In addition to providing unparalleled access to a huge variety of leads, social media also allows marketers to interact with consumers via a variety of unique channels, such as blogs, image sharing services and video content.
Follow these 10 tips to get more out of your social media presence.
1) Nurture your fans
Social media is nothing without followers so the first tip in this list is to cultivate and nurture your fan base. A considerable social media following allows you to rank well in organic SERPs and reach leads beyond your immediate customers. Additionally, a healthy group of fans allows you to make more sales, push more product out the door and further position yourself as a leader in your industry. There are many ways to nurture your social media fans, but the most effective ones are very obvious:
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Read and respond to fan comments and input
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Offering great content your fans find valuable
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Engage with them on the social media channels they prefer and
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Offer the occasional giveaway or VIP incentives program
These simple things can help keep your fans interested and engaged and ensure that they come back for more.
2) Use visual content
My guess is that you’ve heard a little something about visual content lately. Visual content is all the rage right now and rightfully so. Content that contains compelling visuals attracts an average of 94% more total views than text-only content and 60% of customers are more inclined to reach out to a business when its images pop up in local SERPs. With this in mind, dedicate yourself to spreading visual content across all of your social media platforms. You can do this by posting images of your recent blog post to Instagram and inserting the link to the blog below it or by creating unique Canva images or infographics to accompany your written content. In addition to being attractive to your fans, visual content also packs a great deal of information into a small space, which means it has a high potential of going viral and earning you more views for your site.
3) Get on Google+ local
Google+ local is an important tool for small B2C companies. The service can help companies get a product out in front of qualified leads and can even boost SEO ranking due to the fact that it indexes everything a company posts. Companies that appear in the first page of Google search results get 54.8% of total Google clicks, so it’s important to have a strategy in place for obtaining the top spot. When optimizing your Google+ local page, make sure that your listing contains your business address and phone number, some customer reviews, photos or videos of your products, goods and services and accurate information about your location. You should also include keywords in your listing to make your page more visible.
4) Create lots of content
The great thing about social media is that it is a dynamic environment and you’ll do best if you refresh it often. This means uploading pictures frequently, creating new blog posts and videos, offering giveaways and trying out new social media channels. This keeps your site from looking old, outdated or stale and helps give existing customers something to look forward to on a regular basis.
5) Network
In business as in life a great network is important. For companies that use social media, building a network has never been easier. Additionally, building a network is an effective way to increase fan engagement and create fresh content. Consider asking an industry expert to write a guest post for your blog or pair up with a parallel company to create a webinar that delivers how-to type information to your customers. Interview thought leaders in your niche and make sure you’re sharing relevant news topics from other outlets. These things can help you build social media relationships while also attracting leads through inbound content marketing techniques.
6) Use social media to sell
Although great social media makes use of inbound marketing tactics rather than pushy, hard-sells, it’s undeniable that it can also be an effective place for companies to pitch new products to their customers. This is especially true when a company has a healthy base of followers built up and can draw from previous customer reviews. When it comes to selling, an Instagram post or a Facebook video introducing a new product is an ideal way to introduce items to your customers.
7) Get good at customer service
Did you know that social media can be used to fulfill customer service requests quickly and efficiently? Take stock photo company Shutterstock, for example, which uses Twitter to receive and respond to customer service requests. The Twitter platform allows the company to handle customer service requests quickly as well as allowing customers to receive real-time feedback about their input. This, in turn, makes customers feel seen and heard and contributes to the development of a good customer/company relationship.
8) Repurpose your content
Social media is a great place to repurpose old content into something new and exciting. Because social media is generally a shorter form than a blog post, it’s easy to break an extensive blog post up into a series of tips posted on Twitter or to use the questions you receive about a product or service on social media into a series of short videos or podcasts on the subject. Additionally, you can turn blog posts into infographics to be shared on Facebook or offer live Q&A sessions on a live stream app like Periscope.
9) Use social media to survey customers
If you create content like Podcasts or Q&As with industry experts, it’s likely that social media can be a resource for finding out what, exactly, your customers want more or less of. By taking to social media to survey your customers or to ask for their input, you create a situation in which customer opinion is valued, important and, most critically, heard by the company in question. This, in turn, helps ensure that you are targeting your content to your customers’ true interests and desires. Surveying your customers on social media also allows you to target future product launches and releases to their preferences and interests, which means more sales and conversions.
10) Optimize for mobile
At the risk of sounding like a broken record…optimize for mobile. We mean it. 85% of Americans classify their mobile devices as a central part of their daily habits. Platforms like the Facebook mobile app have upwards of 1 billion users every month. It makes sense to reach out to your customers on mobile social media apps to ensure that your company has a presence on those preferred platforms. Most mobile social media platforms allow users to develop scheduled posts that include visual content, sales offer, direct links and even insider tips. When you combine the power of social media with the huge and growing power of mobile platforms, you create a virtual marketing machine that’s difficult to stop.
Conclusion
For companies that want to be found online, social media is an opportunity that’s simply too good to miss. With so many social media platforms to choose from, it’s no wonder that upwards of 88% of brands use social media for marketing purposes. Taking the time to optimize a social media marketing strategy is a win-win way to get the most value out of each social media platform used.
By using social media to repurpose content, attend to customer service needs, offer insider deals, meet customers on mobile platforms, network and create a loyal base of followers, marketers can easily win at social media marketing and establish themselves as leaders (and social media gurus) within their niche.
