Leverage Social Media Without Silly Cat Pics

Digital marketing is a fantastic way to connect with your customers, and social media is an essential component of digital marketing that also serves as an incredible tool for building your brand. Staying updated with the latest industry trends is crucial for businesses to remain relevant and effectively leverage social media. This blog post will give you the latest tips on how to leverage social media marketing to share content and tell your story in a unique way that builds both awareness and loyalty. Let’s get started!

Why social media matters to small business

Social media is a powerful tool that can make or break your business. Whether it be through the content you share, how you interact with customers on social media sites, or by using features like promoted posts and advertising as part of your marketing strategy to build brand recognition.

You want to leverage social media because you can’t afford to be spending your time and money on any activities that don’t lead to a new customer.

Want to Leverage Social Media? Choose Your Marketing Strategy FIRST

You can’t choose a social media strategy until you’ve chosen your marketing strategy. And yes, you don’t “do” a marketing strategy you choose a marketing strategy!

The marketing strategy you choose tells you what content to post – and this is how you leverage social media and spend less time, effort, and money on your marketing.

There are only 3 marketing strategies to choose from (so that’s easy):

1. Content Marketing: This is the slowest path to cash. It’s the best marketing strategy for subject matter experts who are always helping their clients and audience choose products and services.

2. Direct Marketing: This is on the opposite side of the spectrum from content marketing. It’s ideal for businesses who have a target audience with a specific problem where they are offering a specific solution. It’s your fastest path to cash because you control so much of the process.

3. Advertising. This strategy is ideal for businesses and entrepreneurs who provide the most value by spending TIME with their customer; salons, restaurants, professional services, etc. This is also ideal for any business who simply doesn’t like direct selling or creating content. If that’s you, then you’re going to need to pay to play – and that’s advertising.

Once you know your ideal marketing strategy, you’ll have a clear idea of which social media platform is best for you and you’ll know exactly what type of content or social media advertising will work best for you. A successful social media strategy is crucial for effectively engaging your audience and achieving your business objectives.

I’ve come up with an easy way to pick your social media strategy –just take this quiz!

1. Choose your Social Media Platforms Wisely

With social audiences being dictated by a multitude of social media channels, it is impossible to stay connected with all users, at all times, across all networks around the clock.

To leverage your marketing strategy, you have to be selective.

Study your business requirements and audience type to target audience through right avenues.

Example, a fashion designer can grow rapidly on Instagram or Pinterest than on Twitter. Similarly, a local business can gather more audience through Facebook than through Snapchat.

Take away: Do not thin your presence over all social networks, stay focused on 1-3 social networks instead of scattering over many. Leverage your social media by build an authentic profile with all relevant details and references. And, keep your profile updated around the clock.

2. Grow a Valuable Target Audience

After setting up your profile on the social network(s) of choice, the next step is to build a valuable audience that can generate leads and revenue. Building a valuable audience not only generates leads and revenue but also fosters brand loyalty by creating emotional connections and trust. Don’t get rat trapped into the bait of numbers. Of course, numbers are impressive, but at the end it is about meaningful audience- one that will be interested in buying your product. In fact, 67% of Twitter users are more likely to buy brands that they “follow”, as quoted by Hubspot. You can make use of third-party applications to connect with right audience through effective search, streamlined resources.

Take away: If you have serious business plans, random follow/unfollow is waste of a time. Target your to-be customers using right growth tools at hand, and at same time keep monitoring it effectively.

3. Engage them with Good Content

The way you create content can either strengthen or weaken your business. Leveraging social media effectively can lead to improved customer satisfaction and greater brand recognition. With the flood of information floating across different channels, it is pretty easy to get drowned in noise.

Incorporating user generated content can help you leverage your marketing strategy and also amplify your reach and foster community building. Therefore, write about unique ideas that sell. Bring across genuine thoughts, growth techniques and solutions on your service platter. Educate, entertain and be informative – that is the mantra to keep you going. And, a touch of humor never hurts.

