5 Winning Social Media Strategies

5 Tips for a Successful Social Media Campaign

One of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal, social media is essential to building your brand. Here are five strategies that will help you increase traffic, promote engagement and drive conversions.

1. Deliver actual content. Instead of shamelessly promoting your brand with every post, generate entertaining or informative content that appeals to your customers. This is a good way to ensure that your target audience will continue engaging on an ongoing basis. If you're having trouble determining what might appeal to your customers, consider using Facebook Audience Insights. Just type in the interests you are looking for and you will see other similar brands which are having success with specific types of content. Use this to inspire your topic lists, as you begin cultivating a more engaging social media presence.

2. Limit automation. There are a number of apps and programs that offer auto posting and direct messaging. While these might be invaluable for certain segments of your digital marketing campaign, they can actually hamper your social media presence. Because they cannot respond to questions and comments, auto-posting tools do not promote engagement. If you are a savvy marketer, you may be able to leverage automation to create a more productive profile. Just be sure to add enough personal touches to inspire conversation.

3. Build your relationships. If you really want to create brand loyalty, relationship marketing is the way to go. Social media platforms provide excellent opportunities for you to consistently engage with audiences; however, you must be willing to dedicate time and money. Forget instant results and focus on long-term brand building. Communicate with your audience as much as possible, and remember that other people are probably reading interactions between you and your followers.

4. Develop measurable objectives. To run an effective social media campaign, you need to understand your goal and know how to measure progress. For instance, if you are a B2B marketer trying to boost sales, you might decide you want to generate an extra 50 online leads every month. If, on the other hand, you are focused on brand awareness, you might want to boost the amount of times your brand is mentioned by 40 percent. Whatever the case, your goals needs to be specific and measurable, so you can determine what is working and what is not.

5. Study the competition. Since they are targeting the same customers, your competitors can become invaluable resources. Research each one to see how they are getting likes, mentions and comments. Are they using humor or contests? Is their content informative? Do they spend a lot of time replying to messages? Try to determine what your competitors are doing and see if you can adopt some of their thinking to enhance your unique plan.

The High Stakes

When businesses engage in poorly planned social media campaigns, they can waste considerable money and time. What's worse, sloppy or ill-conceived tactics can lead to PR nightmares that torpedo a company's reputation. In today's online environment, negative sentiment can spread like wildfire. With this in mind, it pays to carefully consider every aspect of your social media campaign to deliver consistent, engaging content that's always on point.

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