In today’s blog I’m going to give you five social media marketing tips that you can use, to take your social media marketing and overall presence to the next level next year. And the best part? There’s nothing stopping you from making these changes right now – in fact, as a bonus social media marketing tip from me, my advice is to make the following five changes to your social media marketing approach as soon as possible!
Social Media Marketing Tip 1: Consistency of Content
With content, consistency is key to success. You’ve got to make sure that you're producing quality content every day, and posting multiple times a day too. You see, there is a Lot of content out there on social media, and it’s all competing for attention.
As a result, you need to get out there as much as possible – you need to be seen constantly popping up in people’s feeds, and you need that content that gets seen to be something that the people who see it want to react to.
Having great content but posting sparingly, or spamming people with rubbish content is not how you succeed. If you do these things then in one case you simply get forgotten about, while in the other you’re remembered for all the wrong reasons.
Social Media Marketing Tip 2: Build Your Brand
If the only thing you’re trying to do is sell on social media you’re going to be losing out in a big way – and this social media marketing tip is definitely aimed at you. You're probably not seeing the results that you're looking for social media with this approach, and that’s because has changed a lot in the last few years. In order to get the most out of social media marketing today, you also need to build a brand.
You need to provide value to your audience and send a consistent message about who you are as a business. What you want to do is focus on positioning yourself as an authority or thought leader in your industry.
The people that see your content and share the same ideas that your brand and content represent - they’re going to come to you rather than your competitors when they’re looking to buy - because for them you are a thought leader and authority in your sector of the market. You know what you’re talking about, so you’re the people to buy from.
Social Media Marketing Tip 3: Harness LinkedIn
In the past LinkedIn has been something of a ghost town, nobody really pushes content there. In actuality a lot of people use LinkedIn to educate themselves - to learn, develop and either better themselves or further their career. It's not just a platform for finding jobs anymore.
These days you're, going to be able to get more organic reach on LinkedIn than you will on Facebook. Organic reach on Facebook is not what it used to be, but on LinkedIn you can still reach a very large percentage of your following just by just posting content on your personal feed.
So my next social media marketing tip is to use that to your advantage – ask your intended Facebook audience to follow you on LinkedIn, and when they do, direct that LinkedIn audience to your Facebook content, and watch as both platforms help the other grow!
Social Media Marketing Tip 4: Longform Content Must Allow Multi-Tasking
Nobody has time to consume content that takes half an hour and all of your attention to get through. Longform content like this can still provide quality and value to your audience, but it needs to be delivered in the right way. For a lot of people, that is going to be the audio-only format permitted by podcasts.
Why is this? Well, because as the heading for this social media marketing tip stated – they allow people to multitask. You can put your headphones on and type out an email while listening to a podcast , you can put it on in the car during the drive home… You can’t say the same about a YouTube video or a document that needs to be read.
In addition to this, if you can create a podcast that’s about your business (or even better, about the industry that you're in) and include meaningful content there, you’re helping yourself fulfil what we talked about in my second social media marketing tip today - you’re positioning yourself as a knowledgeable authority figure or thought leader in your industry.
Social Media Marketing Tip 5: Video Content
If you're not already producing video content at this point, the cold hard truth is that you should be. There are so many opportunities in the social media landscape, but often they require video content as it’s usually the quickest way to get your brand, your values and your message across to your audience.
These people that are watching that content become familiar with you as a company and as a brand. They learn who you are, and because you were quick and to the point initially and didn’t waste their time, you can now be a little more aggressive with your sales pitch.