We are a few months down the new year, and social media maintains its reputation as one of the most promising media of marketing in terms of its ROI. So, we thought to do a post on how to make the most of this relatively low cost and effective channel of online marketing. So, here’s a list of tips and tricks you can follow to take the social media of your business a few notches higher and cope with the upcoming social media trends well into 2017.
1.Make a choice of social media network
a) Mark your brand’s presence across all social networks
You might prefer one social network over all the others. However, your followers might prefer some other social network and you might be yet to discover their preference. Therefore, it is important for your brand to be present across all social networks, to begin with. So, you need to be regular with posting across all popular social networks such as Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to ensure social media success for your brand.
b) Emphasize on the networks where you perform well
Then, there are some networks that perform better for your brand as compared to the others. When you have discovered such networks, you can be more intensive with posting on these while maintaining the basic presence across the other networks. This will help you focus on the social network that brings you maximum returns on your social media efforts.
2. Your style of communication matters
a) Consistency is the key
The most important thing with social media is consistency. So, if you are interested in growing the followership of your account, you should strive to post regularly to consistently you’re your audience with relevant, informative and interesting content. So, if your social media account goes dormant or if you do not post regularly enough, there are hardly any chances for your followership to grow anytime soon.
b) Interactions are important
Interacting with related and similar brands, industry influencers and users that belong to your target audience can be a bit cumbersome and time-taking but it is one of the most effective means to grow your brand’s popularity on social media and therefore, it is totally worth the effort.
3. Have fun with the upcoming features
Never step back from experimenting with the new and upcoming features that the popular social media networks roll out, since these can serve as great means to add an element of surprise to the content you feed to your audience and it can help you delight them with ease.
a) Instagram
While on Instagram you can make use of the features such as Instagram Stories and live stories, they also have recent updates such as the ability to like the post comments that can help you make your brand’s presence felt effectively.
b) Facebook
On Facebook, you can now make use of live videos to get higher reach for your posts – Facebook is also soon to launch 360 degree live videos and audio-only broadcasts that can, as well, be benefited from.
c)Twitter
You get an option to use live videos on Twitter as well. The new Twitter update also lets you take advantage of the whole length of 140 characters for text while also including links and photos. This gives you more room to add hashtags or express your thought completely.
4. Tell your story effectively
As you work on your social media posts or campaigns, you need to ponder over the story that you want to tell to your audience to engage them and build a bond with your brand. When you have a story in your mind to tell to your audience, you are better able to craft and organize your ideas related to the content and messaging across the social media channels.
a) Make your content in tandem with your brand image
More than just getting a lot of social media attention in terms of likes and followership, your brand must have all its post content in complete coherence with your brand’s image and its key message. So, you should remember that if your posts are getting a good number of likes and attention but fail to convey your brand’s message, then your brand will fail to directly benefit from its social media efforts.
b) Format content to optimize for each platform
We have different social media platforms for a reason. So, it will do your brand no good to be present on each of these platforms if you are not customizing the format of your content to match the need of each of these platforms. So, it is very much necessary to format the content to customize it specifically for each platform. For example, while you need pictures for Instagram, you’ll need long form posts for Linkedin and while you need memes, videos and GIFs for Facebook, you’ll need crisp and short announcements for Twitter. So, while the message you want to convey could, at heart, be the same but it will take a different form to suit the audience of each platform, in its tone and format.
c) Incorporate videos & high-quality images
It is observed that videos and high-quality images with interesting content get a lot of tractions on social media and therefore you can try to make your social media story-telling much more effective and impressive by including these. Your videos can be simple and based on a creative perspective for something ordinary and yet, if your audience can connect with it, you can create great impact. Images should be kept that of as good quality, as possible, with appropriate use of stock images as and when needed.
If you take care of these simple tips for your social media this entire year and ahead, you can use social media to accelerate your business marketing efforts extremely efficiently.
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