By now, nearly every business owner and marketer out there knows that social media marketing is a key skill for branding and sales growth. However, actually doing it successfully remains something of a mystery to many. They post, tweet, and stay engaged but don’t get anything in the way of results.
That leaves them asking: “how do you do social media marketing right?”
Although there aren’t many hard and fast rules in the growing social space, we do have a handful of best practices we think you should follow if you want to turn your social accounts into a force for lead generation online sales…
Go Where Your Customers Hang Out
Most marketers have a natural instinct to gravitate towards the social media services they enjoy using most. That’s understandable, but it’s also backwards. Your goal should be to reach the highest number of likely buyers, which means posting content to the social sites they like to use. Pay more attention to their preferences than your own if you want to be a successful social media marketer.
Post Regularly to Your Business Social Media Accounts
Your customers and prospects have crowded social feeds on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. To increase your odds of catching their attention, you should update your accounts at least a couple of times per week. One easy way to do this is by using tools like Hootsuite to prepare and schedule your posts ahead of time.
Use Images Whenever Possible
In one study, image-based posts got 20 times more likes and shares on Facebook than text posts did. That’s not too surprising when you consider the human mind processes images thousands of times faster than writing. In other words, if you want buyers to notice you, grab their interest with vivid images rather than clever phrases.
Keep Your Marketing Messages Light
Social media accounts are best used for gathering interest, building awareness, and establishing your branding credibility. Most of your fans and followers will ignore blatant sales pitches, so don’t overwhelm them with hard offers. Instead, entice them with pictures, discount codes, and quick informative ideas.
Use the Right Tags and Labels
While you don’t technically need to employ search engine optimization on social media sites, you do have to structure your posts (and especially hashtags or other labels) in a way that makes your content easy to find. Otherwise you might have lots of great images and ideas to share, but they’ll never be noticed by your target audience.
Are You Starting With the Right Knowledge and Mindset?
Far too often business owners and executives find themselves chasing the latest internet marketing trends rather than figuring out what they need to accomplish and developing commonsense plans to get them there. If you want to break away from the hype and start seeing real improvement in your business, talk to the experts at Biondo Creative in Philadelphia today!