Social media is an extremely effective marketing tool when used correctly. Social media marketing can consume enormous amounts of time, however—time that you could devote elsewhere.
To use social media effectively it is important to select tactics that have a proven record of success. Otherwise, your investment of time and money might not show a good return.
6 Proven Social Media Marketing Tactics—Not Trends—That Work
The tactics listed below can help small and medium-sized businesses reach many of their social media goals. You can scale them to fit your situation and the amount of time you have.
When you are strapped for time or are just starting out, the following social media marketing (SMM) tactics work well:
- Develop an in-depth social media plan for each channel. Get specific. Which channels will you use? What is the audience, goal and level of involvement needed for each channel? It’s OK to start small and add channels later. However, making a detailed plan makes it more likely that you will follow through and achieve SMM success.
- Use a social media management tool. A social media management tool will allow you to batch your content contributions across social platforms and schedule them for release. This will improve your social media efficiency and effectiveness and allow you to do more.
- Use social media to drive traffic to your website and blog. Promote your new content! Whenever you write a new blog post or add a new page to your website, share a link with a short description on Facebook, Twitter or any other channel of your choice. This can significantly improve traffic to your website.
- Interact, don’t just repost. Comment, don’t just like, share or retweet. This strengthens your brand, highlights your expertise, and increases followers, friends and readers.
- Follow your competitors on social media and comment on their posts or tweets. If their audience is like yours, your comments, likes, retweets and shares will be noticed—as long as you are adding to the conversation, that is. Don’t troll and don’t outright sell—join in with value-added statements and watch your own traffic increase.
- Respond to online comments and reviews—even negative ones. Genuinely respond to every review and comment. For negative comments or complaints, say that you are working on the problem or offer a credit or refund. In the least, thank the commenter for taking the time to provide feedback.
- Use images on Twitter. This tactic has been shown to increase engagement significantly. There’s a lot of text on Twitter, so adding an image to your tweets can make them stand out.
You do need to understand one thing: These tactics require an ongoing commitment of time. You don’t need to spend a huge amount of time each week. Rather, you need to spend focused time on social media consistently, day after day and week after week, to get the results you want.
Feeling Overwhelmed? Social Media Is a Must—But You Don’t Have to Go It Alone
There are many ways to use social media as a marketing tool. In fact, there are so many that it could be tempting to hide your head in the sand and ignore the opportunities available to you.
If you find yourself overwhelmed by social media, reach out for help.
