With the majority of the world’s population using at least one social media platform, the marketing potential of social media has been growing more and more every year, showing no signs of slowing down in 2022. So how can you take advantage of this increase in popularity? Through social media marketing, of course. Here are some tips on how to build your social media marketing strategy to be sure it’s ready to soar by 2022.
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Social media marketing
With social media’s growing influence on businesses, advertising giants like Facebook, Google, and Instagram create new features and platforms to help their users interact with businesses. Whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or an e-commerce business that wants to reach customers who aren’t shopping in your physical location; you will need a strategic plan around building your digital footprint across all channels, from email lists to blogs. One of our most popular guides is Social Media Marketing – Strategies, Tips & Tactics To Grow Your Brand or Business. We just published a second guide: Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies – How to Grow Your Digital Footprint in the Next 5 Years that covers more advanced strategies, tips & tactics.
Purposes and tactics
If you are new to social media, you may feel that it’s a bit overwhelming. Where do you start? What should you use? How much time should you devote to each platform? This can be an incredibly daunting task and many businesses just don’t even bother. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not important in fact, having a presence on multiple platforms is essential if you want to reach your full audience.
So how do you begin formulating a social media marketing strategy for today (and into 2022)? It all starts with defining your purpose and creating goals based on those purposes. Here are some questions to ask yourself: Who is my target audience? Do I have a target market that isn’t covered by other brands or influencers? Does my business have unique offerings that aren’t being shared elsewhere online? These are key questions to answer before deciding which social networks make sense for you. Once you’ve figured out who your ideal customer is, determine where they spend their time online what websites they visit regularly, what apps they download most often, etc. Social media is still king when it comes to reaching millennials so if yours is a millennial-focused business, Facebook will likely be an important component of your strategy.
Engagement
Social media is a new age’s version of an old-school way to market and advertise products. It is cheaper and more effective than other types of forms of marketing out there like print or TV. If you follow these four simple steps, you can use them to grow a business or to help promote yourself in any field. You might be using social media already, but not utilizing its full potential! Before I tell you about those four steps, let me tell you why I think it is so useful: Because we live in such a technological world, almost everyone has at least one form of social media (Twitter, Facebook etc.) on their phones/ computers etc. The reason that there are so many apps is that every type of person/company uses them.
Set goals that make sense for your business
Social media experts have espoused hundreds of theories about how to make social media marketing work. But there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. What works best is having clear, attainable goals and objectives before jumping in and building a strategy. Whether it’s driving sales, establishing yourself as an expert or increasing brand awareness, being clear on what you want to accomplish will help you determine what tactics to try and which might be right for your business.
For example, if you’re trying to drive traffic to your website from Facebook posts, then sharing links that direct people there is likely going to be more effective than just sharing articles. If you’re trying to increase engagement with your audience by getting them involved in conversations, then posting questions that invite comments might be better than just sharing content. Before starting any campaign, take some time upfront to think through what success looks like for you and then build strategies around those goals.
Tell me the importance of social media marketing?
With any kind of business, you have to find ways to connect with customers and keep them coming back. Social media is an extremely effective way to do that, especially if it’s a platform people are already using. Facebook and Instagram are two of the biggest platforms today and both offer lots of opportunities for brands to market themselves. When creating a social media marketing strategy in 2022, it’s important to stay ahead of trends by studying what other brands are doing on each platform. If there is a trend or formula that seems successful, you should try your best to replicate it to grow as an organization.
Take time to research your target audience
The best way to engage with your audience is by taking time to research who they are and what they like, what their needs are, how they express themselves, and more. Put yourself in their shoes. Try to empathize with them. Think about what kinds of things you like and find interesting, but also pay attention to how you feel when someone tries to sell you something that doesn’t feel genuine or authentic it probably made you want to ignore them. Make sure people want to interact with you because of YOU and not just because of a product or service that you have available.
Establish your most important metrics and KPIs
In every industry, there are varying ways to measure success and it’s important to make sure that you’re measuring success in a way that reflects how you’re generating value. For instance, if you sell mattresses, your goal might be to increase sales of a specific mattress model over time (this is a KPI). Or if you run an education program, your KPIs could be related to several enrolments or student satisfaction. In either case, establish what these metrics are before doing anything else with your strategy. With these in place, you can start thinking about how different types of content and tactics will contribute to those goals.
Bring other departments into the mix
Social is more than a one-man, or one-woman, show. While some companies are lucky enough to have dedicated social teams, many organizations don’t have the time or resources to do so. If you work in another department say engineering or sales consider bringing some people into your social efforts. Even if they only spend an hour a week or month on these efforts, you’ll see benefits in terms of connecting with customers and growing reach. In fact, according to Hub Spot’s 2017 State of Inbound report, 93% of marketers who use multiple channels report better lead quality from their inbound marketing activities. So even if you can only get one other person involved, it might be worth it!
Make your social presence as timely as possible
The value of fresh content constantly cannot be understated. The days of hitting publish and forgetting about a tweet or status update are long gone. Posting unique, interesting content will keep people coming back to see what you have to say on any given day. For some businesses, posting daily is necessary to show up in search results and build a large following; if that’s not possible right now, aim for at least twice per week and optimize any stale posts with relevant hashtags or links. People love talking about themselves and sharing their experiences, so by giving them something they can relate to you’ll be able to draw out an emotional response that makes them more likely to respond positively.
Create and curate engaging social content
Social content is how people consume information these days. They turn to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other channels to see what’s happening in their friend group’s lives. If you want to reach them through their friends, you need to create top-notch social content that people want to share. The two most common reasons people give for not sharing a piece of content are it looks spammy and it doesn’t feel authentic. This means you have to be strategic about how you curate content and make sure your voice shines through. You also have to be careful about creating shareable content that isn’t too promotional or self-serving after all, nobody likes a brand that only cares about itself.