7 Tips to Successful Social Media Marketing

Have you ever tried your hand at social media marketing? Despite all the hype, launching a successful social media marketing campaign is not as easy as opening a few accounts and waiting for followers to arrive.

The most successful campaigns are the products of good planning, smart and consistent work and a solid knowledge of social media platforms. Here are 10 tips to help you take your campaigns to the next level.

1. Have a Plan

Setting off on your social media journey in a haphazard, “make it up as you go along” kind of way will probably reward you with the same level of haphazard results. There’s a method to this madness, even if social media may appear somewhat chaotic at times.

Before you start your campaign, know what you want to achieve and define what social media success means to you. Decide what platforms you’re going to use and how you will approach each one. Create a systematic facebook follower implementation plan and make time every day for the activities you need to do, be it posting content or interacting with contacts.

Without a set plan and goals you’ll never be able to achieve success or measure the progress of your social media campaigns.

2. Know Your Social Media Platforms

Many social media platforms have some kind of special feature (some more than one) that you can use to your advantage. Get to know your platform and everything it has to offer you. Here are just three quick examples that you may not know about:

– Twitter Advanced Search

Specify the job or service you are offering and choose your area. You can easily find customers already looking for what you may be offering this way.

– Facebook Offers

These are a little different from regular Facebook ads. You can set them up in your Facebook page and whatever you offer is promoted in your news feed.

– LinkedIn’s “Your Day” Feature

This will help you to keep tabs on significant events in the lives of your contacts (birthdays, promotions, etc.), giving you the opportunity to congratulate and reconnect with them. Also set up a company page on LinkedIn in addition to your personal profile.

3. Keep An Eye On Competitors

Competitors can be a great source of ideas. Monitor their content and posts and take note of anything that gets a lot of reaction or attention.

Don’t copy this content, but use a unique variation of that basic idea to boost your own results. This doesn’t only apply to competitors, of course. Look at successful posts or campaigns outside of your niche or community as well.

4. Be Choosy About Your Platforms

Don’t join as many social media networks as possible. This is a common myth perpetuated by the quantity over quality spam crowd. Go where your customers are and use the platforms where you’ll most easily be able to connect with them.

Maintaining a strong presence on 3 or 4 key networks is better than a diluted presence on 6, 7 or 8 networks. Just having a presence is not enough. You need to be active and provide value on a consistent basis.

5. Stand Out With Image Updates

People love images. Visual presentations consistently outperform text on the internet.

Instead of just using text updates, why not spice it up by putting that text on a relevant, eye-catching picture. Pictures are easy to share and people love to do just that. They also draw attention and will stand out among the many text updates your prospects will already be getting.

Choose your image carefully, making sure it gets the message across, that it is relevant but also attention-grabbing.

6. Build Influence

This is a long term strategy, but very important. You need to establish yourself as an authority in your niche or market.

Communicate with your followers and answer their questions. Build a reputation as someone knowledgeable and trustworthy. Connect with other leaders in your industry or niche and build relationships with them.

Finally, consistently deliver quality content and make every post matter as something of value.

7. Ask

People love to talk, offer opinions and interact. What is the easiest way to get them to do this? By asking questions.

This is such a simple, but effective way to get your followers talking and to interact with them. You’ll not only make some connections, but you’ll learn more about your audience, what they want, their likes and dislikes.

You can also get clues about what sort of content they desire, making it possible for you to give them more of what they want.