All businesses, from small businesses to large corporations, want to engage with their target audience on a personal level. By listening to what your target audience is asking for, you can use social media as a key part of your digital marketing strategy to direct them to your website or blog.
Choosing the Right Social Media Channels
Before you start engaging your followers, you need to find out which social media channels are best for reaching your target audience. Do you use X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, WeChat, or a combination of these? Here are some general guidelines, but the use of social platforms is highly dependent on your audience.
- X (Twitter): Great for short messages, general reach, and impressions.
- TikTok: Perfect for creating and sharing short, engaging videos, ideal for reaching a younger demographic.
- Facebook: Allows for longer posts and has a broad user base, mainly aged 20-65.
- Pinterest: Ideal for imagery, perfect for art or fashion industries.
- LinkedIn: Heavily used by B2B business professionals.
- WeChat: Best if your audience is primarily from Asia, specifically China.
Once you’ve determined which social outlets to utilize, here are five additional tips to keep in mind with your social media marketing posts.
1. Spend Your Time Wisely
Social media marketing can be time-consuming. Use tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to schedule posts during your downtime. Account for time zone differences to ensure your audience sees your content. Determine the best engagement times based on your audience’s interaction with previous posts and automate your posting schedule accordingly.
2. Create Unique Content
Show your uniqueness by linking to blog posts and articles highlighting achievements, news, and other benefits. Research trending hashtags, share pictures, and host caption contests. Ask questions that only experts in your field can answer. Think outside the box to provide unique content that your followers can interact with and share.
3. Be Genuine to Your Followers
Don’t always push for sales. Use social media to get to know your followers and build mutually beneficial relationships with your audience and influencers. Influencers can significantly impact your success; a single retweet or like from a key influencer can put your content in front of hundreds or thousands of people.
4. Stay Active and Engage
Inactive social channels are a bad look for small businesses. Stay active with fresh content daily. Engage with your followers by answering their questions and commenting on key influencers’ profiles. Genuine, consistent interaction will get people’s attention and help build your network.
5. Quality Over Quantity
Focus on creating quality content across a few key channels rather than being on every social media platform. Make sure your posts are worthwhile and focus on building relationships. Reach out to your audience, do your research, and focus on one or two social channels initially. Once you’ve mastered those, you can expand your efforts.
I hope the above tips will help you boost your digital presence. With a strategic approach and some prior organization, you have the opportunity to significantly boost sales and grow your brand. If you need help implementing any of the above suggestions, please contact me! You know I am always happy to help.
Ethan is a Full Stack Web Developer and SEO Specialist based in Pittsburgh, PA. In his free time, Ethan enjoys working on various projects involving Ruby, Vue and AWS applications.
Ethan graduated from The Firehose Project coding bootcamp in 2016 with a focus on Ruby on Rail and Computer Software engineering.