Although social media marketing has changed significantly over the past couple of years, using platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to promote your brand is still an effective technique. But while you may think that social media is simple, it’s easy to get caught up and make silly mistakes that can damage your brand. Below, we’ve rounded five things you need to do if you want to win at social media.
Automate less
The internet is awash with social media automation tools, and while they can be incredibly useful when used effectively, they take away the human touch from your brand accounts. By all means, rely on scheduling tools like Buffer and Hootsuite to keep your account topped up when you’re too busy to update them yourself, but take the time to respond to customers, post pictures from your office or store and celebrate events like Halloween and Christmas.
Stop selling
Users won’t want to follow your account if you only want to sell to them, so get out of the mindset that social media is a straight promotional technique. If you really want to capture your audience’s attention, you’ll need to create original, engaging content and link it back to your brand. Run an ice cream shop? Post attractive photographs of your latest concoctions on Instagram and Facebook and start discussions by asking what people’s favourite flavours are. The more human you can make your marketing; the less likely people are to switch off.
Don’t ignore people
Social media is about much more than giving people a window into your company – it’s about providing a service to your customers and prospective patrons. Customer service interactions on Twitter have increased 250% in the last two years, so follow the crowd and respond to your customers when they reach out for help. Oh, and because you’re doing so on a public forum, delivering customer service on social media can actually help to improve brand awareness and image without you having to do any extra work. Two birds, one stone.
Don’t send auto-DMs
We’ve already covered automation in the first point of this article, but automatic direct messages are so annoying, so impersonal, so irritating, that they deserve their own point on this list. Setting up automatic direct messages to new followers on Twitter makes you appear as though you are a robot, and they usually state the obvious, too. What’s more, they’re boring, they don’t provide your users with any benefit, they waste everyone’s time and they can result in genuine direct messages getting lost in the slough of automation.
Get visual
Social networks were designed to be visual – and while Instagram and Snapchat force you to take pictures and videos, many digital marketers treat Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as an entirely different beast. That’s one of the biggest mistakes in marketing, though – images, videos, GIFs, emoji and other visual content can all be used to increase engagement levels and help you get more out of your social media marketing. Social posts that include images generate 650 percent more engagement than text-only posts, and posts that include videos generate three times as many link clicks than text-only posts. Visual content makes sense.
Wrapping up
When used correctly, social media can be one of the most powerful lead and traffic generation techniques in digital marketing. Experiment with the five points that we have raised in this article, and you’ll increase the effectiveness of your social marketing, and don’t forget to get in touch with Webahead today.
