Social media is evolving at lightning speed. If you want to maintain interest and grow your communities on Facebook, Instagram and other channels, you need to keep your social media marketing fresh and on-trend.
In this post, we share some ideas for taking your social strategy to the next level.
Polling your followers is not only a great way to up audience engagement, but also to gather useful market intelligence. For instance, if you’d like to promote a new product or service but aren’t sure what is going to have the greatest traction – it’s poll time!
Recognising the usefulness and popularity of polls, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram now make it breathtakingly simple to create a poll on their platforms.
Responding to current affairs with an astute and well-aimed social media post (aka newsjacking) can do wonders to raise your credibility and the profile of your brand. On the other hand, responding in a blunt and misguided way can be a very public form of brand self-harm.
How can you remain part of the conversation without putting your foot in your mouth?
The answer is to make sure that before you post, you engage in a spot of social listening. In other words, take a moment to scroll the hashtags that are relevant to the subject in question and get a feel for the prevailing social sentiment. This isn’t to say that you ought to parrot whatever is trending, but it will give you a potentially vital heads up about what you should be careful of.
There are two ways of doing this.
Firstly, wherever you post, do it consistently. There is no golden rule about how often you ought to be posting, just keep it regular.
Secondly, just like anywhere, on social media people come to associate a brand with a particular way of being. Keeping your brand voice consistent is therefore essential if you want to create a strong brand identity.
Instagram began as the best platform for sharing still images. However, while it remains the number one social media platform for image sharing, it has drastically expanded its capabilities so that it now includes options for uploading videos, GIFs, custom-made memes, and live video feeds.
Given the diversity of options, it will be well worth your time exploring some of the other ways of connecting with your audience.
A little bit like YouTube a few years ago, Instagram has now fully entered the fray in terms of providing a platform for ordinary people and celebrities alike to post video content directly to their online followers. IGTV differs from the short videos you can upload on Instagram because it allows users to upload videos up to ten minutes in length. You can now share Q & A sessions, live stream events, interviews, video reviews and testimonials, and much, much more.
With no barrier to entry, there is nothing stopping you from creating your own IGTV show today.
As social media marketing becomes ever more sophisticated, there are ever smarter ways of leveraging it to your advantage. One of these is by retargeting your ads to people who you know have already previously engaged with something you have put out. This is an especially useful way of increasing ROI on your ad spend, as you will make sure your ads only get seen by people who have demonstrated an earlier interest, thereby increasing your chance of making conversions.
For small business owners, the prohibitive cost and sheer unlikeliness of securing an endorsement from a celebrity influencer might make the idea of influencer marketing seem like a non-starter. However, turning to micro-influencers with a strong local following may even be better at helping your brand to grow because of their geographically localised follower base.
Last but not least, in this day and age you should be aware that most people are viewing your content on their mobile. Do them (and yourself) a favour by making sure that when posting to Pinterest and Instagram, you use vertically-oriented, rectangular pictures in a 2:3 aspect ratio.
If you are new to the social media marketing game, don’t be intimidated. The year is still young and with an ever-increasing suite of social media marketing options available across platforms, it is definitely worth your while to experiment and see what works best for you.
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