Social media is a big part of business marketing – like it or not.
Using social media to drive traffic to your website or a brick and mortar shop to create sales should be one of the main goals of your social media marketing strategy.
Embracing the following 6 simple guides will ensure you can follow your social media strategy with ease. Graphic below illustrates how socialites connect.
1. Time of day
Think about when your consumers are most likely to access your posts. Think about your customer – if they are stay at home mums with school aged children then a good time is probably 2.30pm just before the school pick up – whilst waiting in the car they are a captive audience. In general 45% of social media users in Australia access their updates first thing in the morning so you might want to schedule a post to capture the ‘general’ user. Consider when your core consumer has the TIME to absorb and share – hopefully!
2. Engage with ease
Use a website like Hootsuite, Sprout Social or Buffer to help you distribute your content to multiple platforms at once. Not only do these sites consolidate all your social media outgoing messaging but they also show all your incoming info too – it’s called a social media dashboard. It saves heaps of time and you can even use it as your social media planner.
3. Capture interest at a glance
Studies show that subject lines which are between 28 to 39 characters get the best results. Even when the content is the same, if the post is sent with a variety of subject lines you will get varying degrees of open rates. Use Google Analytics to assess your success rates and plan future campaigns with the results of your findings.
4. A responsive response
Did you know 70% of people accessing social media do it on their smartphone? Be sure you optimise and develop your content for mobile interfaces – this means when creating a website always choose a ‘responsive’ site. It will cost more but its worth it.
5. Define the goal of your posts
Beware of why your readers want to read your posts/tweets/blogs – is it to access offers and promotions, for a bit of fun, to research products they might buy or for a hit of knowledge? Avoid the heavy sell at all times. Instead use your wit and positive attitude to offer brand differentiation. Remember to share unique promotions that your readers won’t receive elsewhere.
6. A hacks trick for increasing followers
Do you have friends or collegues who you can create a partnership with? This is called S4S (also known as Share for Share or Shoutout for Shoutout) Basically you post each other’s content with a reference or tag to each person on an agreed-upon social media platform – easy peasy. Plus it works on any social media platform!
You may also be interested in 5 ways to increase sales for a retail brand.
