March 24, 2017, by The Ingenuity Lab
Pitch@Palace 7.0: Top 10 Social Media Tips You Need to Know
Social media is everywhere. No matter you are doing business or in the education sector, almost everybody has a presence on at least one form. Businesses have long been trying to implement social marketing tactics with mixed results. It seems pretty easy to do but like most business tasks, it is anything but.
To help the Pitch@Palace Boot Camp Entrepreneurs with their business development, we invited KUMO – a digital agency specialising in online marketing – to share their tips for online success. Let’s get started!
1. CREATE A STRUCTURED PLAN
An overall structured plan for social media is mandatory but each channel also needs its own strategy to maximise results. A major mistake companies make is to just blindly start sharing and tweeting.
Every channel needs a purpose. If you cannot answer why you are using social media then you need to go back to the drawing board and redefine its purpose. What is Pinterest for? Can you share your latest blog post on Snapchat? Is LinkedIn a sales channel? You should know the answer to these questions and more before you begin your social campaign.
Each social channel has a specific purpose and is used by a different demographic. Listen to your audience and respond to their platform-specific needs, demands and questions.
2. BE CONSISTENT
As part of your structured plan, a consistent posting schedule needs to be incorporated. How often you publish on each channel needs to be considered. For example, tweets are fleeting and serve a very short-term purpose, whilst Instagram moves a little slower and content stays slightly more relevant for longer.
It is very easy to be forgotten and without consistency, you could be lost without a second thought. By the same token, you don’t really want to be seen as that profile or page that posts every ten minutes with most of it being regurgitated, useless junk that might be regarded as spam.
An actionable plan of consistent, high-quality and useful content across social media can quickly build up a following of dedicated fans. Remember to appeal to their exact needs, though or you may be at risk of losing followers over time.
3. USE A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT TOOL
Managing multiple social media accounts can be hard work. Make your life easier by using a social media management tool that allows you to manage multiple platforms, see all your feeds on one screen, schedule your posts in advance and track your results.
Having one common area to easily have all of your channels at hand can make social media management a breeze. Schedule posts to multiple social platforms at a time with ease.
Some tools, such as buffer, even offer analytics and insights into your posts.
4. POST MORE IMAGES AND VIDEO
Social media is fleeting and quick. Images work great as the user is instantly drawn to them. A picture says a thousand words and in the seconds that your post is visible to your audience, they might be worth much more than that.
We live in a fast-paced world where social media isn’t particularly aimed at reading. Sure there are words knocking about but how much they are absorbed is up for debate.
Graphic, visual representations and videos resonate so much better than black and white text. They are engaging, enticing and much more likely to attract attention.
5. A/B TEST
Once your campaigns are up and running you can run A/B tests. A social media platform will show one variation to one user and one to another. This allows you to test to see which copy, image, headline etc. performs best with your audience.
Unlike other marketing split testing techniques, with social media A/B testing it is best to change as little as possible. If there are two near identical posts with the only difference being the image and one post performs significantly better, you know this type of image works better with your audience.
After a few rounds of split testing, you can begin to get a real understanding for what type of posts and content engage your audience and use insights to push your brand.
6. MEASURE AND ANALYSE
Much like A/B testing, everything that is posted on social media needs to be analysed and measured. There is nothing wrong with experimenting and pushing the boundaries but if you are not collecting data you will never have a benchmark for success.
Do your tweets to do with certain topics get more likes or retweets than others? Does including a link to your site work in getting visitors up? Does including a picture with a post see an increase in followers?
There are a whole host of social KPIs to monitor and determining the best methods for meeting them is something that you should always be aiming towards. Data doesn’t lie, so analyse it carefully to see where you can improve.
7. CREATE COMMUNITIES
Creating your own online community is a gold mine. The aim is never to ‘sell’ yourself but to establish yourself as a thought leader and industry authority. If you can establish an engaging community with your target market you have direct access to their needs, wants, complaints, tone of voice and so much more.
You’ll be one of the first to know what is great, what is poor and what real life users believe needs to be done to enhance your sector or area. Not only that, if you manage to become an authority, you’ll be one of the first ports of call for information.
8. USE YOUR BEST-CONVERTING AD COPY IN YOUR SOCIAL CAMPAIGNS
If you are using paid marketing channels, such as Google AdWords, you should have a vast amount of data on what ad copy converts and what does not. Use this data in your social campaigns to improve click through rates and engagement.
You have all the information at your disposal to create the perfect posts. Real-time data from real users is at your fingertips; you just need to implement it within social channels.
9. NARROW YOUR TARGETING TO BOOST ENGAGEMENT AND REDUCE COSTS
Don’t be afraid to pay for social media marketing. Paid Facebook marketing, for example, is a very powerful tool.
Gone are the days when people with clipboards stood on the streets asking for your opinions.
Now all that information is given away for free by people through their social channels. Your target audience is already in place and social media data is ready to work almost immediately.
You can be incredibly targeted with Facebook marketing which narrows your targeting pool and reduces your costs by only targeting the right demographic. You don’t have to do any of the research for this to be effective, either.
10. USE CONTESTS FOR AUDIENCE GROWTH SPURTS
Contests are gold mines for social media. They instantly get your followers interacting with your content and creates a buzz around your brand. They are also a great way of attracting new followers who might be interested in entering.
If it is planned correctly, you can use contests for a multi-staged approach from pre-launch, launch, the contest and revealing the winners. As a bonus, you’ll likely have a ton of new email addresses and data useful for other marketing campaigns, especially email marketing.
KUMO are a digital agency specialising in online marketing. KUMO are partners with Google, Brightpearl, and PayPal and are Bing Ads Accredited Digital Agency. Providing bespoke Web Design, Development and Online Marketing services.
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