Today, saying that maximum people spend a major part of their days on social media would not be an exaggeration. Social media has become an extremely integral part of people’s lives and daily routines. Some of them are so addicted that the first thing they do after waking up is checking their social media feed. 

Highlighting the importance of social media in consumers’ lives, marketers and businesses flock to social platforms in the hope of connecting with their target customers. However, currently, there is a content overload on social media and the competition is pretty much on a rise each day. It can be challenging for you to stand out unless you have a clear social media marketing strategy. Staying updated on the latest social media trends can help fuel your strategy and make you stand out in the crowd.

Social media is a super vital tool for spreading brand awareness, engaging with existing customers, and creating brand loyalty. It’s especially beneficial for small business owners, thanks to its low cost and easy accessibility. We all know how to use social media. Some of us use it to connect with friends and family, others use it for marketing purposes. Regardless, it has emerged as a universal medium that both brands and consumers need.

Social media is a broad channel that goes beyond Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn is growing in popularity, as well as Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and others. How do we implement these channels into our social media marketing? 

So are you looking to ace the social media game? You’re at the right place my folks because in this blog you are going to be learning something worth investing in.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is the process of building awareness about you as an individual, the products you sell or stand by, or services through the various social media channels. The ultimate goal of any social media marketing campaign is to drive traffic to a website, increase the visibility of a product, gain more social media followers, or find more customers. The most popular social media networking channels today are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, and Linkedin.

But, Why is Social Media Marketing Important?

Social Media Marketing has been gaining huge popularity recently because:

It is one of the fastest ways to spread the word about a new product, service, or news item – A tweet can go rival in minutes and spread a message around the world faster than TV or other traditional media

It is a trend – practically millions of people around the world spend a good amount of their time on social media networks so if you need them you know where to find them.

It’s the new marketing – Back in the old days, marketers found out that many people spend time in their cars driving so they thought of the billboards on the roads. Today, people are spending time on social media so as a marketer you have to start thinking this way too.

It’s the new influencer – Recent studies show that social media is becoming a great sales channel and more and more companies are stating that they get customers from Facebook or Twitter.

Social Media Marketing Tips for Beginners

Have you ever thought about how you can take advantage of social media? How can beginners build a proper social media presence and make the most out of it?

Here are 10 quick tips for you to up your game!

1. Decide which social media platform(s) you want to create a presence on

2. Optimize and make the most out of your social media profiles

3. Connect your website or blogs with your social media pages

4. Add all the social media buttons on your website

5. Find, follow and connect with the influencers in your niche

6. Keep a balance between following and followers

7. Share interesting and niche-related content

8. Post often, but post relevant/relatable content

9. Don’t forget to follow back

10. Follow the rules and be patient

Decide Which Social Media Platform(s) You Want to Create a Presence On

As a beginner to social media, you have to choose one or two social media platforms and concentrate on those rather than trying to work on all platforms at the same time. This is a mistake that many beginners make and in the end, they quit without having any monetary benefits.

One of the many ways to find out which platform is best suited to your niche is to find the influencers and analyze where they are finding success. For example, find out the leaders in your niche and check out the number of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Pinterest followers, etc.

Optimize and Make the Most Out of Your Social Media Profiles

Once you decide which social media tools you will use (at least for the beginning), the next step is to optimize your profiles on those sites and make the most out of them. By optimizing your profiles you increase your chances of getting more followers along with more engagement and it is also a good way to boost your SEO efforts.

Some generalized rules that apply to all the various networking platforms are:

Use a real photo, showing your face – avoid using anything that is not real. Social media is about connecting people and if you want to have a trusted profile you need to get out of your cage and put your face on the web!

Write a good description about yourself or your company – What is your background or expertise? What are you proud of? Mention this is your profile.

Give an indication to users what type of info you will share – Although this is not necessary, I like to read in profiles what kind of info to expect from the particular person. For example in my Twitter profile, I wrote: “..tweeting SEO, social media, internet marketing tips and advice”.

Include a link to your website – On Facebook include a link in the ‘About section’, on Twitter and Pinterest in the ‘Web site Section’. In other words, do use your social media profiles for SEO purposes as well.

