Social Media Marketing is a self-explanatory term on its own. It means marketing or advertising through social media platforms in order to increase your customer base. Unfortunately acing the art of social media marketing isn’t as simple as it sounds. Social media is a dynamic platform with ever changing trends. For a generation that stays on their social media accounts more than their own homes, following correct social media marketing guidelines is as important as your actual product or service. So the question is what it actually takes to be a hit on social media.
Here are 10 Social Media Marketing Guidelines that you should follow religiously if you want to not only promote your brand but also get a response from an average follower. Do whatever, but never break the rules!
1. Do not try to learn everything and Be everywhere at once!
Digital marketing has turned into a vast sea of opportunities, tools and technologies. There is so much to do and so much to learn. But a good marketer knows that it’s a skill acquired with patience. You cannot learn everything at once. Always remember it’s a step by step process and you will learn things eventually. What you need is to be open to learning at each step.
Also, trying to be everywhere makes you lose focus on the content and target audience and drives you away from doing work that really matters. You are more likely to end up confused in searching for opportunities rather than actually making use of them.
2. Never-Ever Compromise with the Quality of Content
The content of your advertisements should be ‘timely, relevant and engaging’. There is no point of marketing a woollen scarf in summers, neither is there a point in gifting a summer dress to someone from Alaska. Knowing your target customer, their needs and demographic conditions is must to post timely and relevant content. Look for the demographics that have best engagement and dig deeper into the data to make your content more engaging and useful for your audience.
Also keep in mind, the platform you are using for social media marketing. Places like twitter might need a short, catchy ad, while at Facebook a video with full advertisement may grab more attention.
3. Don’t underestimate the power of an Image
An image is a snapshot of time, conveying more than a 100 words at a time. Moreover, studies show that in today’s time of endless scrolling through the social media sites, images get quicker attention and are shared more frequently as compared to plain texts. Gaining traffic or attention through Images that support your cause is a proven booster for social media marketing.
4. Always develop a Standard Style
Creativity is good but so is consistency. Having a consistent format of your pictures, writing style is a sure way of gaining more attention and developing a loyal set of followers. Using an attention-seeking style with a constant type-face, a standard filter or editing technique may help you develop your brand over different platforms simultaneously.
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5. Avoid buying followers using third-party methods.
Unlike the popular view, more followers doesn’t always mean more money. What matters is that you have more loyal followers than average or impulse followers. Increasing your number of followers or likes may seem like an enticing idea but if you are overlooking your content quality or your dedicated followers because of them than it may cause more harm than benefit.
6. Understand the battle between consistency and content fatigue
Although regular sharing of your old posts to show your top stuff is a good way of marketing as old posts have high engagement, oversharing the same content may lead to your followers slowly tuning you out. Your aim should be boosting promotions without losing clients through ad fatigue. This results in lower ROI and reduced click-through rates and ultimately ignorance from the follower.
7. Use relevant tools
Gone is the time when books were hailed to be a man’s best friend. Technology is the new best friend of a social media marketer. With so many tools, extensions etc present in the industry today, you need to choose the ones that suit you best. Having all of them is as bad as having none. Check the latest trends, the reviews, updates and your needs to find the ones to keep and the ones to discard.
8. Do not ignore paid social advertising and e-mail marketing
Most social media platforms offer a free global outreach which is definitely a great way to start your journey of digital marketing. But its not the end. Social media giants like facebook and twiiter have so much data generated that they can sell it back to businesses in order to improve their ROI, public reach and content quality.
Similarly, marketing through e-mail is an area where very few are successful, thanks to spams that fill our e-mails. But this can be an opportunity if used wisely. E-mails are great way of reaching out to your committed customers and sharing valuable content like coupons, updates, offers etc.
9. Always review the data
If there is something that always speaks the truth, its the numbers. In today’s world there isn’t a need of large spread sheets and immense calculations to check your performance. Tech-giants like twitter give you a detailed analytic offering of your account including number of views, engagements, top posts etc. Although dealing with the numbers may seem frightening at the start, its something you ought to do in order to grow.
10. Do not disappear on your customer
In current times the most exciting thing about social media is how it lets us stay connected even in our busy lives. Your customers also expect a real connection from you. Therefore conversations through social media platforms, feedback on services delivered and rewards for your loyal customers can help promoting goodwill of your brand and boost your marketing. Your customers should know that they can count on you!
