How to Take Your Social Media Strategy to The Next Level

Social media marketing has become one of the most congested marketing channels globally. Because it is free to sign up and advertising costs less, many businesses have flocked to this marketing channel, increasing its competitiveness.

Not all businesses make a success of their social media marketing, even with thousands of dollars invested. It is survival of the fittest, and to meaningfully boost online presence, you should develop an effective social media strategy.

What are some of the characteristics of a successful marketing strategy? Here is a step by step guide on how to take your social media strategy to the next level:

1. 1. Spice up the content you share

   The content you post on social media has the capacity to draw the target market near or repel them. Thus, it is important to pay special attention to the content you create and the way it is posted on social media channels.

   To spice up the content posted on the business' social media handles, you need to add as much visualization as possible. Social media users do not like reading bland long paragraphs, but rather, they want to see pictures, GIFs, animations, and videos.

   Do not deprive them of this type of content and ensure to increase the quality of any pictures or videos you post. Try by all means to avoid using stock images on the social media handles of the business.

   Custom writing experts from Academized suggest that stock images are very beautiful but they may not carry the message that your business, in particular, is professional. Stock images are easy to identify and your followers might think that you are a scam with no offices or real employees.

2. 2. Social media listening

   Some businesses do not see the broader scope of a social media marketing strategy and therefore limit their growth. Those businesses do not perceive social media as a tool to communicate with their customers.

   The word communicate does not refer to a one-sided conversation, rather each party gets to voice their opinion. That is how every business should view social media marketing as an opportunity to hear the opinions of their followers.

   In marketing, doing this is called social listening and it involves collecting all the comments and posts about the business. They can then easily engage with the followers that have posted by liking, responding, or reposting.

   It can be nearly impossible to get almost all the comments and posts without tools that can help. Tools such as Hootsuite, BuzzSumo, PromoRepublic and HubSpot can help you with this seemingly daunting task and make it easier.

   Social listening is one of the most efficient ways of connecting with customers, creating long-lasting loyalty relationship.

3. 3. Using TikTok for marketing purposes

   To reach Gen Z customers, you should try and communicate with them using an approach they prefer. TikTok has overtaken this generation and they enjoy the humor and visual content posted on this platform.

   

   At first, it might have seemed that TikTok is not suitable for marketing but there are certain brands that proved this wrong. Influencers have been growing steadily on this platform and there is plenty of them that are active on this social media channel.

   Brands have partnered with TikTok influencers and the products being marketed have been very much favorable. The products marketed using this channel are advertised with great humor and in a unique way.

   Subsequently, these products have become memorable in the minds of viewers and a lot of them have converted. You can also join TikTok yourself and share fun videos with your followers without involving influencers.

   That might substantially decrease the costs but you have to understand the basic principles of how TikTok operates.

4. 4. Consider using micro-influencers

   Across all social media platforms, there are influencers with large amounts of followers that have been leveraged for business purposes. As the following of a certain influencer increases, so does his costs of advertising a product or company.

   That poses a challenge to smaller companies because they might not have the financial resources needed to hire an influencer. To solve that problem, influencer marketing has been segregated into smaller pieces.

   There are mega, macro, and micro-influencers that you can choose from, depending on your budget. Mega influencers are the top celebrities with over 1 million followers macro-influencers have between 10,000 followers to 999,000.

   Micro-influencers have under 10,000 followers and usually charge under $500 dollars for a branded post, sometimes their price range drops to under $250. Micro-influencers have another benefit, which is that their audience is active and engaging with their content.

   Despite their lower following, micro-influencers are easy to reach, cost less and, have higher engagement than others.

5. 5. Instagram Stories and IGTV

   Instagram is full of generic content that is posted on the IG feed and quite frankly, marketing using that method is oversaturated. Customers are too used to seeing businesses post on their feed and they are now immune to that type of marketing tactic.

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   Instagram has given businesses an opportunity to improve by adding features such as Stories and IGTV. Businesses can use these features to the best of their advantage by posting stories regularly in an appealing way.

   For example, they can use stories to create beautiful visual video stories that improve the customer experience. Posting videos or pictures of challenges and contests run by the business on your Instagram story can yield higher engagement.

   Additionally, when the content is posted on the story, it remains at the top of the feed and doesn't get buried under other posts that were uploaded after it. You can also post a series of videos on the same day and time on IGTV to keep followers engaged and excited about the business.

6. 6. Carefully choose the platforms you will be active in

   There is a wide variety of different platforms that you can use for social media marketing. However, not all are necessary. Each business needs to determine the merits of each situation and decide on the social media channels they will use.

   

   Using all social media channels and posting on them consistently comes highly recommended. Although that is true, there may be social media channels unsuitable for some types of business.

   For example, B2B businesses are mostly suited by channels like LinkedIn and other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Using Pinterest and TikTok for this type of business may not be suitable. Thus the company may decide not to use these platforms.

The bottom line

Social media marketing is an important part of a digital outreach strategy and should be carefully planned. That includes planning and choosing which social media channels would be efficient for the business.

Sticking with the latest trends of social media marketing like using Instagram Stories and IGTV can help you grow the marketing strategy currently being implemented. You might also want to start using TikTok if that is appropriate for your business and will not damage the company's image and reputation.