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15 Social Media Marketing Ideas That Actually Work

15 Social Media Marketing Ideas That Actually Work

Every small business owner knows that standing out from your competition is much harder than it is for companies with greater reach and higher budgets. In 2019, there were approximately 30.7 million small businesses across the United States. For this reason, investing in high-quality social media marketing ideas is more important than ever. Knowing where and how to invest your money can help bring your business to new levels and help start bringing in the conversions you ideally want to reach.

15 Audience-Enhancing Social Media Marketing Ideas

Below are fifteen effective marketing ideas to use on your company’s social media pages. All social media marketing ideas allow for a unique opportunity to beat out your competitors as well as grow your company’s customer base.

1. Facebook Ads

Running ads for your business is a delicate process. You want to make sure you engage the user without appearing as an obvious advertisement. This is where Facebook’s ad manager can help.

Since many companies already use Facebook as a primary source of advertisement, it is important to stand out amongst the rest. To do this, you want to ensure you are reaching a targeted audience consisting of people most likely to invest in your business.

One way to do this is through Facebook’s specific audience targeting filters. You can promote ads to customers based on age, location, interests, occupation, and many more attributes. You should also be aware of what you are advertising and not just who you are marketing to.

Users are much more likely to click on an ad that is subtle and does not come off as pushing a product or service. For this reason, promoting content on your site will help draw users to your business more often and potentially lead to more conversions.

2. Express Your Brand’s Humanity

Above all else, customers want to feel like they are supporting a genuine business and not some money-hungry corporate conglomerate. One way to shift away from this appearance is by adjusting your tone of voice to customers.

You want your voice to come off as friendly yet professional and relaxed but informative. A great way to do this is by introducing your audience to you or your employees with short bios, photos, and stories.

Depending on your brand, you can be a little more playful with your post’s copy. Starbucks recently promoted their products on Twitter by excessively stating the word ‘really’ when describing their level of desire for coffee.

Fun and unique expressions such as this educate the customer on your company’s voice while making your advertisement much less invasive.

3. Schedule Your Posts

Many social media management services suggest scheduling your posts depending on your individual audience’s rate of engagement. You can customize this schedule and continue to modify it by monitoring your audience’s behaviors.

For example, you may want to begin posting five times a week as opposed to three if your audience is more active. By adding more social media content you can improve engagement in many cases. Taking a look at your account’s analytics page will help to track how your audience engages with your posts.

You may also find that most users are more active after traditional business hours. Shifting to evening posts would then increase the likelihood of reaching more customers.

Furthermore, you should individualize these schedules amongst all your social media accounts since user behavior may vary across platforms.

4. Create a Series

Creating a social media series is an innovative way to give your brand a personal touch. Series may consist of case studies or stories following a brand mascot or loyal, long-time customers.

Using a continual story engages users and excites them when interacting with your content. Also, if done correctly, your series will leave customers wanting more- making them more likely to check back in with your page and lead to higher engagement.

5. Run Multiple Contests

Contests are one of the most fun social media marketing ideas to use. Contests are exciting for users who already follow you since they have the chance to win a prize offered by your company.

To add, contests can draw in new customers if strategically implemented. For example, to be entered in your contest, you may ask users to like, share, or tag a friend on your post. This is a great way to increase engagement while simultaneously spreading awareness to new customers.

For maximum exposure, consider running your contest across multiple platforms. Users who follow you on Instagram may not be aware of your Facebook page, leaving them in the dark when it comes to contests or promotions.

6. Test Your Content Ideas

Using the analytics function on Twitter, you can determine which ideas your audience responds best to. From here, you can create desirable content that most users will get used to.

Depending on your brand, you may want to cycle through different types of media when testing out your ideas. For example, you may want to use an image or video you found particularly interesting to grasp a better understanding of your audience’s interest in it.

After releasing the post, you can then compare your engagement on that post to your average engagement to see how that content stands up against average posts. This tool can help you create more elaborate ads your customers are more likely to engage with.

You might want to consider investing in media monitoring tools, as tracking your brand and competitor mentions and keywords relevant to your business is also important to help you plan out your future content.

7. Focus on the Customer

From time to time, highlighting a dedicated customer on your social media pages can bring huge success. This spotlight shows users that you appreciate their contributions and loyalty to your business.

Additionally, it can be refreshing to see a fellow consumer representing a brand you love instead of a well-known celebrity.

Real, life-long customers provide a more genuine appearance. This tactic can convince users that your brand is authentic and that the post is not meant to advertise to them- it is simply recognition and appreciation of their business.

8. Follow Trending Topics

Social media marketing relies on remaining relevant in your specific niche but that is easier said than done. Trending topics change rapidly and usually on a day-to-day basis. With this in mind, you might be thinking how can I ensure that I am keeping on top of current trends?

