Nowadays, the first thing most people do when they get up in the morning is to make themselves a cup of coffee or tea and check their social media feed. Only then they`ll, maybe, go through newspapers, most likely online. That means that you and your business should be available online. To beat your competition in the sea of online companies, it takes a lot of planning, work, and effort.
The first essential thing you need is a good website. Just after that, it`s imperative to be active online and establish good social media marketing. It`s good practice to pick right platforms, ones that are suitable for your work and, of course, most popular ones.
Facebook How To
Facebook is suitable for almost every business, it`s flexible and offers a lot of possibilities and options for adjustment. It`s essential tool for your brand's promotion so use it smartly. Basic rules we should follow are:
1. Your business profile has to have a cover picture (or a video) which is intriguing with the size of 851x315 pixels with a call for action or/and contact information.
2. Your recognizable logo should be in the profile picture (the same applies to other platforms, website, etc.).
3. Link all other social media accounts with Facebook along with a site.
4. Carefully create content which will be published and posted at least once a day to increase post visibility. Posts don`t have to be exclusively related to your business or brand, they can also have fun or educational character but still associated with the subject that`s important to you.
5. Also, there is a possibility of sponsoring Facebook page which will significantly increase your page visibility and post reach; therefore, it will be shown to a more significant number of people which can, subsequently, get you more followers.
Since the moment the Facebook page is created every day posting has to be a routine. That way you are making page attractive to people who just recently started following your page or liked it as well to your page`s old followers. Otherwise, it can look unprofessional and irresponsible. Like most things on the web, Facebook also is subject to constant change. Business policy, visibility, rules of marketing on Facebook undergoing a regular makeover, so it`s important to keep track of those changes and successfully adjust to new trends.
Twitter How To
It is in the second place, after Facebook, in popularity. In a very short period, it gained huge acclaim for its simplicity and portability. Twitter was designed as a microblog where we can share stories up to 140 characters. Twitter recently doubled the number of characters you can use in the posts as a test feature, but it didn’t reach a full acceptance so far. It means that we have to be eloquent and witty if we want to get desired effects.
Besides, we can share videos, such as from our website, pictures or links. It is possible to connect it to Facebook page, website or foursquare and share content directly. Twitter was the first social media platform that introduced hashtags to the world, and it gained tremendous acceptance. Not long after, other platforms followed. By using specific hashtags (it`s recommended not to use more than three) we can guide people right towards our tweet.
It`s recommended to tweet several times a day and make sure to note down when your followers are most active. Make sure to sign up for Twitter directories. There you can find interesting people and businesses. The 80/20 rule applies to Twitter as well as to the rest of social media platforms. It specifies that 80% of our published content shouldn`t be promotional but offering free value to the users in the form of useful tips, inspirational quotes, etc. The rest of our posts, 20%, will be directly related to our brand or business. If you don’t commit to every day tweeting with meaningful and well-prepared content - don`t start at all. For successful marketing, Twitter, like the rest of the social media, requires persistence, patience, and creativity.
Instagram How To
It is application intended exclusively for users of smartphones and tablets. It can be accessed from computer although its not possible to post from it. On Instagram, there is a possibility of publishing a so-called story, which was introduced after the massive expansion of Snapchat. The story is a video or a picture that has the lifespan of 24 hours and gained more significant popularity than Snapchat itself. Those features appeared recently also on Facebook. Instagram offers video with various options for altering and editing your footage such as the boomerang, slow motion, rewind, etc.
There is live video option, which is also very popular and it`s recommended to make longer ones so the followers can notice and start watching. Lastly, there are pictures, the most crucial medium of this platform, with the addition of various filters and editing tools that can work for you and help you create whatever content desired.
Hashtags, as on Twitter, are a fundamental feature. They are limited to 30 tags but its advised to be careful and not to overdo it and of course be witty and creative. Instagram offers a lot of possibilities for sound marketing because it`s specially built for smartphones, user-friendly and there is no need to be in front of a computer to use it.
Don`t post only exclusively business-related content, consider funny pictures, videos, play around with it.
Other Social Networks
YouTube - is Googles video sharing service. It`s great for musicians, people that are into animation and video making. There are a lot of YouTubers that got very famous by hosting their channels. Authors of successful videos with a lot of views become partners and have an opportunity to get a commission from advertisement revenue displayed on their videos.
Tumblr - is also popular social media platform, mainly used for fun but a good portion of it is socially and politically oriented. There are also tags and a possibility of sharing videos, GIFs, photographs and, of course, text similar to blogs. What differs Tumblr from other popular platforms is that it`s not censored.
Pinterest - is an excellent media network which enables users to collect all the things they like from the internet and place it in one spot, to pin it on, so-called, board.
We will just mention other also prevalent platforms such as Google+, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Flickr, Skype, My Space and hundreds of others.
Marketing Strategy
Things that will make your marketing efforts a lot easier are various tools which will help you save time and be more productive like tools for tracking your competition. With the help of analytics we can see in what time of the day our followers are most active, so we can schedule our posts to match that time.
Importance of hashtags shouldn't be neglected. Nowadays they are present in most of the social media networks. By using them, we can search the web for the tags we are interested in. That way we can find for us relevant people, posts, and pages. There are a couple of general rules we should follow considering them. One of them is to keep track of which hashtags are popular at the moment and marking the location with hashtags. Structure of hashtag doesn`t allow space between words and they have to be related to what we are posting about.
If we consistently keep posting interesting stuff on social media networks, there is a bigger chance of reaching a broader audience and attract them to follow our work. Social media users like to share interesting posts with their friends and followers, and in that way, we are increasing our number of followers. It is one of the most efficient and cheapest types of social media marketing techniques. These are so-called organic followers. There is also a possibility of buying likes and follows (inorganic followers) which can increase visibility but not productivity. Besides, Google robots will eventually penalize you for buying followers and ban your page. It is always good practice to choose slower but more efficient way of attracting followers with useful, relevant and engaging posts.
With good marketing on social media, we can accomplish a lot. Some of the advantages over other forms of marketing are:
- connecting business and client
- acquiring followers
- the increase in visibility
- direct communication with clients
- build up of loyalty
- the increase in sales
- keeping track of followers and adjusting marketing strategy to their needs
- research
- motivating old and gaining new followers
The most important thing is to be consistent, agile and persistent. Keeping track of all changes and new features, keeping a tab on your competition. If we allow ourselves to neglect marketing on social media, we are risking to become unprofessional and outdated. Even if you achieve some success on social media don`t stop there. Keep posting and be active. Constant creativity is in demand because the average user gets bored very quickly. That`s why most of the business owners decide to place their marketing campaigns into the hands of professionals to keep continuity, a flow of fresh ideas, well-designed marketing strategy, be in touch with your area of expertise. And by keep doing that for days, months, years, as long as there is demand for clients, there has to be an excellent social media marketing.