Connect Your Website or Blogs With Your Social Media Pages

After you have your social media profiles ready the next step is to connect your website with your social media pages. There is a set procedure to follow for each platform and you must do it correctly and in a defined manner.

A correct binding between the two means that search engines and social media websites know which website corresponds to which social media page

Add All the Social Media Buttons on Your Website

Besides connecting your website with the respective business pages on social media, you also need to add social media buttons on your website so that readers can easily share your content. As a general rule of thumb, keep the buttons above the fold to increase exposure and have in mind that larger buttons get more clicks than smaller buttons.

Find, Follow and Connect With the Influencers in Your Niche

So far we have selected the most appropriate social media tools for our niche, optimized our social media profiles, connected our website with the social media pages, and added the buttons on our pages for more interaction.

The next obvious step is to pretty much find people to follow but most importantly to gradually build our tribe of followers. Before getting into that, you should first find and follow the influencers in your niche.

It is almost certain that they will not follow you back because you have a new account with no followers but doing so is important for the following reasons:

Social media platforms will use this information to make suggestions on who to follow so following popular people in your niche is like telling them that you are also in that niche.

 When you follow popular people who are likely to get followed by others as well. A trick many people use is to follow the followers of a popular person because they know that some will follow them back as well.

They will most probably share important and useful information about the niche so you have a chance to learn something new and re-share that with your followers.

Keep the Perfect Balance Between Following and Followers

Once you start following people you should always have in mind that it’s better to keep a balance between the number of people you follow and the number of people they follow you back.

This is important especially on Twitter and Pinterest and the reasons are a lot:

Software applications are using this ratio (followers/following) to make suggestions on ‘who to follow so if you have a very high ratio you minimize your chances of getting new quality followers.

It is a matter of trust – Who do you think has a trusted profile: someone with 1000 followers but following 2500 or someone with 550 followers that follows 510?

A balanced profile is better for SEO – SEO’s have been talking the last couple of months about the importance of social media for SEO and how things are changing and although it is not yet confirmed, it is more likely that people with strong social media profiles are in a better position than those with weak profiles.

A strong profile, in this case, is someone that has more followers than following and someone that is followed by people who are considered influencers in the niche.

Share Interesting and Niche-Related Content 

This is the foundation for having a successful social media marketing campaign. When we talk about publishing content we always say that ‘content is the king’ and this is true in the case of social media as well.

If you share interesting and useful content you can get more re-shares, more visitors to your website, and under some conditions more customers as well.

Post Often, But Post Relevant/Relatable Content

A common question by people who are just beginning on social media is “how many times should I post per day?”

The answer depends on the network.

Many studies are analyzing the effect of posting frequency and some best practices are:

Facebook personal page – As many times as you want

Facebook business page – No more than 1-2 times per day and no more than 7 times per week.

Twitter – The more you tweet the more exposure you get.

Pinterest – a few times per day is enough

Don’t Forget to Follow Back

Most people concentrate on how to get new followers but they forget to follow back those who have already followed them.

Every day you should create the habit of viewing the people who are already following you and decide who to follow back.

If you don’t do this regularly then most likely some will unfollow you and this is why you may sometimes notice a decrease in the number of followers.

Follow The Rules and Be Patient

Social media networks have rules to keep spammers away. For example, there is a limit on Twitter on the number of people you can follow per day; Facebook has its own rules, etc.

This means that it may take some time to build thousands of followers so you need to be patient and not try to rush into results either by breaking the rules (your account will be suspended) or by spending your money on ‘buying followers or tweets’ or anything similar.

Try to spend your time creating a great social media profile that will stand over time and why not become one of the authoritative profiles in your niche.

Conclusion

When it comes to social media there are 2 important pillars.

The first one has to do with the setup of your social media profiles and the second one is about usage i.e. how you use your social media account.

For the first pillar, it is important to engage in the networks more suited to your niche and to have a proper connection between your social media pages and website.

For the second pillar, it is important to follow the right people, be followed by the right people, and share relevant and interesting content always by adhering to the rules of the different social media networks.

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