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If you like to scroll through your Facebook or Twitter feed on your Smartphone as a way to wind down after a long day, you’re far from alone. As of 2022, Account New Window4.48 billion people around the world use at least one social media platform to keep in touch with friends, family, and, yes, businesses.
Before you can actually begin creating and maintaining your page, it’s time to outline a social media marketing strategy. Creating this strategy in advance is a great way to ensure that you use your resources wisely and invest your time where it matters. Read on for some ways that you can prepare for making an awesome, client-engaging social media page that your target audience is sure to love.
Before you can actually begin creating and maintaining your page, it’s time to outline a social media marketing strategy. Creating this strategy in advance is a great way to ensure that you use your resources wisely and invest your time where it matters. Read on for some ways that you can prepare for making an awesome, client-engaging social media page that your target audience is sure to love.
The first thing that you need to do before setting up a social media marketing plan is to set objectives for your social media use. The path that you take with your marketing efforts is going to depend on the ways that you best think you can meet these goals, so this is a critical first step.
Many business owners use the SMART method of goal-setting to ensure that their objectives are appropriate. This strategy states that goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Having objectives that fall into these categories ensures that you have something to work toward that actually will work for your business.
Once you have set a goal for your social media campaign, you must identify the audience that you’re marketing towards. This will tell you who you need to make your page appeal to when meeting your objectives. To identify your target audience, there are a few questions that you must ask:
There are a couple of ways that you can confirm that your answers to these questions are correct. First, you can use Google Analytics to see who is accessing your official webpage and what their search history is like. This will give you a clearer picture of your audience’s interests.
Most social media platforms also have ways that you can analyze the trends of who is accessing your page. While this is something you can only do once you set up your page, you should look into doing this on each specific platform that you create a presence on.
After you identify your target audience, it may help you to consolidate your findings in a buyer persona. A buyer persona is simply a fictional character based on the demographics, occupation, interests, and searches of your target audience.
You can use this character as a basis for who you’re marketing to and consider how this individual would engage with your page. This is the person that you want to make sure will be interested in your social media presence and care about following your page.
Once you know who you’re targeting, you can choose the social media platforms that you want to make a presence on. Consider the platforms that your buyer persona is most likely to use. Middle-aged target audiences may have made their home on Facebook, but millennials and Gen Z audiences may prefer Twitter and Instagram.
Creating pages on multiple platforms is a good choice, but you should focus your maintenance and marketing efforts on pages that you think will be most interesting to your target audience.
Once you have a comprehensive social media marketing plan, it’s time to begin setting up engaging pages on each of these platforms. Through branding, considering your target audience, and uploading interesting content, you’ll be able to reach out to potential clients in an authentic way. Read on for some tips on how to do this!
Branding is one of the most important aspects of a business, and you need to brand on social media in the same way that you have branded on your official webpage.
You’ll need your posts to have a specific and consistent brand voice. It will be strange if you sound really casual in one post and go to professionally stuffy in the bat of an eye. Most businesses find that being consistently casual and personable while still maintaining an air of authority is the best way to go. Additionally, on social media specifically, you will want to engage others on a personal level, which means talking to them in the 2nd person and being casual and fun.
Additionally, making sure that you’re consistent with business bios is important. It’s critical that people in all online venues can see what you’re all about without there being questions about your consistency.
Having your logo prominently featured on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages will also help people see that you’re the same business marketing in different places. You’ll be more memorable and people will view all of your pages as valid and legitimate.
Speaking of creating a bio, you may be wondering how to do this.
On platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, you can have a longer and more detailed bio. Include information like where you operate, what your vision and mission are, how to get in touch with you, and the specifics on the services that you provide.
However, on platforms like Twitter and Instagram, there’s a very short character limit that you’ll need to navigate. This means you’ll need to only include the most relevant information, which is usually a short summary of what you do.
