More businesses are adding social media to their marketing arsenal and for good reason. It’s an important feature that can help your business successfully reach its objectives. Social media is an engagement channel for brand awareness, promotions, customer loyalty and even boost sales.

It really is no surprise that social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools to date. Last year there were a reported 2.3 billion active users and more than 1.9 billion mobile users worldwide. These numbers are staggering and are still growing by the day. It’s never too late to start so if your business is struggling to find a social footprint, this post is just for you. Here are a few things you can start implementing today.

1. Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin

It’s not uncommon for marketers or businesses to try cover all possible areas to maximise their market reach. This is not impossible but you might end up with too many accounts to effectively manage and monitor. To start off with, choose at least 3 social media channels and focus all your efforts there. As you master each channel, you can then explore and expand to other platforms.

Besides Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram there are other platforms that target particular niches. Etsy and Wyan are good examples as they focus on art and travel respectively. Don’t just conform to the ‘social media norms’, make the smart choice for your business.

2. Find The Right Social Media Influencers

If you didn’t know this already, influencers are vital to achieving social media marketing success. To give you an example, reports suggest that more than half of millennials would try a brand suggested by a YouTuber. This is a clear indicator of how an influencer can help create awareness, drive interest and almost control consumer behaviour.

When looking for influencers, take your time and find the right ones within your niche. Be sure that they are followed by a quality audience most likely to engage with your brand. Connect with them and build a mutually beneficial relationship. You provide interesting and relevant information and they’ll give you access to a new audience.

3. Grow Your Audience

Every social media channel has its benefits and shortfalls. As such, Facebook doesn’t allow you to follow fans of a page while in Google+, Twitter and Instagram you can search for relevant users based on biography and mutual followers.

Put in place a few minutes a day to look for and connect with followers. You’ll be surprised how well this works by being noticed in various online communities. This will help you build a bigger and more targeted following.

4. Seriously Optimise Your Facebook Ads

Social media ads have been, and still are, a popular and very effective marketing tactic. Targeted Facebook ads, in particular, have massive benefits as your content can appear in your audience newsfeed at any time, anywhere.

The most common way to set up social media ads is selecting your content, decide who you want to target, how many should receive the message and how long the ad will run for. Facebook ads can be optimised even further by using Comments, Shares, Likes, Link Clicks, Post Engagement, Claim Offer and Video Plays. This gives Facebook the required conversion data to help you identify the specific actions relevant to your business goals.

Take a look at one of our previous posts on Getting Started With Facebook Ads. It provides some really useful information.

5. Utilise The Power Of Video Marketing

Video has been one of the top ten strategic online technologies since 2011 and continues to impress. Consumers’ appetite for streaming videos on their computers, mobiles and tablets is only increasing. It would be foolish not to consider a video marketing strategy to at least some degree.

According to a survey in the latter part of 2016 by Wyzowl, 84% of consumers were convinced to make a purchase after watching a brand’s video. In addition, 91% said they prefer watching a video to learn about a company’s products or services. Despite this, there are still companies who don’t believe in the advantages video marketing offers.

Live streaming is just one example of how video can help almost any business. It’s a great way to make a bold statement, an immediate impact on the audience as it provides real-time engagement.

6. Switch Content Regularly

Whether you’re running out of content ideas or just want to change things up, switching your format is a good strategy. This includes a number of ideas and below we’ve listed five of our favourites.

• Convert a blog into a number of social media posts
• Break a video down into smaller segments and use accordingly
• Create a short, powerful video from a blog post
• Convert snippets of your articles into images as a series of helpful tips
• Use information from blog posts and video to create stunning infographics

7. Build Strong Relationships Through Social Media

Building relationships extend beyond influencers or shareholders; your focus should be on individuals within your audience. Customer experience has long been one of the major determining factors when choosing a brand. The addition of social media into the mix proved even more beneficial and detrimental to those who don’t follow best practices.

Just as quickly as your business success is announced, a bad customer experience goes viral even faster. Engage with your audience on a human level, let them know you care. Answer their questions (good or bad) and make the effort to start a conversation, not just sell them something.

Don’t be fooled by the apparent simplicity of the social media marketing world. It may not be rocket science but you need to do it right. Social media is a powerful tool that can yield incredible returns when used correctly. Just remember to be patient and play the long game. Success doesn’t happen overnight.

Are you successfully using social media marketing in your business? Why not share your nuggets of wisdom with our readers?

If you need help with your social media marketing strategy, please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.