The marketing world is dynamic and ever-changing. Social media trends, technology, and tactics are never stagnant. That's why it is critical that your business stays up to date with the latest developments in the industry. After all, the last thing you want is for your business to fall behind while your competitors stay ahead of the curve.
Between 2020 and 2021, there was a 14% growth rate in digital marketing budget spending across businesses. This has stiffened the competition in the social media market, pushing businesses to optimise their digital presence.
Before we move on to the various ways to optimise your special media presence, let’s understand what optimisation means. It refers to garnering optimum results out of a marketing effort. So how is optimising your social media going to help you, you wonder? It helps you to-
show up on platform search results,
rank higher in your followers’ feeds,
get quality engagement on your posts,
send traffic to your website,
maintain brand consistency, and
publish content your followers want to see
which will result in more clicks or conversions, and ultimately more sales.
We have broken down five key ways to enhance your social media presence:
Set S.M.A.R.T. goals:
Your social media strategy should consist of specific goals that are measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. Every social media strategy needs an established set of clear, quantifiable objectives. Without them, there is no way to define your goals or measure your success. Setting specific goals that align with your overall marketing strategy not only holds you accountable but also guides your marketing budget and ensures all efforts work toward the bigger picture.
Choose appropriate Social Media channels:
From the earliest stage of your social media marketing, you need to ask yourself who it is that you’re trying to reach. Who are your competitors? What are your goals? You must conduct research on the different types of social networks and align the answers to the aforementioned questions, and find the right channels that will help you grow.
Develop a distinct brand voice and tone:
Your brand voice defines your brand's identity and personality. The tone you choose adds to the character and may vary based on your target audience and platform. While developing your brand’s voice and tone, think about how you want the brand to be perceived by your existing and potential customers. Once you have developed your brand voice and tone, it’s important to maintain it throughout your content. This also includes finding that sweet spot between being conversational and promotional based on the kind of communication needed for the situation.
Create engaging content:
It is important for every brand to treat customers like human beings and not merely an instrument to improve their statistics. Customers stay loyal to brands due to, and for, the experience. Thus, it is important to make them feel valued and important. By having interactive polls, tweets, sharing your experience surveys and other snippets, you can improve customer engagement. This also helps in building trust among your customers.
You can create a mix of content depending on what your customers are looking for. For instance, Are your customers looking for solutions? Try how-tos and hacks to help them. Are your customers looking for information? Then share the best bits in consumable quantities, leaving them wanting more.
Keep a close eye on your insights:
Once you have established your goals, platforms, schedule, and begun posting, you must keep a track of your progress. You must check the reach, impressions and engagement of your posts and accordingly determine what works best for you. In this case, here are some questions you must ask before taking a step:
Are you achieving your goals and objectives?
Are you posting the right types of content? For example, images, videos, text-only, or a mixture of all three?
Are your posts resonating with your audience?
It is possible that you may find out that your brand is doing well on one social platform while not performing well on another. In such a situation, you may want to focus more on the platform that’s not doing so well, in order to figure out what’s lacking and how to improve the same.
Social media optimization is useful to both users as well as businesses. It helps you stay on top of your game by garnering more attention and creating an impact on your audience, while simultaneously helping your audiences wade through their problems.