Social media marketing budgets are on the rise. They say that social media advertising costs at least $48,000 a year. Businesses are spending a lot of money on digital marketing and advertising, but often don’t have the knowledge or expertise to use social media to improve their marketing efforts.
The result of this belief is that businesses think that social media isn’t working, when in reality, it is. Some brands are deriving a great deal of benefit from their social media spending and are willing to allocate large sums of money to it on a monthly basis.
What are some ways that you can begin to see positive outcomes from your social media marketing?
There are a few social media mistakes that brands commonly make which prevent them from being successful. This blog will focus on common misconceptions and mistakes, and what you should be doing instead.
Rewind to 2005. In the early 2000s, social media wasn’t yet popular. Only 5% of American adults used at least one social media platform, according to the Pew Research Center.
It spread like wildfire, though. As of 2011, 50% of Americans were on social media. As of today, that number has increased to 72% of Americans. This might be a modest estimate. Statista puts that number at closer to 79%.
This trend does not seem to be slowing down. As of 2021, there are approximately 3.02 billion social media users worldwide, according to an estimate from Statista.
Most businesses understand that in order to be successful, they need to have a social media presence.
Simply being present won’t cut it, though. It is necessary to have a well thought out plan to be successful on social media, especially considering that the platforms are not designed to be easy for businesses.
The decline in organic reach on Facebook over the last several years is an example of how the platform has changed. As of February 2012, research shows that organic reach was around 16%. The number of people using the internet daily went down to 6.51% in March of 2014.
If a page has 200,000 likes or more, the situation might be even worse. Their organic reach is very low, at only 2%.
Social media marketing campaigns can be very beneficial, but if you don’t use the platforms correctly, you could end up being penalized with a negative image.
One thing to remember is that digital marketing shouldn’t be an afterthought. You should make time for it even if you’re busy. You should not have something just for the sake of having it. Social media can be used to help grow your business online, by helping to increase revenue and gain returns over time.
Have a (Digital) Marketing Strategy
According to Smart Insights, nearly half of businesses are engaging in social media with no strategy. When it comes to your digital content marketing strategy, don’t just improvise. You won’t get the results that you want.
You can’t just fly by the seat of your pants because there are too many moving parts. You need a plan for every individual social media platform because each one is complex. If you use more than one platform, you will probably end up with a big mess.
A strategy will help you stay focused. So, how can you start to develop one? You need to be able to answer this question: What is your goal for your social media marketing?
This is where your strategy starts. Do you want to:
- Figure out your target segments/customers?
- Sell products for your eCommerce brand?
- Grow your email list?
- Boost traffic to your website?
- Boost audience engagement?
- Improve brand awareness?
- Generate leads or sales?
- Manage customer relationships and customer experience?
- Manage public relations?
What’s your goal? Setting and working towards goals will give you a better understanding of what steps you need to take to achieve them. Look at your current situation and your desired outcome, then start planning the steps you’ll need to take to get there.
Make Your Goal Measurable
If you want to increase the size of your email list, you have to include the target number of subscribers in your plans. Do you want to grow it to 1,000? 10,000? When do you want that accomplished? Within six months? Within a year? . When you have a goal that you can measure, it’s easier to track your progress and stay on course.
Know Who Your Audience Is
It can be helpful to know who your audience is and what they want to see on social media when you are trying to decide what kind of content to create. Do market research: Study them. Find out what kinds of posts your target audience responds to and interact with, and what sort of content gets their attention.
Examine Your Current Social Media Efforts
Are your current social media marketing strategies working well? See which social media marketing campaigns are working and which ones need improvement by running multivariate testing. This will help you identify what needs to be changed in order to be more successful.
Keep a Social Media Calendar
What are the best things to do to reach your goals and objectives? Plan that out on your social media calendar. Your content calendar should list the types of content you’ll be releasing and when you’ll be uploading them. This will help you stay organized and make sure you’re regularly putting out new content.
Track Your Metrics
Make sure your strategy is being implemented properly and achieving the desired results. You’ll need to evaluate and respond if you find that a few of your efforts aren’t yielding the results you want after a reasonable amount of time.
It’s important to remember that your marketing plan, goals, and objectives may need to be updated as your business grows and you get new information from your analytics.
Stand out on Twitter
Twitter is one of the most challenging platforms to stand out on because of its limited character count and short shelf life.
The following are a few suggestions on how to make your tweets more effective.
Symbols and emoticons
If you add symbols to your tweets, not only is it more fun, but your tweets will be shorter and easier to read. The Wall Street Journal uses Twitter symbols to add bar charts to its tweets.
