How much time do you spend each week on social media? Does it amount to what you would describe as either “too much”, or “more than you’d like to”?
Ever since businesses started noticing that social media marketing delivers big results. Numerous gurus, experts, hackers and strategists have been struggling hard to put together some pretty awesome tools and tricks to help business owners like yourself save precious time and energy. Take a look at these 15 tips to make your social media effort easier.
1. Calendars
This is the first tool you’re going to want to get your hands on. Gone are the days of pulling out your phone every time you want to publish a tweet from your business account. Nowadays you can use a variety of tools to schedule out your posts in advance. By actively scheduling things, you can improve your:
- Productivity
- Focus
- Consistency
- Engagement
You’ll also often want your social media marketing to align with the release of your blog posts, and the best way to do this is with a calendar.
2. Images
You might have noticed that images are currently a pretty big deal. It’s no surprise given the degree to which we are a visually stimulated species. Yet, take a look around and you’ll start to see that pictures and photography are a more important part of engaging your audience than ever before.
In the age of Instagram, SnapChat and Pinterest, images are king. People have shorter attention spans, so it’s only natural that we need to work harder to grab it right away. There are few better ways to do this than with a perfect image. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words right?
3. Cross Promotion
Cross promoting content is one of those things that many will advise against, but that’s only because many people utilising this method will fail to follow #15 (optimising posts for each platform). However, using the right tools it’s more than possible to cross-post and keep content appropriate and styled properly for multiple outlets.
4. Don’t Overlook Google+
Most people avoid Google+ for no apparent reason. Well, believe it or not, Google + is actually still alive and you should consider using it for your business. It’s a testament to the failed initial marketing of Google + that using it can be at all considered a hack, yet honestly it just didn’t take off like the big G would have hoped. Despite all of this, it’s a veritable goldmine for marketers. Time and time again, reports show that audiences on Google+ are among the most engaged social media users anywhere on the web.
5. Keywords
Here’s one you might not have considered, and it can make your social ads a whole lot more effective. When you’re targeting keywords on social media, pay attention to the fact that people write differently than they do when making a Google search query. It’s usually more conversational and in their own personal voice.
On the flipside, if you were to target standard search queries, you might aim for keywords like “pet sitter” or “cat sitter”. It’s one of those common sense things that you might not think about beforehand, but when you do, you might face-palm realising how silly it was to have ever overlooked.
6. Remarketing
Remarketing is a great use of your time as it generally provides a strong ROI. That’s due to a little something called cognitive biases. A fascinating topic for another article, but its application in this circumstance can be summarised as such:
- You’ve been targeted for remarketing
- You begin to see the ad everywhere
- You begin to believe the brand is prolific
- You believe prolific brands are great brands
- You’re more likely to buy from great brands
7. Paid Advertising and Post / Page Promotion
Facebook and Twitter both offer such incredibly robust targeting that you can run an effective advertising campaign, directly to your potential customers, for literally a few dollars a day. It just doesn’t get any better than this, so what are you waiting for?
8. Giveaway
Running a contest can help you make a ton of headway with both your business objectives and your social media growth. Be careful though, as some social media sites have strict regulations regarding the contest conducting.
9. Learn to Read and Use Data
There’s an old business adage that you’re probably familiar with. “You can’t improve what you can’t measure.” When it comes to social marketing (and marketing in general), data collection and interpretation is crucial. And trust me, it’s not going anywhere. The only way for us to know if our marketing is working is to keep track of the results and iterate upon our successes.
10. Cover Photo
First impressions matter. You’ve surely heard people advise you to never judge a book by it’s cover enough times to be all set for a few lifetimes. The reason people constantly reiterate this is because so many of us continue to do it despite all the well-intentioned warnings.
You need to wow potential customers with your first impression. What they see when they open your twitter page, is largely going to determine whether or not they stick around to follow you or not. We published an article showing exactly how to do this a few weeks ago, check it out here.
Great example above. Simple branding, and the image draws your attention to a right-aligned message about what this company is all about. Well-done!
Keep it simple, and be consistent with your overall branding. Use the same color pallette as your logo and stick to your most successful messaging, you know the drill!
11. Profile Picture
This one is so simple that it hurts. You’d think this wouldn’t be a problem, but for whatever reason, businesses will often fail to actually complete their profiles. For the love of all that is holy, please don’t perpetuate this problem. Step up to the plate and do yourself (and your brand) a favor: complete your profile.
- About section
- Profile picture
- Cover photo
- Address and other basic information
There’s really not much to be said here other than the fact that the more information you make available to customers the better. It conveys your purpose more clearly, and it’s a critical piece of your business’s discoverability in local search.
You should of course, take this a step further, like the page yourself, get your friends to like it, and ask some customers to leave reviews. The more information and content on your page the better.
12. CTA (Call-To-Action)
This is especially true when it’s a product or service people are interested in either learning more about or outright purchasing. Sadly, they have to give up because they can’t figure out a way to do it easily and quickly. There’s a reason CTA’s are so ubiquitous. It’s because they’re downright necessary.
When you do start A/B testing CTA’s, make sure to be creative and think about how to engage the people viewing your ads. Your goal is to make your visitors think about themselves, your brand, and the emotions your product or service can evoke.
13. Utilise Twitter to Repurpose Old Blog Posts
As your social following grows, you’ll get new audience members that haven’t read some of your older content. But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t want to if you put it in front of them right? Sharing older content from you blog is a great way to share your expertise and the breadth of your work with newcomers, and it keeps your feed busy and varied.
14. Add Reviews and Testimonials from Twitter and Facebook to Your Site
Regardless of what industry you’re in, word of mouth will always be one of the most important tools in your lead-generation arsenal. There’s some powerful psychology at work here: it’s even been theorised that the development of our ability to gossip is partially responsible for the success of our species here on Earth.
Either way, seeing real reviews and recommendations is hugely important when it comes to building a report with a new visitor. They’re far more likely to follow you if they see stellar reviews and confirmation that you’re good at what you say you are.
Take the time to get a few reviews and you’ll find your social following will experience a big boost.
15. Optimise The Posts According to The Platform
It’s important that your posts be specifically formatted and angled for the particular social outlet you’re going to be posting on. For instance, when you post on Twitter, you’re going to want to make sure that images are in native Twitter format. If they’re not, the image won’t display in people’s feeds. Instead they’d have to click on it.
Take the time to use the right tools, and to optimise your posts for each outlet instead of just dumping them out there and/or ignoring potential cross-posting issues.