Tips for Crafting an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy

By Ernesto Verdugo • Social Media, Social Media Trends • 29 Nov 2017

In recent years, social media marketing has quickly become one of the most powerful strategies to attract traffic, engage audiences, and drive sales. According to Social Media Examiner, 92% of marketers say they have increased exposure through social media, and 80% see positive results for traffic.

That said, an effective social media marketing strategy needs to have some key elements if you really want to scale and make the most of it. Here are seven important hacks to keep in mind.

1. Curate content

Social media marketing isn’t all about promoting your own content. In order to really grow your audience and become an authority in your niche, you’ll need to share a wide variety of content that interests your followers.

Finding and sharing this content can be a huge time-suck, unless you use content curation tools. Feedly, for example, is a feed aggregator you can use to do this. It helps you find relevant content feeds based on keywords, and keeps them all in one place. Then you can easily view and share to your social profiles right in the app.

2. Tag influencers

You’re never going to achieve viral growth with your social media marketing strategy unless you enlist the help of influencers. Influencers are other individuals in your niche (not your competitors) who have a big social following of their own.

Target influencers with your marketing strategy to encourage them to share your content with their social audience. The easiest way to do this is by tagging them in your posts.

You can also reach out to influencers via direct message or email asking them to share your content.

3. Schedule your posts

Use a social media marketing tool to schedule your posts to go out at optimum times. Buffer is my personal favorite but Hootsuite is another great alternative to try. Social media automation tools will create unique, trackable links for your social posts and monitor engagement of your shares and posts. Then you can use this data to identify your best traffic sources and improve your strategy.

4. Leverage current events

People turn to social media to interact with businesses, but they also use it to get the latest news and information. You can really grow your following if you integrate the two.

Keep track of trending hashtags that you see on Twitter. Take the opportunity to use them in your own social posts. This helps you join bigger conversations on the social platform outside of your own following.

You can also use Facebook Trending Topics or Google Trends for a similar purpose. Trending topics on Google Trends can help you brainstorm content that’s relevant to current events and can garner more buzz on social media. ComiConverse for instance jumps on trending hashtags related to movies and games to boost engagement. Continue reading here.

LOCAL SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TIPS FROM 5 EXPERTS

It’s hard to imagine any kind of digital marketing campaign these days that wouldn’t include social media. After all, Facebook alone now boasts 2 billion users, and the number of consumers who use social media only continues to grow.

Of course, how different brands leverage social media (at least effectively, anyway) varies widely. Indeed, the social networks that any brand should focus on, and the strategy and tactics it should employ, will depend a lot on its industry and its business model.

And local marketers are no exception. After all, local businesses target local consumers, so the social tools they use to do so (and how they use them) is going to differ from how, say, a multinational brand or online retailer does. So to that end, we chatted with 5 social media experts to get their two cents on just how local marketers can tap into social media to drive more foot traffic through the door.

1. USE FACEBOOK HYPER-LOCAL AD FEATURES

When it comes to local social media marketing, there’s more to it than just engaging local influencers. Indeed, there are also a lot of paid advertising options that can help you reach your target market, says Liesl Barrell, CEO of ThirdWunder: Continue reading here.