TEN UNIQUE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TIPS FOR BEGINNERS
“Every expert was once a beginner.”
If you’re new to social media marketing, or if you aren’t quite sure you are using it right, then this article is for you. I want to share with you ten unique social media marketing tips for beginners
1. SET SMART SOCIAL MEDIA GOALS
It’s no secret that goal setting increases your likelihood of social media marketing success, yet it never ceases to amaze me how many businesses have given scant thought to creating their social media goals. Without goals, it’s hard to know exactly how well your social media marketing is performing. Clear goals will not only propel your strategy forward, but they will also serve as defined metrics when it comes to measuring your progress. Describe the specific goals and outcomes you’re seeking to accomplish with your social media activity. These should be aligned with your business goals.
SMART goals are one of the longest-lasting, most popular goal-setting frameworks for business.
2. DONT SPREAD YOURSELF TOO THIN
It’s important, especially if your resources are limited, that you’re focusing your social media efforts in places that will generate the most return for your efforts. Nor should you spread yourself too thin by trying to be everywhere at once. Every additional platform your business is active on means additional time and effort required to engage and create tailored content for that platform.
Before becoming active on a social network, try answering the following questions to help you choose the platform that is right for you.
(i) Will this platform help me achieve my marketing goals?
(ii) Is my target audience active on this platform?
(iii) Will this platform match the content I create?
3. GET TO KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
Develop a deeper understanding of your target audience. Where do they like to hang out online? What content is most relevant to them? What kind of information are they looking for? How do they like to consume that information? Once you deeply know your audience, you can then start to build relationships with them and create content that is relevant to them.
Insider Tip: Creating audience personas is a crucial part of designing your social media strategy and truly understanding who you’re trying to reach.
4. CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA STYLE GUIDE
A social media style guide will help you present a consistent style of communication across all social media platforms. Whether you are a team of one or have multiple staff posting to your social media accounts, you should create a style guide that outlines exactly how posts look and read.
Take Action: Your style guide should define the following:
- the tone and voice of your brand’s social media presence;
the writing style of your posts — consistent format, spellings, etc; - the colors, logos, and fonts you will use;
- how you will use hashtags and emojis.
5. ADD IMAGE TO ALL YOUR POSTS
You’ve surely heard this before, but it’s worth reiterating: images matter — a lot. Visual content is 40x more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content
Add an image to all your online posts — even those that are text-based. To aid brand recognition and create a strong visual identity, maintain consistency across all your images by sticking to the same colors, fonts, and layouts.
6. DEVELOP A REGULAR POSTING SCHEDULE
Social media marketing is an ongoing commitment. You need to post consistently to stay in front of your audience’s eyes and keep growing. Set aside one day each month to map out upcoming events, holidays, and so on, which you would like to write or post about. Then use a simple excel spreadsheet to create your content calendar. Do the same thing with another spreadsheet for social media postings.
7. POST WHEN YOUR AUDIENCE IS ONLINE
If you search for optimum posting times, you will find many guides online. You can follow these recommendations as a starting point, but I do recommend you do your own testing to see which days and times work best for your own particular audience within your industry.
8. ANALYZE WHATS WORKING FOR YOUR COMPETITORS AND INDUSTRY PEERS
If you search for optimum posting times, you will find many guides online. You can follow these recommendations as a starting point, but I do recommend you do your own testing to see which days and times work best for your own particular audience within your industry.
9. ADD SOCIAL MEDIA BUTTONS ON YOUR WEBSITE
Besides connecting your website with the respective business pages on social media, you also need to add social media buttons on your website so that readers can easily share your content.
Depending on the platform there are many ways and plugins to do that, I suggest you search Google using “how to add social media buttons to xxxxxx” – replace xxxxx with the platform your website is based on.
As a general rule of thumb, keep the buttons above the fold to increase exposure and have in mind that larger buttons get more clicks than smaller buttons.
10. FOLLOW THE RULES AND BE PATIENT
Social media networks have rules to keep spammers away. For example, there is a limit on Twitter on the number of people you can follow per day; Facebook has its own rules, etc.
Try to spend your time creating a great social media profile that will stand over time and why not become one of the authoritative profiles in your niche.
CONCLUSION
When it comes to social media there are 2 important pillars.
The first one has to do with the setup of your social media profiles and the second one is about usage i.e. how you use your social media account.
For the first pillar, it is important to engage in the networks more suited to your niche and to have a proper connection between your social media pages and website.
For the second pillar, it is important to follow the right people, be followed by the right people, and share relevant and interesting content always by adhering to the rules of the different social media networks.
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