7 Tips to Instantly Improve Your Social Media Marketing

When you open your phone and scroll through Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, it seems like there are hundreds of accounts who all have some secret to social media marketing that you don’t – how do they seem to get it right when you find it a struggle?

I get it; just because social media is so pervasive doesn’t actually mean it’s easy to reach your audience and market on the platform.

At least not yet – the 7 tips listed below will help you give your social media marketing strategy an instant boost. Provided you take action and implement them! Ready? Let’s dive in.

Tip #1: Take Another Look at Your Ideal Customer

If your social media marketing efforts aren’t landing then you probably have a problem with how you’re going about using the platform.

The problem with social media marketing is that it can be a completely different beast to other forms – if you have content marketing on your blog down, you won’t necessarily have the same success on your social media pages. (Not yet, at least – more on that in a moment.)

Instead, sit down and do a deep analysis of who your current customers are (ideally the best ones, not the crummy ones you don’t really want) and then look at the profiles of who follows you.

Do you see a correlation?

If not, you likely aren’t producing the type of content your ideal customer is interested in. Before you make any changes, sit down and redefine exactly who you’re talking to.

You can do this by creating a Buyer Persona. If you don’t know what that is, here’s How to Find the Buyer Persona for Your Blog.

It will make every other tip in this list exponentially more effective.

Tip #2: Follow Your Success

I know I just said you won’t necessarily see success across the board, you can replicate it.

Let me explain; if you have a wildly successful blog for your B2C (business to customer) business selling hiking backpacks, but you’re making a huge push on LinkedIn, you may not be able to replicate the same results.

Why?

Because while your ideal customer and readers may be on LinkedIn, they’re there to make business connections, not think about purchasing a new backpack.

But, if you have a huge following on your website’s blog and you use lots of beautiful hiking imagery and include great tips, that will likely transfer over to Instagram, where your ideal customers go to look for new hiking locations and challenges.

If you share your beautiful images and portions of your content over there, you’ll likely see traction.

If you’re having success in one area ask your audience where they’d like to see more from you. Go where your customers are and you’ll see an instant boost in your marketing efforts.

Tip #3: Analyze

Are you taking full advantage of any analytics tools you have access to on your social media profiles?

If not, it’s time to start looking at them.

Sometimes, you’ll see that you got the most responses to X type of post, or by posting at a certain time of day, and it’s well worth trying to replicate that exact post with a new similar one to see if you have the same success.

If you find it, do it again.

Repeat successful strategies until they stop working. Too many people marketing on social media have one post that does well and think that it is the sign of an upward trend, not a specific trend for that type of post or timing.

Start analyzing your actions and test out new – or the same – strategies.

Tip #4: Up Your Interaction

When you get a comment on a post, are you responding to it?

If not, why not?

Replying or even just reacting to your audience’s comments and interactions on your posts will make them feel noticed and special (which – in case you hadn’t noticed, is the reason most of us are on social media at all) and will want to come back and comment again.

Even if all they wrote was “love it!” react with a heart emoji or simply like their comment. Start conversations with your audience and answer every question you get.

Even the biggest social media accounts have managers replying to comments, so follow their lead.

Tip #5: Share Share Share

Are you sharing your blog posts, videos, or podcasts with your audience? Do you share something of value regularly? Do you ever share a customer’s post with your audience?

It’s time to remember that loyal customers are worth their weight in gold, so make them feel special and try to help them out, too.

Share your content that offers them something of value (yes, tips and information count), share any posts they make about you with your audience, and don’t be afraid to pair up with other brands and businesses you have a crossover audience with.

Even if you don’t do any other content marketing, the odd “as a thank you for following us, here’s a 10% discount code you can use for 48hrs” will make them feel seen, special, and up your sales in the process.

Tip #6: Post Often

How often are you posting? I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but many social media experts are seeing results with social media accounts that post 2+ times a day.

Yes, that’s a lot to manage, but the more you post the more opportunity you have to get in front of your audience.

The only caveat to this rule is on what you’re posting. If it’s basically just spam, and of no interest to your ideal customer, it won’t help them or you.

This is where a great scheduling tool will come in handy.

And this also goes for blogging. You want to be consistent and post often. In fact, we’ve written a guide on How Often You Should Post.

Tip #7: Embrace Video

If there’s one major trend in social media marketing for 2020, it’s that you need to embrace video.

Throughout 2019, we saw social media platforms push video to their userbase and organically push video posts (whether a post or a story – it doesn’t matter) to audiences.

While it’s getting harder to be seen with traditional posts, if you can jump in front of your phone camera a couple of times a day to share what you’re doing or to share a helpful tip, you’ll get a boost from the platform itself, which is pretty much unheard of in our current pay-to-play social media world.

Your videos don’t need to be high quality and you don’t need to be camera-ready – in fact, some brands saw that engagement go down when they got “too professional” and so returned to using their phones for their video content to maintain a better connection with customers.

Here are 7 Elements of a Perfect Social Media Video if you don’t know how to create one.

Ready to implement these tips?

Once you’ve put these tips into practice, you’ll see an instant boost in your social media marketing efforts.

Regardless of your industry, always make sure to analyze, follow your customers, and listen to what they tell you.

Once you’ve got even a handful of loyal customers they will lead you where you need to go.