Take away: Content is your virtual identity on social media. Bring variation to what you post. Make use of infographics to generate interest. Also, don’t copy-paste similar content across different channels. Edit and alter it as per channel requirement. Research shows, words like Retweet, RT (on Twitter) can boost audience engagement by 23%.

4. Do not Sell

Shocked? Because as a business owner, you were always told to sell. Not any more. Try tweet a Sale Board? or post a Buy-Me? image on Instagram. You are bound to be unfollowed, or blocked right away. Instead, consider partnering with social media influencers who can promote your products in a more authentic and engaging way. The reality of social media is that nobody wants to buy a product. Nobody is interested in promoting your business. As an audience, people seek life changers.

Therefore, don’t tell them what your product deals with, tell them how it can transform their life experience.

Take away: In-your-face advertisement is offensive. Therefore trade ideas, share experiences, narrate stories that encircle your business/brand. At the same time, be genuine and subtle. Larger than life promises are a big disappointment. Check out how Nike sells ideas much before they sell shoes.

5. Warm-up your Conversation

Social media has revolutionized networking and communication, but at the same time, maintaining a strong social media presence has become crucial. The world of business on the social front seems mechanized. Therefore, humanize your business to connect with your customers. Build rapport with your audience. Keep them in loop about your progress, your work status, off the scheduled fun through social media. Be real. Your audience will choose the brand that is more humanizing and vocal about their business.

Take away: Be interactive as well as receptive, like a next-to-door buddy for them. Make them believe in the quality of your service. You are after all working for improving their life, isn’t it? Also, never ignore an email or a message. Avoid automated replies, unless you have a robot working at your support desk.

6. Spread across your Social Schedule

You might have heard this in high school- Time is Money. Right? Overlay this quote with the mind boggling pace of social media and it becomes even more important. Spending time across social media is a great idea- you should definitely do that. But how much time should you spend, is the next question. Don’t let the whirl of social media spin you around. Prioritize and manage your time, or you?will become a victim to social noise. Utilize social media analytics tools to track your performance and optimize your posting schedule.

Take away: Set a specific time for posting, reviewing content and communicating across with your audience such that it does not overshadow your routine tasks. Discover your ?sweet-spot? across different channels by experimenting with different post timings. You can also queue or auto-schedule your posts using various scheduling apps in order to save time and hassles of posting at odd hours.

7. Use Social Media Analytics Tools

Profile- Check, Content- check, Post- check, Audience- Check, Growth-?

If that is the case, stop right away. Because working directionless in your social media efforts is as good as not working at all. Every business, no matter to what scale it spans, must have an analytical report to back upon. Efforts should always be measurable. And, make sure you are not measuring it in the beam balance of likes, favorites or retweets.

Take away: Record your growth pattern. Test out different schedules, measure audience behavior. Use Google Analytics for studying traffic through sources and conversion rate. Also, anticipate your growth through the market of content.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor can social value be created for businesses and entrepreneurs. It requires not only a well-planned out strategy, but also a consistent effort on effective implementation, and above all patience. Now, whether the plan is to amplify your brand’s outreach or generate revenue leads, the key is to have an effective strategy followed by a powerful execution.

8.Make a list of people you want to engage with

I’ve been saying that marketing has gone back to the pre-internet days. You want to market like it’s 1999, and that means building real relationships with real people.

The best advice I’ve seen on this, comes from my friend, Brian Moran, who gave this wonderful interview which is full of specific tips that will really help you leverage social media for your business. Yes, it’s manual, yes, it takes more time. But the results are going to be social media marketing at its best.

Take away: Watch this video.

So, go ahead and start building a healthy and proactive audience, such that they mature as your happy customers tomorrow.

Low budget marketing strategies for CEOs with no marketing department. Join DIYMarketers.com for free marketing tips.