9 Easy Social Media Strategies to Boost Your Business
Are you looking for modern digital marketing strategies? Are you having trouble finding new customers for your products or services?
Well, did you know that over 72% of American adults say they use at least one social media platform? Considering this, it makes sense for your startup or small business to be active across multiple social media platforms. And if you’re curious if social media marketing is important, read my post “Why Social Media Marketing Is Important For Businesses” to learn more.
If social media marketing sounds daunting, don’t worry!
In this post, I will provide you with nine proven social media strategies to connect you with your audience and create significant results. Keep reading to learn more!
1. Use Various Hashtags on Your Posts
In order for hashtags on social media platforms to work, they have to be used correctly. A lot of times, I see someone post a picture of their delicious-looking burger with #burger. I hope it works for them, but chances are it won’t give them much in terms of results.
When using hashtags, you want to maximize your usage. For instance, on Instagram, you can use up to 30 hashtags. However, according to a study by Sprout Social, the Instagram posts by businesses that performed the best just had one to three hashtags in them.
On TikTok you can use up your character limit with hashtags, which usually is about 5 to 10 depending on the length.
Besides using hashtags, you want to use them in a variety of ways, depending on their popularity. There are hashtags with 5,000 posts and others with millions. You’ll get more attention if you use hashtags that are less used but enough where people search for them.
On Instagram, they found hashtags to increase engagement by 12% compared to posts without them. With this social media strategy, you can reach more people who would have otherwise never seen your posts.
If you’re looking for inspiration on which hashtags to use in your social media strategy, check out All Hashtag.
2. Understand Your Target Audience
Before you can truly gather your customer base through social media, you need to know who you are targeting and what demographics fit within your niche before starting any social media strategies.
If you are a baby clothing brand, you probably target young parents. If you’re in the music business, target young adults and college students.
Once you determine who your target audience is, you can curate content to match what they would be interested in. By using what you know about your target audience, your marketing strategy can target them effectively.
3. Engage With Your Community
One of the best things you can do for your customer engagement and social media strategy is actually communicating with your community.
This doesn’t mean you can post a picture of your brand and make a blanket statement. This means you answer comments on social media, answering questions from followers, and posting stories asking for feedback or customer interests.
If followers send you direct messages on social media, you need to respond in a timely manner so they know you care about them.
The more you show interest in your community, the more they will show interest back to you.
4. Provide Value to Your Followers
Social media has changed since the days when you could post a picture without a caption or use several emojis. If you want to use social media as a marketing strategy, be sure to offer your target audience value. A great way to provide more value to your followers is through your captions.
Instead of posting a picture of a shirt that you’re selling with no caption or just a simple shirt emoji, give the caption context. Share where your customers and followers can buy the shirt, its cost, and maybe even a coupon code.
If you’re a travel agency, post more than just a picture of a mountain. As a bonus, try including an adventure guide, tips for the hike, or facts about the mountain.
The same goes for any other small business in any industry.
5. Create Relevant Content
Have you ever scrolled through social media on your phone and seen a post from a business that seems completely irrelevant? You probably unfollowed them immediately. The reason you follow them is for the specific content they provide, so if they don’t deliver that, you may feel like following them is pointless.
You can apply the same principles to your own business when you implement your own social media strategy.
To successfully use digital marketing, match your business’s values. To keep your followers engaged and wanting more from you, almost all of your content should match your niche and target audience.
While it’s important to stay on top of your own business, it’s also essential to stay right on top of the times. If there’s something important going on in the world, like a big current event, comment about it in your stories or make a quick post. It is easier for people to relate to businesses that stay current.
6. Track Your Analytics
You could consider implementing these social media marketing strategies in order to grow your business. The problem is that without tracking your analytics; you do not know how well you’re doing. Unless you know how your business is doing on social media, you cannot figure out whether you’re driving sales or converting followers into customers.
One thing is obvious: if you get more followers, your content will get seen by more people. Make sure that you know which analytics are relevant for each platform.
On Instagram, for instance, you want to produce content that people will save and share. It shows that you are delivering value through your content. By analyzing your posts, you will know which ones worked and what to do in the future.
7. Stay Consistent
The key to success is consistency. You’ve most likely heard this before, and it still applies to your business with a social media strategy.
By maintaining consistency through your social media platforms, you can keep your followers and customers engaged and attract new ones. You don’t have to post a photo on Instagram or a video on TikTok every day.
Create a schedule that suits your convenience and follow it.
This may mean posting Monday through Friday. It may mean posting three times a week.
Whatever consistency means to you, stick with it! Be sure not to disappear for weeks at a time. That is one surefire way to lose followers and customers.
8. Create a Content Calendar
Making a content calendar is one of the best ways to stay consistent with social media. Rather than spending just a few minutes each morning making sure you have content to share, you can pre-plan your posts and captions in advance. Pre-planning also helps you make sure your posts have a nice aesthetic.
This is not only more efficient for you and your productivity, but it will also help you stay consistent and avoid getting overwhelmed. There are many apps out there that are great at helping you pre-plan your content in advance.
One free tool that I highly recommend is Notion. If you’re looking for a tool that integrates with your social media accounts, consider tools like CoSchedule, MeetEdgar, Publer, Semrush, or Sprout Social.
9. Stay Up to Date With the Latest Trends
Social media today has its users hooked by creating trends that others on social media can follow. It creates the opportunity for people to stay on the platform for longer periods.
Maintaining your business’ social media relevance requires staying current on new trends. Since algorithms power the platforms, the algorithms favor accounts that follow the trending topics.
Trends can be anything from a sound you use in your videos to a dance move you try on TikTok. Adapt the trend to your niche, no matter what the trend is. Using this creative approach will lead to your account gaining more followers, which will ultimately result in customers!
Ready to Engage With These Social Media Strategies?
With everything you need to do to run a successful business, adding in these social media strategies may seem overwhelming.
You may ask yourself, how am I supposed to pay my employees, keep track of my taxes and expenses, gain customers, and engage on social media every day?
What a great question!
Running a business can be stressful, and we can ease that stress by increasing your digital presence through social media marketing.
Contact us and let’s set up some time to chat!
Thanks for reading,
AJ