“Social media is here. It’s not going away; not a passing fad. Be where your customers are: in social media.”
- Lori Ruff, Founder, and Entrepreneur of Suite branding.
It’s quite common for companies of different sizes to use social media to gain a competitive edge over their peers. However, while both established and startup companies use the same platform, many of the smaller startups end-up becoming fish food for the bigger brands because of the sheer difference in their budget. Of course, this doesn’t always have to be the case. If your business is still in its infancy, yet you’re looking for ways to outperform established brands in your industry as far as how you market in social media platforms, then these tips are for you.
1. Use Facebook Power Editor’s WCA.
Are you using Facebook’s advanced tool for efficient ad management? Don’t forget to use its website custom audience (WCA) feature as well. WCA will give you access to warm traffic and allow you target people that have accessed your site through their news feed. It will help you determine which demographics are particularly interested in your products and services, making it extremely useful for finding potential leads.
If you still aren’t using Facebook’s Power Editor, this step-by-step guide should help you get started.
2. Create lists.
If you want to follow and interact with users who are relevant to your niche, don’t overlook the importance of creating lists. Twitter and Facebook allows you to create a list of people that you want to connect with. You can include the people whom you’ve already interacted with, as well as those whom you’re still hoping to connect with.
If you’re interested in sharing their content to your audience, subscribe to their feeds and check to see if they’re on other social media platforms. You can also bookmark their websites and visit them on a regular basis; keeping an eye out for content that you can share to your audience.
3. Network strategically on Linkedin.
Instead of blasting emails to all the people, you’re connected with, tailor your messages to fit the different groups and users that you’re hoping to network with. You can create a tagged list so you can easily make changes on your emails, and send relevant information at the most convenient time for all your contacts. Having lists of tagged groupings also lets you filter your connections by tags and send an email to up to 25 people all at once.
4. Use platform searches to discover content.
Make the most of Twitter and Facebook’s search features by using it to gather insight into what your audience is interested in. It’s also useful for finding out how tight the competition is on different social media platforms.
Facebook offers Graph Search, which allows you to refine the results of your searches to people, pages, places, groups, apps and events. Twitter also has the Advanced Search feature, which lets you search not just people and places, but also tweets that contain specific words. Features like these will help you learn more about your customer or clients so you can adjust your social media strategy to better suit their needs.
5. Add the reviews on your social media pages on your website.
When your visitors are on your website, why drive them away to your social media pages just so they can check on what people are saying about you? The fact is, the way people consume content on your website is very different from the way they’ll consume content on social media platforms.In most cases, your website is a place where they can focus on your company since you have full control on the kind of experience that you want to give them.
On the flip side of the coin, there’s a bigger chance of your visitors getting distracted, if they’re consuming content on your social media pages. That said, you’d be better of if you’ll add the reviews on your social media profiles, on your website. What GadgetSalvation.com did is a perfect example. You’ll notice in their “Reviews” page that they added their Facebook, Google +, and Trustpilot reviews. At this point, their visitors can easily go back to selling their gadgets, after having gone through the reviews.
6. Connect with your email subscribers
Ever since Gmail added the different tabs in their platform (Primary, Social, Promotional, etc...), the results of email marketing have gotten quite a hit; simply because a lot of the emails sent by marketers end up going to the “Promotional” tab, which a lot of the Gmail users ignore.
Fortunately, you can overcome this obstacle with the use of social media platforms. Instead of simply sending your list your usual email newsletters, you can also invite them to your social media pages. That way, the next time you send them updates, you can notify your connections not just through email, but also through your social media pages.
7. Make your posts more visual
“Tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets.”
- Bufferapp
Having seen the figures, you should already know by now how images/graphics can make or break your social media marketing campaigns. Posting photos on networks dedicated to image sharing and cross-posting them to Facebook and Twitter is a surefire way to make your brand more eye-catching. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Aside from publishing your content with regular photos/images, you can create original images and infographics that summarise your posts. There are free and easy-to-use online tools like Canva, PicMonkey, and Pictochart that you can use to create and edit compelling images that will make your posts more appealing.
8. Automate your Twitter account
You can save several minutes each week by automating some parts of your Twitter account. Tools like Buffer, SocialBro, and Twitterfeed will make it easier to share content and interact with people in your community. They will allow you to provide helpful and timely.