How To Improve Your Social Media Marketing Efficiency
Here’s how to improve your social media marketing efficiency, and why today’s leading platforms will remain important for advertising purposes for years to come.
Social media platforms offer an effective method of advertising which virtually anyone can take advantage of, yet many small businesses hesitate to embrace the power of Facebook and Twitter because they’re uncertain of how to properly leverage them as resources.
It would be nice to bury one’s head in the sand forever, but the reality of the modern marketplace demands that businesses either embrace social media marketing or slowly but surely fade into irrelevance.
Focus on your failures
The first step to take when harnessing the power of social media platforms for marketing purposes is to analyze your past failures; where did you go wrong, what caused the underlying issue, and how can you go about doing better in the future? Unless you’re prepared to answer these questions, your company will never successfully tap into the power of modern social media platforms. One common mistake that far too many small businesses make is consolidating their efforts on a single platform. Rather than focusing solely on Facebook or just on Twitter, you need to have a comprehensive strategy that encompasses many different platforms at once.
Social media statistics remind us that about 73 percent of all small businesses are involved on social media platforms, yet most of these companies focus solely on Facebook and Twitter because they’re the hard-hitters in the Western marketplace. There are many social media opportunities that you can take advantage of outside of these two platforms, however, and certain businesses can benefit tremendously by focusing on niche platforms that have fewer overall users but more potential targets for their unique messaging.
If you’re a small business with a focus on specialty products, handmade artisanal works, or other picturesque oddities, consider investing plenty of resources into Instagram, a platform which is focused on visuals and photos. Companies that are solely interested in targeting successful professionals with their marketing efforts should pay particular attention to LinkedIn. When you understand that these platforms aren’t all the same, and that each offers a unique opportunity that takes a certain approach to exploit, you’ll make far fewer mistakes and enjoy much greater success than before.
You should also take some time to read up on common everyday mistakes that businesses make on social media messaging campaigns. Small mistakes like spelling errors or awkward visuals can quickly go viral, diminishing your brand while embarrassing and endangering whomever was responsible for the gaffe in the first place.
Focus on content
Now that you know what to avoid, it’s important to stress that a focus on excellent content is the only way you can bolster the actual efficiency of your marketing campaign. You can use social media tools to achieve this, but the point it, is because users respond to excellent content more readily than anything else; most people understand when they’re being advertised to, but they’re willing to let it slide if they’re actually interested in what’s being presented ot them. Focusing on creating content that’s incredibly shareable will pay off, as harnessing the network of your target audience is a clever way to maximize the amount of people who are ultimately exposed to your messaging.
Creating compelling social media content entails investing in what you’re doing; while social media marketing can help you cut overall costs, don’t make the foolish mistake of thinking that you don’t have to spend anything at all. Churning out shoddy, lackluster content and using it to flood the feeds of your target audience won’t produce desirable results but will instead anger and alienate those consumers you’re trying to win over the most. It’s also imperative to understand the important of data when it comes to targeting users, as only by mining data effectively will you know where to consolidate your efforts and focus the bulk of your spending and energy.
The ins and outs of social media data may seem simple to master, but you need to be particularly cautious when collecting data from the internet. This is for two reasons; first, you need to ensure that the data you’re collecting is of sufficient quality to be put to work. Second, you need to ensure you don’t cross ethical boundaries, inadvertently surveil your target audience, and ignite a social media outrage bubble which could seriously hurt your brand’s image.
Finally, don’t be afraid to have a specific employee focusing on social media messaging, as trying to do social media marketing via committee will doubtlessly reduce your efficiency. A dedicated expert will learn the tools of the trade more quickly than a group of amateurs and will almost always produce results good enough to justify the additional expenses needed to keep them around. Before long, you’ll find that improving your social media marketing begins and ends with talented employees churning out excellent content that’s tailor-made for your target audience.