An efficient way to remain relevant is by consistently checking a platform’s top trending hashtags and discovery pages. On these pages, you will find trends that are most frequently engaged with and the timeline of their popularity.

Using the information gathered from these sites, you are then able to structure your content to fit current consumer interests. A recent example of this can be seen in Gillette’s ‘The Best Men Can Be’ video advertisement.

Gillette’s ad focused on breaking away from the stereotype regarding how a man is “supposed” to act.

This topic is one that is consistently portrayed on social media. Gillette was able to remain relevant at the moment while demonstrating their core values through their use of promotional content.

9. Poll Your Audience

After you have built up a relatively large audience, it would be in your best interest to run a poll with those users. Polls give you a better idea of what your customers like about your business and what you could improve upon.

Polls also have the ability to reveal an audience’s preferences so that you can adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.

A great poll will engage the user while learning more about their individual needs, behaviors, and what makes them tick. For example, Hootsuite polled its audience on Twitter to understand when their audience engages most on their social media posts.

The results of this poll informed Hootsuite on which days of the week and times during the day customers were most active with their posts. From here, they then began posting content at times where they predicted they would receive optimal engagement rates.

Many platforms have started using polls- making it increasingly easier to poll multiple audiences on multiple platforms.

10. Have a Seamless Appearance

Your posts will range in the types of content and products you promote however, be sure to keep the core elements of your posts the same. Some of these elements include:

  • Font size/type
  • Color scheme
  • Number of words per post
  • Hashtags

Consistency is crucial for keeping users aware of your product. Establishing a unique appearance on social media platforms makes your business recognizable to users while looking professional.

11. Use High-Quality Hashtags

Hashtags are the key to reaching users online. Posting your content with supplementary hashtags such as #Marketing is great- however, it is in your best interest to use less-common ones.

For example, Adobe began using #CreateYourStory. Personalizing a hashtag to your brand allows you to build a community of consumers while tracking your reach.

Additionally, you may want to consider using hashtags you believe your audience is frequently engaged in. These hashtags will vary depending on your niche.

Lastly, some of the best social media marketing strategies consist of brands using action-oriented hashtags. These are hashtags that are created solely for the promotion of the entire company or a specific campaign and help users engage with your brand.

12. Use Your Highest Converting Ad in Campaigns

Using the metrics gathered by social media platform statistic tools, you can increase your visibility and click-through rate (CTR) on ads. This can be done by repurposing content that has already been released to your audience.

Depending on the platform you’re using, your company can measure either a Relevance Score or Quality Adjustment when leveraging your visibility and CTR. To do this, simply take your best-converting ad and promote it to your social campaigns.

If your ad performed well, and you saw ideal pay-per-click (PPC) rates, you will likely see the same results across your social platforms.

13. Create Industry Relationships

Starting a conversation on social media platforms can help cross-promote your business. Sparking a conversation by tagging an industry leader or influencer in your niche brings awareness of your company to that person’s audience.

Platforms focused on conversations, such as Twitter, are a great starting point when creating industry relationships. You may branch out to other platforms if you find that most leaders in your niche prefer certain platforms over others. Work with industry bloggers, media outlets and ask them to leave honest and unbiased reviews about your product or service. Features in expert roundups and review articles are great examples of earned media that boost your brand's image.

14. Keep Ads Fresh

Promotional ads do not last long in the realm of social media. For this reason, you want to make sure to continuously monitor your live ads across all social media platforms.

Typically, as time progresses, your ads begin to reach fewer and fewer customers based on the algorithms of each platform. One way to address this issue is by planning for multiple variations of the same advertisement.

Fresh ads promote more impressions due to their new content on products the user is already familiar with. These help the customer remain excited about your business while exposing them again to the content they are already familiar with.

Consistent, fresh ads increase the likelihood that a customer will engage with your business and hopefully lead to a conversion.

15. Remarket on Social Platforms

Regardless of how long you’ve been in business, you know that remarketing can result in a highly profitable outcome. This tactic, combined with other social media marketing tips and tricks, helps regain customer interest in your product or service.

Paid social campaigns can benefit from remarketing on social media platforms, primarily Facebook, due to their persistent nature. Customers are more likely to convert after being remarketed to in comparison to an initial advertisement.

This method, despite its amazing capabilities, is not always effective at bringing in conversion for your company - but this doesn’t mean that it is not worth your investment.

If nothing else, remarketing brings additional brand exposure to the customer which is always an asset to your company.

Using Social Media as a Tool

Regardless of your industry, social media provides a platform that can potentially expose your business to billions of users. There is no other form of marketing in which you can reach the same number of people.

Whether you decide to use one or all of these social media marketing ideas, be sure to always focus your content on the needs of the consumer. Continue to build your social media read reviews for tools that can help with growth, check out StormLikes as one example. For more social media marketing tips and advice on how to grow your business, feel free to check out other posts on our business blog.

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