Our guide will show you how to use more than 109,000 symbols available on Twitter.
Keep it short
Try to keep your tweets to 120-130 characters so that they will be more successful.
Add value with photos
According to Buffer’s research, tweets with photos get more clicks and shares than tweets without photos. This means that tweets that include images will be retweeted 150% more than tweets without images.
According to HubSpot research, photo posts bring in 55% more leads than other posts.
Stand out on Facebook
Since Facebook’s recent algorithm changes result in less exposure for brands, it is beneficial for us to find ways to make our posts more conspicuous. Here are some tactics to try.
Creative emoticons
I’m not saying they’re not professional, but they’re definitely more fun. Emoticons can spice up a status update.
Shorter is better
Here are some interesting facts about lengths of Facebook posts that BlitzLocal discovered after looking at close to 120 billion impressions. The researchers concluded:
“Longer posts tend to perform poorly. The ideal length for a post that will result in interaction is between 100 and 119 characters. Questions tend to increase interaction by 10 to 20 percent.
Pin posts
Putting important information or offers on pins can help ensure that people see them. A pinned post is a post that you manually select to stay at the top of your Timeline.
Highlight posts
A similar option is highlighting. A highlighted post expands across the page, taking up both columns. Draw attention to a horizontal photo on your page by highlighting it.
Edit headline and summary text
One of the great things about Facebook posts is that most of the fields are customizable. This flexibility allows you to highlight the most shareable elements of your content.
Size photos correctly
Images on Facebook will be automatically resized if they don’t meet the site’s specifications for size and aspect ratio. Therefore, it is very important to consider these factors when choosing photos to post.
Images must be 1.91 times wider than they are tall to be in the correct aspect ratio. This means the image will be the same size on both the desktop News Feed and on mobile.
The size of images shown in the News Feed have been increased, so it is important to maintain the correct aspect ratio to ensure the images look good no matter where the user sees them.
The recommended image sizes for Facebook’s desktop News Feed and mobile views have changed. The recommended size for thumbnail images on the Facebook News Feed is 400×209 pixels. Any images that are smaller than 154×154 or 90×90 pixels will be automatically be resize to those dimensions.
On mobile, Facebook’s recommended image size is 560×292. If an image is smaller than 100×100 pixels, it will be resized to that dimensions.
Stand out on Google+
Other social networks may not have the same features as Google+, which can help you to be unique. Here’s a guide to them.
Prioritize rich visuals
Google+ is a social network that is very visual.
This means that when you post an image on social media, you should make sure that it is high quality and not a thumbnail. This will make your post more engaging and interesting.
The network also takes some posts and gives them priority placement in a user’s feed, making them more visible than others.
How can you make that your post? A variety of factors, including those determined by Google, affect what becomes an enhanced post in a user’s stream, with the goal of surfacing content and people that the user is unlikely to want to miss.
You can improve your chances by taking and posting lots of high-resolution photos and videos.
Useful, eye-catching GIFs
Animated GIFs are eye-catching, and Google+ is one of the few social networks that allows them.
Google uses animated GIFs as tutorials when introducing new features and highlighting great ones, like this one from New York Fashion Week.
Slightly longer posts
There is research that shows that the average post on Google+ is 156 characters, or 2-3 sentences.
The philosophy of Google+ is to have discussions that are more in-depth and thought out. Google+ allows users to share up to 100,000 characters in a single post. This provides an opportunity to explain a concept in depth, share an interesting statistic, or otherwise capture the reader’s attention with valuable information.
Format for better readability
Google+ offers more formatting options than other social networks, including the ability to bold, italicize and strikethrough text. You can use these options to make your headlines more reader (and Google!) friendly.
Lower Thirds in Hangouts
Make sure you brand your Google+ Hangouts by using Lower Thirds. This text explains how to add your name and other identifying information to a Hangout so that others in the Hangout can see it.
Stand out on LinkedIn
You can post on LinkedIn from your personal page, or from a company page.
Post often
The first step is to make sure you are regularly sharing content on LinkedIn. Many people still see LinkedIn as a place to simply keep their professional resume updated, when in reality, sharing content regularly can have a big impact. People who share content on LinkedIn once a week are more likely to be contacted by a recruiter than those who don’t share.
Conclusion
If social media is used correctly, it can be a very powerful marketing tool for businesses. No one said this would be easy. You’ll need to do a lot of research, keep track of what you’re doing, make changes as needed, and come up with new ideas. It will demand time, effort, and above all persistence. But if you can learn to use it to your advantage, it will become an essential marketing tool for your business.
