SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

When it comes to deciding on the best social media platform for marketing, it is important to consider a number of factors first. 

Below are the first few questions you need to ask yourself…

Who are your target audience?

Firstly, you'll want to define your typical customer, try to be specific with your answers as it'll make your decision later on easier!

• Who is your typical customer?
• How old are they?
• Are they male or female?
• What are they interested in outside of your product and service?

What are your business goals?

Once you know your audience, you need to define goals for that audience.

As a business owner, your main goal will normally be to increase and drive sales, however, there are other creative goals for social media.

For example; a customer service page, recruiting employees, building relationships, tutorials and how-to videos, increasing organic brand awareness, offering free quotes, or using paid ads.

Where is your audience hanging out?

Your audience and goals are defined, it’s time to find the best platform for your business.

Which platform is your target audience spending most of their time on?

Which platform is suited to your goals?

E.g. Your goal is to increase your organic reach - stay clear of Facebook and head to Instagram or TikTok.

Your goal is to recruit more employees - head to LinkedIn and Facebook paid ads.

There is no reason why your business can’t post on every single social media platform, however in most cases it is not relevant to have an account on every platform.

There are strengths and weaknesses for each platform which have been outlined below:

Meta / Facebook:

Strengths: The most targeted form of advertising with 2.91 billion monthly active users.

Weaknesses: Very limited organic reach, and highly competitive. You've got to pay to play.

Instagram:

Strengths: There are lots of platform tools to use for your benefit; e.g. reels and stories.

Weaknesses: Instagram suffers from many technical drawbacks and its organic reach is declining. 

LinkedIn:

Strengths: Great opportunities for B2B professionals and building relationships.

Weaknesses: Potential spam and time-consuming to build a profile and see results.

TikTok:

Strengths: Organic reach is unlimited with over 1 billion monthly active users.

Weaknesses: Audience isn't suitable for all businesses and requires a lot of effort to see profile growth.

Pinterest:

Strengths: Incredible way to direct traffic to your website and boost the rankings of your website in search engines.

Weaknesses: Can be a time-consuming process and copyright infringement is high.

Based on all of the above pointers, you should now be able to identify which platforms are the most appropriate for your business in particular.

Anyone is qualified enough to create a post on a social media platform, however, this doesn’t always mean that the posts being created are going to be effective for marketing and for your business.

As marketing experts, we have outlined 8 of our best tips for creating optimised social media posts that are engaging and most likely to generate leads.

Our 8 Top Tips for posting on social media:

Engaging Headers

Start your post text with an engaging header, this is one of your only chances to get your audience to stop scrolling. Make your text easy to read and experiment with a tone of voice that suits your business.

Use Images 

Try to include a visual for every post; e.g. photos, videos, or GIFs. Ensure they are high-quality and are the right size for each platform.

Link Usage 

Be cautious about using too many links, as they can limit your organic reach.

Only use relevant links to your website when necessary. (Aim for 20% of posts with links).

Engage, Engage, Engage

Engage with your comments and direct messages. It is important that your audience feels heard, so always respond!

Brand Colours

Always stick with your brand colours when making any visuals, this allows your business to be consistent and your audience will get familiar with your content.

Clear CTA (Call To Action)

End your posts with a clear call to action which encourages the reader to the next step.

Do you want them to visit your website, send you an email or book a callback? 

MAKE IT CLEAR.

Relevant Hashtags

Keep your specific hashtags for your business and post topic. 3-5 relevant hashtags are more effective than 20 irrelevant hashtags, and only use trending hashtags that apply to YOU!

80/20 Rule

Use the 80/20 rule when creating your content. 20% sales and 80% value. 

Don't overload your audience with sale post after sale post, provide valuable content such as top tips, entertainment and faqs that they are more likely to engage with.

Give it a go implementing all of these 8 tips and see how well your social media post is received.

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how many times a week you should be posting on social media.

This can vary based on the industry your business operates in and the platform that you are posting on.

If you operate in a B2B capacity, you may not experience the great benefits of posting regularly on social media as this is not where your target market is looking for your services. 

However, if you are an attractive B2C business, regular posting on social media can be extremely beneficial and gain your business lots of brand awareness and potential new customers. 

If posting on social media is an effective strategy for your business, there are different ways of posting to have different levels of impact, we’ll outline these below. 

If your aim is to build brand awareness, social media content such as Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube shorts is extremely powerful and has the potential to get in front of thousands, even millions of people. 

If you’d rather focus on generating conversions, the best type of organic content to post is images & text to platform feeds e.g. Facebook, Instagram and X (Twitter). 

In some cases, you may want to prioritise building relationships with the customers and audience that already follow your social media accounts.

If this is the case, it is highly recommended that you consistently share stories on Instagram or Facebook as followers can engage with this content.

There is no reason not to post a variety of the above content each week to check all of these boxes reaching all different audiences. 

If you are at the very beginning stage of building up your social media platform, we would recommend posting once a day to build up some traction.

Once you have done this and are happy with the stage this is at, you can then reduce this number and base your content approach around quality and not quantity. 

Ultimately, the number of times you post on social media per week is based on your target demographic and the amount of quality content you are likely to obtain.

Subconsciously there is a set of do’s and don’ts for social media that can either make or break your social media marketing. 

To ensure your social media marketing attempts are effective, it is essential that you take onboard expert advice.

Below we’ve outlined just a small number of the do’s and don’ts of social media. 

What are the DO’S of social media marketing?

DO use a variety of post styles:

Using a variety of post styles such as feed posts, reels and stories will help your business to engage with followers and potential followers in different ways for different purposes.

DO create customer-focused content:

You should create content that is customer focused e.g. about a specific need or requirement.

Content that is too focused on your business’s background and uses the word ‘WE’ too often will not be attractive to a customer. 

DO proofread your posts:

Take the time to carefully proofread your social media posts to eliminate the awkward possibility of making any simple errors that could reflect badly on your business if your followers see them. 

DO join relevant trends: 

Keep an eye on the latest social media trends and if they can be applied to your business, don’t be afraid to use these in your marketing - after all they are the most popular posts (at the time).

What are the DON’TS of social media marketing?

DON’T post too much:

Posting too much content can have a negative impact on your followers as they may feel you are spamming their feed and may unfollow you meaning they’re not likely to ever use your business again. 

DON’T buy followers:

It can be very tempting to buy followers, however, this is not recommended as these followers will not have any direct interest in your business and are unlikely to engage with your posts. 

DON’T expect to go viral:

Just because you have posted content that you believe is exactly what your audience likes, it doesn't mean you will go viral with your content, going viral isn’t a regular occurrence.

Going viral is not a long-term solution to marketing, if you did go viral your followers may increase momentarily but it doesn’t mean these will stick and generate leads. 

DON’T overuse hashtags:

Don’t feel the need to overuse hashtags in your posts, especially in the middle of the post as this can be off-putting for your followers.

You only need to include a few good hashtags at the end of your post (on the relevant platforms only). 

Follow these do’s and don’t of social media marketing to generate far more effective social media posts that can generate more of an impact and engage your followers.