5 Tips for Making Social Media Marketing Work

For businesses today, it’s not uncommon to have multiple social media accounts, across various platforms. For any business wanting to be at the top of their game, it’s a must. Unfortunately, many businesses are lacking the ability to utilize their accounts to their full potential.

Business that are not online-based can find social media marketing especially difficult to navigate. Traditionally, marketing has been all about pushing products and the newest thing. In today’s increasingly social environment, this simply doesn’t work anymore.

If you want to get past those product-centric tweets and self-advertising status updates, try these five ways of making your social media marketing more successful.

1. Link your accounts and promote.

Social media accounts can all be linked together, so if you’re posting on one account, you can easily post across all your other ones. Social media platforms like Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow an easy, one button sharing system so you can make sure all your accounts are being utilized with every post. It may seem funny to tweet to your Facebook account, but everything is interconnected now and people will be able to see where else they can follow you. Adding your online social media information to your printed or digital correspondence, including business cards, will also expand your reach.

2. Don’t turn yourself into a spammer.

It’s good to post on a steady and regular basis, but don’t overdo it. Posting constantly will make your newsfeed look more like spam and followers may end up deserting you. Anything over three or four posts a day is bordering on over posting, and you need to make sure that all your posts have something useful in them for the followers, not just a product advertisement.

3. Inform and provide value.

Instead of trying to get followers to buy something, show them why they should. Rather than selling to them in every post, give them some content with value in it, and explain to them what your product can do to help them or how it can make their lives easier. Showing them is better than telling them, and informing them is a step in the right direction. They will start to believe that you care about them, rather than just their spending dollars.

4. Interact with your clients & potential clients.

Successful social media means actually being social with your followers and customers. Answer questions in a timely manner, and with more than just a one-word response. Be polite and helpful, and don’t forget that even comments can be responded to. Never before have businesses had the ability to have such an open line of communication with their customers, and the customer is the one checking in. Being able to give your customers personal attention and high quality responses is an amazing opportunity that’s not to be wasted.

5. Stick around and be consistent.

Your competitors aren’t going anywhere, so if you take time off, they will get ahead of the game. Effective social media marketing is consistent. If you go away and come back a month later, your followers may have left you to follow more active businesses.

Keeping your followers engaged and your social media accounts active can be time consuming but it’s an integral part of social media marketing. If you are struggling with it, don’t give up and let your accounts dry up — consider hiring a social media marketing freelancer until you can pick things up again.

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