We bet that you are spending a lot of your time creating amazing content. This involves some hard work, a lot of research and then writing in a way that will engage your target audience. Sometimes even the best content goes unread because no one has found it, and if no one has found it, no one will share it, so all the time you have put into creating that content will be wasted.
The solution here is to promote your content, and this is how your brand will be discovered. The best way to that is using social media, because this is the place where your target audience spends a lot of their time when they are online. This does not mean that you can forget other online marketing strategies, especially SEO, because you need to be front and center when it comes to organic traffic.
But if you want to reach a wider audience, then social media is the place to go to. We have prepared several tips that will maximize your social media efforts and provide you with great results when it comes to promoting your brand.
Opt For Social Media Platforms That Will Reach Your Target Audience
Spreading on many social media networks is a mistake that too many content marketers have made. Trying to maintain presence on too many social media platforms requires some heavy lifting and unless you have a large staff to back it up, it cannot be done well. If you want to target senior audience, than you should avoid Snapchat, and if you want to target millennial males, Pinterest should be pretty low on your list.
This is why you need to do the research when you are picking your social media platforms and choose only the ones that are on the top of your list and the amount that will be reasonable for you to handle. Facebook is the one that is mandatory, and the others depend on you where your research will lead you.
Focus On the Visual Experience
Everything you post on social media needs to have a visual component, and some of the social media platforms are focused only on visuals like Instagram, Periscope, Pinterest and Snapchat. Studies have shown that engagement on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook is greater when there are more images and less text. Implement visuals as a part of your blog posts as well, and also “tease” your readers to read your blog posts by posting compelling visuals on social media networks.
Use different visuals on different platforms and plan how often you will post the teasers for your audience. For instance, you should post a promotion on Twitter a couple of times the first day, few times the second and so on. Make sure to change the images to attract different sub-groups of your audience and when they get to your website, offer them a different visual to boost both your content and engagement.
Headlines Are Important
Believe it, you will never regret the amount of time you will spend coming up with a really irresistible headline. Your content needs to have great headlines, but social media posts where you will be promoting that content needs to have titles that are unique. Coming up with several different titles for one piece of content will enable you to post something new several times a day. If you find this too challenging, you can always rely on headline generator tools for help.
Choose the Right Time to Share Your Social Media Posts
This is something that goes without saying. There are numerous studies online that show when audiences are online on specific social media platforms, so you should set up a calendar for your social media posting that will maximize your potential for being seen. So, the research suggests that the engagement on Twitter goes up by 30 percent on the weekends, because people spend more time in front of their computers, tablets and smartphones.
During the week, the engagement on Twitter is at peak between 1 and 3pm, because at that time people are on their lunch breaks. The biggest mistake content marketers make is not setting up a calendar, because consistency is something that is critical here.
Tweak Promotional Messages Based On the Platform You Are Using
If you want to promote on Facebook, you are going to need an amazing headline, an image or another engaging visual, perhaps a freebie or discount, and a link that will lead back to your website or blog post. When you are posting content on your Facebook page, you need to make sure that it will be truly compelling.
If you want to promote on Twitter, you need to get clever with hashtags, and if you want to promote on Instagram, you can use their new carousel feature to tell you followers a story through images. Remember, the rules of engagement are different with each and every platform.
Engage Your Followers by Starting Conversations and Asking Questions
Social media posts are what the name implies, social. So, your posts need to ask questions that the audience would want to answer, in some cases through polls and surveys. When you get their responses and engage a conversation, you need to be there to participate. You should set up alerts so that you are always notified when someone leaves a comment, tags your brand or mentions it. Perhaps this is one of the main reasons why you cannot simply be everywhere.
As you engage your audience, you can point them to your blog posts that provide answers to their questions in detail or simply provide more information. Everyone out there is looking for information, and if you are not sure how to properly respond to your readers, you can check Facebook pages of some business who are in the same niche to get an idea of company participation in conversation threads.
Use the Power of Sponsored Ads
This has already happened to you, for instance, if you have done a little bit of window shopping online. You log into your account and suddenly there on your News Feed there are advertisements and posts from websites you have visited or from others that are offering services or products you have previously viewed. Why wouldn’t you do the same thing? You can micro-target audiences on your social media by using paid social to make sure that your content will reach the ones that are most likely to respond.
Use Social Communities to Promote Your Brand
LinkedIn is a social network that has over two million communities and groups, so make sure to join the ones that are related to your niche and participate. You need to make sure that you have a good looking profile, that you contribute often, and that you are providing value to other members. That way they are more likely to link your content, especially if they see if you are an expert.
Get People to Share Your Posts
Everyone who is on your team should be sharing your posts to their friends, followers and communities. Relatives and friends should also be sharing your posts. Since you will be joining communities and groups related to your niche, your team and friends should do the same and share each other’s content. The more shares, the more communities will be reached, it is as simple as that, and by reaching out to more communities you will improve your chances of increasing your traffic.
Make Things Easier By Automating Your Posts
Instead of setting a schedule or an elaborate calendar or reminder to log into your accounts and post your promotions, you can use one of the many social media management tools to automate those postings. So, pick a good one that will serve you well, the one where you can modify the schedule and the platforms every time you are ready to publish your updates.
Chances are that you are already using some of the social media marketing strategies we have given you above. Some of these strategies can be implemented right now, and others you can add later, when you have time. All of them are easy and can really boost your online presence and promote your brand more effectively. Even though content promotion is something that will always be the best strategy, social media is one of the most powerful places to get both your content and brand promoted.