach clients and customers.

At it’s core, what makes social media appealing to users is that it is all about connecting and interacting with people, making friendships, building a community and becoming a team player.

Interacting with your followers allows them to feel that they belong, that they are part of something bigger and are not just another face in the crowd to sell to.

Adopting this at the heart of every campaign, post, tweet or comment is definitely going to help your social media followers to actually respect and appreciate what you have to say. It is also going to help increase engagement and build your brand.

2. It’s Not All Business

Ellen Degeneres has over 14.3 million followers on her Instagram account. Does she send out pictures of ads to watch her show? Does she remind viewers when to watch her show or showcase the latest product she is sponsoring?

Not really.

In fact, if you scroll through Ellen’s Instagram she very rarely mentions her show or sponsors because she knows (or at least her marketing team does), that viewers want to see more. They want to see what she had for breakfast, what makes her laugh and what fun things she sees and gets up to on her day to day.

This may seem all well and good as Ellen does have a huge following and doesn’t really need to advertise her brand, however, it is worth adopting this strategy no matter how big your company is.

Sure, not everyone wants to see what you ate for breakfast, but every now and again offering followers a glimpse into your private life can definitely help to establish a strong and engaged following.

Just remember, that whether you are talking about yourself or about your business’ latest promotion, ensure that you are always providing value.

3. Content Crush

Billions of social media posts are shared around the web everyday. Billions.

There is so much content floating around at any given moment that you have to adopt some content strategies when it comes to posting on social media.

As far as posting content, there are three important things to consider-

Timing: Each social platform has different times of day when it is most active. For example, Facebook is most active on Wednesday’s and in the afternoons and least active on Sunday. When you have information like this you can easily use it to your advantage when posting content. You can also experiment as to what time and day best suits your posts.

Frequency: Each social platform also has a happy medium on how many times a day you should post. You can get away with posting more frequently on platforms like Twitter. In fact, many social media marketers recommend about 7-10 tweets per day. On Facebook however, 1-3 is usually ample. The frequency of your posts on social media should also depend on how many followers you have and how engaged they are.

Headlines: This is more specifically for sharing content like blogs, but you should always ensure that you have attention-grabbing headlines that force users to find out more. You don’t want to give too much away in your headlines, but you also don’t want to be too vague either. Test out a few different headlines and see which ones perform the best for your company.

4. Indirect Sales are Key

While there are many ways to get direct sales from your social media accounts this should not be the focus. Instead, the focus should be on building a loyal following which will eventually lead to sales down the track.

Many people forget this when it comes to social media marketing and while some companies do have success with direct marketing, the most tried and true way to use social media is through indirect selling.

Use your social media platforms to talk about current events that relate to your industry, share your blogs and share knowledge in your area of expertise.

When you keep this as your focus your followers will soon turn into life-long customers.

5. Build Presence

There are so many social media platforms out there, how can you possibly catch up?

It is not necessary for you to go out there and join every social platform known to man, however it is important that you stay consistent with at least 2-4 different platforms.

Depending on what type of business you run, you may just be able to get away with being on Facebook and Twitter, however if you want to appeal to a particular demographic your social reach may need to extend out to Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest and more.

Experiment with what works best for your company and stick to mastering each platform individually. You definitely don’t want to be delivering exactly the same content across all the different platforms.

Social Media is definitely a growing and emerging field but sometimes bringing it back to basics can yield the best results.