Get the most out
of your Social Media
Social media
marketing is established as something positive now, with most companies
opting to explore this route. It can lead to more repeat customers,
more brand recognition, more loyal business and much more.
In
order to create this success though it takes a lot of fine-tuning. Effective
social media marketing requires a great deal of effort, and it is not easy
for small businesses to create a regular marketing strategy that will
keep customers interested. Despite the difficulties in building success
there are some simple solutions that can make a huge difference in reaching and connecting
with your audience.
Below are three strategies that will provide a platform for
social media marketing success.
Timing
It is crucial to
schedule emails, tweets, status updates and blog posts at the right time. Not
only do you want to catch your audience when they are checking their messages
and feeds, but also when they have a few minutes to click through and browse
the Internet.
For marketing consultant Jay Baer, the ideal time to reach his audience tends
to be during a “micro-opportunity window.” These are usually a couple of
minutes, but they are critical for reaching the relevant audience. Heschedules his
messages to go out before or after the top of the hour, when many are checking
their phones before heading to their desks.
Later on in the day is also a popular time to send out messages, as well as tweets posted on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays as they draw more clicks. A report by Buddy Media saw a similar pattern on Facebook. Interaction rates for brands were 14.5 percent higher on weekends than on weekdays, and the report also suggested posting between 8pm and 7am when interaction is 14 percent higher than the rest of the day.
Issue calls to
action
In order to
interact and create dialogue with your customers online, you have to propose
it. Facebook postswith questions attached generate 92 percent higher
comment rate naturally so be sure to ask a question to your audience at the end
of the post. This will draw more people in and ultimately a higher comment rate
on your posts.
By posting pictures, instead of just requesting that you audience clicks on the
picture, encourage them to “fill in the blank,” a tactic that leads to four
times as many comments as other posts.
Twitter looked at around 200,000 random promoted tweets and found
four effective ways for businesses to engage their followers. They found that
including a link and requesting that their audience download something is very
useful and accounts for 13 percent more clicks.
Twitter also found that if you ask your followers to retweet a
message using just “RT” instead of spelling it out is also a good way of
generating more clicks. It keeps things short and snappy.
If you have a brand that needs to grow online then simply asking for followers
in return for an enticing reward is a great way of generating traffic. These
could include free prizes or coupons to be used at the company’s online
store. Twitter found brands that paid for a promoted tweet and asked
for a follow increased their audience by a huge 258 percent.
Use images often
Photos tend to
work better than videos, links and text alone on Facebook. It is easier to view
a picture that is already there in front of you rather than clicking on a
video. There is also an element of sound in this one as well because most
people at work will not have the sound up on their computers so images are a
lot more attractive in this sense.
Images provide a nice alternative avenue from some of the text-heavy
marketing that is seen on Facebook at times, and a great deal of people
respond positively to images in relation to learning and consumption.
As you can see social media marketing can help your business gain new, loyal
customers and engage with a broader community. To become successful at
this will take time but by using the tips above as a platform you will become a
success over a period providing you posses patience.
Alex is an English
Literature and Sociology undergraduate whose love for written word has led him
to write about some obscure topics in his time. Currently an intern at Social
Media Frontiers, be sure to follow him @AlexSatSMF
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