Hey, Marketer!

Well, are you a marketer or a small business owner hidden under the hat of marketer?

If you are the latter one, then this article is for you.

It explores different facets of social media strategy and management as we know, the power of social media cannot be downplayed.

Instead, it can be leveraged for businesses of any size or industry, to find customers and, to level up the sale game.

Recent studies from GlobalWebIndex and Facebook have found that over a quarter of global users in the age group of 16-64 use social networks to conduct an online product research.

Around 81 percent of respondents specified that Instagram is their go to search option, which is a healthy indication of social media management being every business’s need.

Imagine yourself in place of a buyer, if you are not able to find their digital presence, would you really buy from them?

Not having a social media presence is a missed opportunity or an incomplete customer experience and should be a part of the marketing strategy

Here’s a list of tactics by Sprout social, prompting consumers to make a purchase

Merely posting about your services or products is not going to get you anywhere, setting SMART goals will help you assess if you’re on the right track

Your goals can be brand awareness, conversion, engagement, education, etc. It’s a good practice to segregate these goals through a funnel perspective.

An understanding of customer journey is needed to chalk out the funnel and, to know if the content being created is relevant for the target market


A typical social media marketing funnel has the following elements;

Incorporating goals becomes easier into each stage of funnel, depending on your customer journey you can guide the audience organically.

For more information on building funnel, read this article on building social media marketing funnel that converts.

Once you’ve set the goals, you need to evaluate your progress frequently to know if your content, tactics are working or not and if they are working, then which ones are the best.

That’s why you need to use social media analytics

Some of the key metrics are the following

Impressions

It’s the number of times an individual saw your message.

Engagements

It’s the number of times an individual interacted with your message in the form of likes, shares, clicks, replies and follows.

Engagement rates

The number of engagements divided by the number of impressions.

Visits

The number of times someone visited your profile page.

Mentions

The number of times your social media handle or brand was mentioned on social.

Followers

The number of individuals who follow you on social networks

Here’s a list of 10 best social media analytics tools;

  1. Sprout Social
  2. HubSpot
  3. TapInfluence
  4. BuzzSumo
  5. Snaplytics
  6. Curalate
  7. Keyhole
  8. Google Analytics
  9. ShortStack
  10. SHIELDApp


Here are some tactics to ramp up your social media marketing

1. Study Your Competition

If your service or product is niche, then you need to perform a target analysis but if you have competitors with similar target market, it’s a great way to start.

You can watch the kind of content they post and, if it is actually liked by the targeted users and, you can use it to tweak your strategy.

For this comparison, you can use Facebook Pages to identify your best performing competitors and, compare their activity with your own.

You can look at the competitor’s follower count, engagement and audience growth.

Remember that you’re one step ahead of the competitors when you sit and, observe your competitors tried and tested tactics and then move ahead.

2. Pick the right channel to reach your target market

Every channel has a different purpose, once you have studied your target market, it will be easier to choose a channel.

If you are a start-up, then it is recommended to conduct a survey and ask your customers, which channel they prefer the most.

If you have an active presence on social media, then use social media analytics tools to understand which channels you should use.

You can also cross-check your choice by analysing competitor’s usage of channels.

3. Use the right tools for Content Creation & management

Content creation is time consuming, especially when you don’t have the right personnel to do it and you are the only person doing it.

There are certain tools which can help you curate content quickly.

If you need to collect relevant content from different information sources, then you can use Inoreader to find and manage this content.

You can use Canva & VSCo to edit and process photos & videos. Also, this content can be managed and automated with the marketing tools list given above.

Use RiteTag to find the correct hashtag for the images and text, you choose to post

4. Use a combination of organic & paid

Your content could be compelling but what if it isn’t getting the right number of impressions?

In that case, you can boost your post by paying a few dollars.

You can make new ads or you can use one of your most engaging post as an ad to increase brand awareness.

5. Engage with your customers on Social

You can use a social media listening tool to find conversations happening around your brand by using a brand keyword on tools like Sprout Social, mention.com, SEMrush Brand Monitoring to engage in conversations with the users.

Remember, your customers may reach out directly or they may leave a comment /review on your page. Either way, they want and need to be heard.