9 Social Media Marketing Tips To Up Your Game

Chances are high that you already have some social media presence. But are you one of those brands that are active and have a thriving presence with high engagement rates? Or are you just kind of there…trying to make it work, but not really sure?

Honestly, you can’t expect much from your social media marketing if you post random content, comment here and there with an @ mention, and so forth.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy that’ll ensure you make it to the top, having a proper social media marketing plan in place helps.

Use these social media marketing tips to help you boost your performance and reap other benefits.

Here’s our list of the best social media marketing tips:

Use the Platform in a Unique Way

Social media campaigns that win are those that stand out. So, see how you can leverage your social media platforms in new and exciting ways.

To get your creative juices flowing, have a look at this campaign from EuroStar. The agency that created the campaign used Instagram’s horizontal profile gallery to launch the new fleet of trains. They created an illusion of a train journey with numerous animated videos and images.

The posts described destinations, hid a special offer, and revealed a benefit of the new fleet, ensuring their following explored the whole profile.

Engage Your Audience

One of the most valuable aspects of social media is being able to connect and engage with your followers.

There are various strategies to leverage this engagement:

Hold Q&A sessions on your platform of choice.
Conduct surveys and polls on your Stories.
Respond when a follower compliments you, gives you feedback, or comments on a post.
Share relatable and appropriate content and comments.
Create and join groups and forums to join conversations related to your industry.
Provide incentives such as competitions.
Offer rewards, like coupons or discounts, free shipping, or membership clubs to drive engagement.

Use Live Videos

Livestream found that 80% to 82% of audiences prefer to watch a live video than to read a blog or a social post, respectively. So yes, video is the way to go.

You could live stream behind-the-scenes content from your company, interviews with influencers, brand events, or product reveals. Video definitely boosts your audience engagement.

Leverage User-Generated Content

User-generated content is content created by your followers that you share on your social media platforms. The value of user-generated content is that you get your audience to engage with your brand on your channels.

You can even encourage your followers to create user-generated content. Ask them to post photos of them using your products or services or the results thereof. Create a hashtag to help you find this content on your social platforms.

If you want to share their content, remember to ask for permission first.

Moreover, sharing this kind of content leads to word-of-mouth recommendations because it provides an authentic experience of your brand. This, in turn, motivates people to engage more.

Use Visuals

High-quality visuals have the power to attract attention, which helps you with your social media marketing. The types of visuals you can use include images, photos, GIFs, and infographics.

Create interesting visual content your followers will want to share on their feeds.

Be sure that your visuals match your brand identity. The more your audience sees your brand and your visual content, the more brand recognition is built.

Create a Content Calendar and Schedule Your Content

Creating an editorial or content calendar helps you plan your social media marketing ideas and strategy. With a calendar, you can see when you want to post what. This also helps ensure you have the content ready before it will be posted.

You can also then identify themes and post accordingly.

Next, scheduling your content ensures it gets posted without a hitch. No more “I forget because I got busy” or “I was on vacation and didn’t have Wi-Fi.” A platform like Preppr can help you schedule your Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook posts.

Post Frequently

Posting now and again is not going to help you with your social media marketing or online presence. On the other hand, you also don’t want to spam your followers.

While we can recommend that you should post one to three times a week, you need to experiment and find what posting frequency works best for you and for the social media channel you are on.

It isn’t ideal to try out every single new platform at the expense of making the most on the ones you’re on. However, you should be aware of new social platforms and investigate if your target audience hangs out there.

If that’s the case, then see how you can use the new platform to gain more traction and increase your following base.

For example, Coca-Cola had great success in China with its “Share a Coke and a Song” campaign. In the U.S., Coca-Cola and its marketing agency turned to Musical.ly, a social platform used mostly by teenagers to create and share music videos.

Instead of putting names on the can or bottle, lyrics of famous songs that align with the brand’s values were featured. With the campaign and partner Jason Derulo, the company held a contest for followers to create and share music videos featuring the lyrics on the bottles on Musical.ly.

So if you do your research and see your target audience using a new social media platform, see how you can integrate this in your social media marketing campaigns.

Track Your Performance

The last social media marketing tip is to track your performance. It is only when you know what is working and what isn’t that you can pave the road to success. Tracking provides you with information you can use to improve your strategy.