Social Media Marketing 101 for Your Business

When you’re starting a new online campaign or you need to know the basics of social media marketing to get the most out of your website.

Using social isn’t as easy as simply posting online and waiting for people to click the link to your posts. You need to engage an audience, build a following, and post frequently to stay relevant and important in the minds of your potential customers.

Choose the Right Platforms

There are several social media platforms offered and all have a way for you to use them for marketing purposes. When you’re trying to decide where to begin, the right choice is likely where more of your customers are spending their time. Although there are several platforms, Facebook and YouTube continue to be two of the most popular places for your customers. This is where they engage with family and friends and where they go to view videos.

Don’t Ignore the Others

Once you figure out what you need to do on Facebook and YouTube, you’ll want to select other platforms to add to your list. Some that you could use include Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, and Flickr. All of these platforms offer their own benefits and drawbacks which are reasons for you to figure out where you want to have our content and spend your time.

What Are Your Goals on Social Media?

Why are you using social media? One of the most important answers to this question is to connect with potential customers. This means you need to create posts that will engage with your audience and showcase items that you’re selling. The next question you’ll want to ask is how you’re going to measure your results? When you understand this, you’ll have astarting point for using the platforms you chose.

Make Your Goals Visible

Understand why you’re using social but also know how often you need to post and where you need to post. You could create themed series posts to engage a specific part of your audience, build contests to grow your followers’ list, and be creative with some odd items that might have your followings showing their friends. Post your goals near your desk and review them often.

Create Your Content and Develop Your Voice

The tone and language you use in your social media content should match the image you’re trying to create for your business. Whether you create a video or you write a blog post, the content should be consistent and offer the voice you’re trying to portray. If you want to engage people on a personal level, invite them in with stories and tone that uses first and second person language. If you’re showing a product, talk about the features and the benefits.

Variety in Your Content Matters

As you develop a consistent voice for your social audience, you can offer several different types of content to show your company and let others know what you have to offer. Bring in images, videos, text, and polls to give your followers a mixture of content to consume. Ensure the content matches the features of the platform you’re using for the post.

Use a Variety of Social Media Tools

There are several different tools offered that can help you develop your posts and offer the most impressive presentation for the platforms you use. Nearly every post will require images which means you should take advantage of graphics tools that are made for social media including Canva, Pixaby, and Unsplash. Content tools can help you build the posts you want to support the images and some of these include BeLive, Google Alerts, and Adobe Spark.

Tools that Support and Analyze Your Posts

You’ll want to measure the effectiveness of your social media posts on the various platforms. Most of the platforms have their own built-in analytics tools to give you the reports you want for your results. Another group of tools for the support you’re looking for will help you find the right hashtags for your posts. These include Hashtagify, Tweetreach, and Ingramer.

Create a Productive Social Media Process

With the right tools in place for you to create the posts, you want to offer your audience; you need to be as productive as possible. Figure out how often you should post and to which platforms you need to have your posts. Create a calendar with the schedule of what needs to be created and when it should be posted to ensure you have the engagement level, you’re looking for to be successful with social media marketing.