But fear not! You can link back to an ‘about’ page on your official website that has all the information that you want people to see. This is not only a good way to let people know what you’re all about, but an awesome way to do some off-site search engine optimization (SEO)! Let’s take a look at why this is.
Your bio isn’t the only place that you should be linking to your SEO-rich blog posts and pages that feature your latest services. This is something that you need to do over and over again. Linking your new blog posts to social media platforms is a great off-page SEO strategy that drives traffic to your webpage.
Not only will this get more people to go to your website, but it will also make your official site more appealing to Google crawlers. They will recognize your page as having been cited externally and therefore believe you to be more reputable. This combined with the greater traffic that you’ll get will boost your rankings.
You also will be able to showcase new information to those who follow you, which means that people who have already expressed interest in your services will have the opportunity to learn more.
Additionally, this is a great strategy for lead generation. You can have those who come from your social media pages fill out a small form on your official page in exchange for an incentive so that you get some information about them. Voila! Lead generation made easy.
Updating your social media pages frequently is essential to letting consumers know that you’re a hip and up-to-date business. If people see that you haven’t posted in months, they’ll assume that you don’t care about keeping up with the latest trends and are becoming outdated. They may also assume that engaging with them isn’t a priority and develop negative feelings about their brand.
Some ideas for frequent updates include:
There’s a lot to explore, so make sure that you talk to an expert about improving your social media content!
Did you know that 73% of people looking for a service are more likely to choose a brand that has videos talking about their products and solutions?
We were surprised too, but this is a fact that you need to know! Your social media pages absolutely need to have video content uploaded directly to them. They also should have some videos linked from your official website so that people can go watch them. Generally, the former option is good for videos under a minute, and longer videos should be linked to from another site.
There are a couple of different video marketing strategies that your business can employ. The first is to have an ‘explainer’ video, which is basically a person speaking a testimonial about how your services have benefitted them. This is a great way to get customers to remember positive reviews about your business.
Animated videos are another awesome choice. While live-action trailers work well on some sites, animated infographics are a fun and engaging way to convey data visually. Your clientele is sure to remember facts and figures when they’re about to associate it with interesting movement, quirky characters, and eye-catching colors.
No matter what platforms you choose to make these engaging posts on, it’s also a good idea to look into the built-in advertising services that each social networking platform has. These platforms guide you through every step of the marketing process. Read on to learn how you can use them!
Instagram is owned by Facebook, so it’s important to note that the process for posting ads on these two platforms is the same. You simply need to ensure that you enable the ability to have your ads show up on both platforms.
In any case, Facebook Ads is a great tool for social media marketing. You can enter the demographics of your target audience. This doesn’t only mean age, gender, location, etc- it also means that you can target people who work in specific occupations. You can also show your ads to those who like the pages of your competitors that may be looking for a better deal on similar services.
Once you enter these demographics, you can set a budget for your ad campaign. Most social media ads are pay per click (PPC) and therefore you’ll need to pay only when they’re clicked on. Your ad campaign will end when your budget runs out.
This is awesome for people who want to reach out but only have limited funds to do so!
Twitter is Twittera bit different than Facebook is when it comes to ads. Any advertisements that a business has on this platform will come in the form of trending and pinned Tweets.
Make a tweet that talks about a specific promotion and links to another, more info-heavy page. If you want more characters, a thread can also be made on your home page. Tag it appropriately with relevant hashtags and pin it to your homepage.
This will let people find it when they browse Twitter tags.
You can also pay to get your Twitter pinned post displayed to people in certain demographics. This will appear in the form of a ‘relevant for you’ Tweet on other’s devices.
While there are many ways that you can reach out to your target audience, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the best way to connect with people from all walks of life.
Now that you know how to create a winning social media marketing strategy, it’s time to get started. Contact us with any questions that you may have about how to set up an interesting social media page that’s unique and engaging to consumers. We’re happy to point you in the direction of the tools, solutions, capabilities, and expert advice that you’ll need to rise to new levels of success.
Go get ’em, tiger!