social-media

There is no one easy answer to the ultimate question of what is the best strategy for social media for your brand specifically. But getting results from social media is so important for brands. However, getting those results is getting harder since more and more people join social media and more and more brands use social media profiles to promote their services. In fact, most of the modern promotion happens on different social media platforms. There is a ton of competition but with the right strategies, you can improve your social media engagement and results. Keep in mind that some of the old-fashioned strategies might not work anymore. You can stand out and reach out to your target audience. Here, we’ll discuss some of the best strategies you can utilize as a marketer and get better in your social media in 2019.

Use social listening software to listen to your customers in social media

What is one of the most important things in marketing that brands often overlook? The data, of course. Such a pivotal step, a resource of immense value and so often forgotten because guesstimation seems a lot easier – and not to mention, cheaper.

Well, it’s time that we break the cycle and start taking our data more seriously. If you want to succeed in marketing, you need to know who you are marketing to, what your competitors are doing, where is the industry heading, what are the gaps in customer satisfaction and so on. When you have this knowledge, you can actually use it to achieve great things with your marketing strategy. For one, you can get to know your audience better, segment it better and learn how to speak to them in a way that will persuade them to lean towards you versus your competitor. Some of the best marketing strategies stem from the data and the proper analysis of the market and social media.

But how do you get it? How do you get this data that will not only improve your social media strategy but possibly your entire marketing strategy?

There’s a solution – social listening tools. While this may sound like you are spying on your audience, you are actually not. Social listening tools are a completely legitimate way to gain information on new trends, common topics, habits and behaviors of people on social media. You can learn many things if you monitor the conversations among your audience that happen online. This will depend on what your focus is on. The first step is to get a good software for this. You need to do a lot of research and see what works best for you. There are many options out there so you really need to create a plan and list what you are looking for and then window shop and test for a while to see where each software can lead you. One of the top softwares in the industry is Sentione and its used by many brands out there. This software allows you to monitor keywords that you want throughout different social media channels on the web and perform market research as needed. You can also use it as a tool to help you find influencers that are relevant to your niche or industry and learn more about your audience and other people as well. Of course, this is just one option and the ultimate decision on which software to choose is yours.

You can do many great things with a good social listening strategy paired with a quality software. For one, you can manage your reputation online. We all know how crucial your online reputation is to your overall success so this is very important. Use this software to learn all about the discussions or posts that mention your brand in them and then jump into that conversation whether it’s positive or negative. Comment and save your reputation by helping with the issue or thanking someone for kind comments. You can also find people who are interested in your product this way and help them make a decision in your favor. This is one of the main perks of online listening tools because you can’t find all of the conversations that include you manually. You can also track your competitors and see what their strategies are and how they handle their digital marketing to see what’s working for them and whether they are active on their social media profiles. You can see how big their audience is as well and then assess their content to see what can work for you as well. Social listening tools can help you find influencers and work with them. All you have to do is follow specific keywords and then find the most popular influencer in the niche.

By using social listening tools, you can also gain knowledge on who they are, what type of content they like and respond best to, which hashtags they use and so on. You can also see which accounts they interact with the most. Finally, use your social listening tool to measure the success of your campaigns beyond the metrics that you usually use and assess the emotional reactions of people to different posts and discussions.

Establish the best times to post by using social media scheduling tools

What’s one of the biggest pain points you have when it comes to creating social media posts and sending them out? For many companies and brands, the ultimate answer is consistency and the efficiency of it all. It can be quite time-consuming and unproductive because social media platforms filter the feeds they give to people which means that you might get lost in the sea of posts. Of course, there are times when it’s more efficient to post than the others. These are the times that you should target as your target audience is online then and they will see your content. Otherwise, your posts will make no sense.

You want to use social media scheduling tools that you can set up easily and then create and organize several posts at the same time. There are many tools that can work for you in this sense that can enable you to post at the best times for your audience. These will make your life much easier and simpler.

You have many different options here in the number of posts that you can make on these networks and the times when you should send them out. All of it is based on research so you can rest assured that your social media audience will get all of your posts.

Boost brand awareness and improve results by turning your employees to brand ambassadors

Boosting awareness of your brand with the wider audience is one of the most important things you can do to improve your conversions, engagement and other important elements. The more people know about you and understand you, the more they will be likely to purchase from you whether it’s a product or a service.

However, boosting brand awareness isn’t always so easy, especially if you don’t have any loyal brand advocates at the moment. This is where your employees come into picture. This basically means that your employees will promote your message and the benefits of your product or service.

Your employees might not have such a large audience but they nevertheless have an impact on their close circle of people, especially their social media friends. Their audience is really engaged and interested in what they have to say. When your employee promotes you as a brand, this has a high impact on their audience and with that, on your brand awareness in terms of increasing it. You can get more social media engagement, more brand awareness, more reach and more traffic on your website. If you want to engage your employees in these actions, you have to start by motivating your team to share your content, information about your product and so on. Build a culture where they would want to be involved and market your product.

You should also create clear guidelines as to what is desirable and what is not. You don’t want your employees sharing something offensive or not appropriate for your audience. You don’t want your employees to ruin your reputation so make sure that the guidelines are easy to follow. Then, with the support of your employees, create and curate your content.

You should also create a system for this that is easy to approach and to use. Your employees should have a simple access to this content and be able to share it simply and effectively

Keep in touch to your audience with the help of conversational marketing tools

This approach to marketing can help you learn about your customers and move them through the sales funnel.

The focus here is on the human connection and conversations that you can have with your customers. For any marketing strategy to work you need to send out personalized, targeted messages at just the right time. Social media is all about talking and discussions.

Keep the conversation going throughout your website and social media. Use a conversational marketing platform and use it as an onsite or in-app chat that can help you nurture your audience. One of your options is Drift.


Keep up recording analytics

As a brand and a dedicated company, you need a strong strategy that can help you reach success. The only way to do this is to keep recording your analytics and keep using the data you get to send out the right messages.

Analytics are so often overlooked but this leads to failure. Keep tracking your analytics and use this to your success.


Conclusion

These have been just some of the strategies that you can use on your social media accounts to receive more engagement and more revenue from your customers. Use these strategies in a way that suits you and based on your goals as a company.

Aimee Laurence works as a social media marketing manager at Do My Dissertation. She develops strategies that allow a brand to reach a boost in awareness.