21 Easy Methods To Kick Start Social Media Marketing
Starting is not an easy task.
But, there is another aspect too. That is, to get results, we have to start anyway.
The marketing world is not different from that. Whenever you start a project, it looks hard at the start.
But once you start working on it, it will look easy.
Some tasks have unique methods to perform. If you know these methods, the task becomes easier gives a better result.
Due to this reason, today, I am going to tell you everything about social media marketing. The best practices and methods that online marketers are using.
Remember, when you know the methods, the task becomes easy.
Social Media Marketing works in the same manner.
Everyone knows the power of social media and its benefits.
You can promote your products or services in any region and at any time. Businesses are using this power to influence their users to force them to buy their products.
Due to these reasons, the competition is at its peak. But, it is also adding quality to the life of users.
To stay visible in search engines, on social media and in the market, use the power of social media marketing.
To make your life easier, I have simplified each step for you. Use these practices to kick start your social media marketing in no time.
The experts use these practices to deliver better results.
Use these methods you will get the expected results.
Setting Up Goals
Setting up a goal is essential to measure the success rate in applying social media strategy.
Suppose, If you start investing in any business without setting any goal like what you want from them. It will not give results as per your need.
Then this whole process will be the waste of, time, money and market reputation.
That is why you should set some goals for social media marketing.
Take help of given parameters to find the best goals for you:
Specific
Your goal should be a specific one. Your goal may be to get more engagement or to get more clicks on the links.
Specific means more focused and to the point. If, you set your goal to get more engagement on social media. It will be easy to understand if you are getting results as per your need or not.
Measurable
Yes, every goal should be a measurable one. Social media platforms provide enough data to get measurable metrics for different tasks.
If you plan to get more like, it will be easier to compare how many likes you get in what period.
Attainable
Your goal should be on real-world expectations.
Never set goals that are hypothetical that you will get millions of likes in a day. That is possible only when you have millions of followers on your social media platforms.
If anyone has these big numbers, that will be hard work for years not days.
Relevant
Set your goals that are relevant to your business.
It plays a crucial role in achieving your goals with better results.
Time-bound
For every goal, choose the period, it helps you to measure the success rate.
If you have made a plan in a time-bound manner, it will push your team and give them a target for that period.
That is a part of every marketing strategy.
Time-bound projects give the motivation to finish the task as per the schedule.
Build A Social Media Marketing Team
A dedicated team is necessary for social media marketing. There are plenty of tasks to perform in social media marketing.
Make a plan, apply it, create high-quality content, publish and track it. If you have huge followers on social media, it becomes a time taking process.
But if you have a dedicated team to perform each task, it will be a better option to get better results.
Suppose, if you want to publish engaging content on social platforms. Then you have to use mix up of all types of content. Better content needs time.
Your team will get enough time to plan and apply the strategy and be more responsible for their results.
Know Your Audience
Research is an essential part of every marketing strategy.
When you plan a marketing strategy for your business, you research every aspect. Add one more task to that, to understand the interest of your audience.
What are the market trends, what type of content users are liking and sharing on the internet?
These simple steps will help you to give an overview of your audience. It helps to create content for the best result and fulfil the criteria for your business needs.
Knowing your audience is an ongoing process. When you start publishing content on social media, keep an eye on which type of content works better.
Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis gives an idea of real-world happening in your niche. It helps to make a unique marketing plan.
Competitors Analysis is not that we are going to market our products like them. But it gives you other ways to market products, to see the marketing gaps that are not covered by them.
It will help you to point out some common mistakes to reduce risk factors.
Competitor analysis also helps to maintain a quality standard while entering the market.
Establish Your Important Metrics
To analyze the competition and to know about your audience, establish the metrics.
Metrics are crucial to achieving your goal.
These metrics will help you to understand your results.
It will not be a difficult task for you. Think about your goal and to achieve that you can set metrics.
Suppose, if your goal is to increase followers on social media, engagement is the first metric. To get more like should be the second one and so on.
In the same manner, you can set metrics for each goal and remember these are significant.
Social Media Optimization (Audit)
It is a heavy word “Optimization”, but, in reality, it is the most Interesting part of SMM.
You are going to enjoy that part in many ways.
First, you will learn lots of new things, that will benefit you for the rest of your life. Second, apply them, you can improve your search engine visibility, with no effort.
To optimize social media profiles, you have to take care of the necessary things.
As a profile-cover picture, description, URL formatting, website linking and contact details.
SMO helps to prepare the social media profiles for search engine result pages(SERPs).
Setup Accounts
Setting up social media accounts for SMM is the need for focused work.
Create separate social media accounts for your business.
Add some team members to control and track social media accounts.
Try to use the same theme and description in all social media profiles. So that when users contact, they will feel unique about your brand.
My advice will be to pick up a colour from your website and use it as a theme colour for your social media accounts.
See, how I have picked up theme colour for social profiles?
Come Up With A Memorable Handle
People always pick up a unique name for their business for many reasons. To look different, accessible and to build a brand.
In a competitive environment, it becomes essential to have a memorable name.
Users have tons of information to access on the internet. If, somehow you get attention, then make it easier for them to remember you.
In online marketing, this will also help you to get more attention from the public.
Try to keep the same name in all your social media profiles.
By doing this, you will help users to find you on any platform they are using.
Start Small
Each process starts with small steps, that is the secret to achieving big goals by taking small steps.
By doing this, you will reduce the extra burden on your life.
At the start, never plan for big goals. I am not saying that it is wrong to think big.
To achieve big goals, take simple, small steps that give you better results.
This little success will boost your confidence then you can change your plan as per your need.
Be Selective
There are hundreds of social media platforms available to use. But you do not need all.
It is also not possible to handle it all at once.
So, what is the smart way? Use selective social media platforms. Those are beneficial to growing your business.
Find Inspiration
Inspiration is a need for everything.
And again If, you are going to market products and services, tie yourself with inspiration.
There will be situations when your plan may not work as expected. Then there should be some positive energy to inspire you.
Positivity not only helps to motivate for a new start but, it also helps to boost the potential to work better.
That is human nature. One day is very energetic, other lazy.
It is my everyday task to read and write blog posts. But it happens with me, then I take inspiration from my past, from great writers and books.
Publish Engaging Content
Engagements are profitable, beautiful and vital.
Increase engagement with people. Add quality to their lives, provide them with what they want.
When it comes to marketing, creating engaging content is not a difficult task anymore.
Use tools, find keywords, write better content to attract them.
No need to write heavy, literature type words, to show them how much English you know? No need to do this.
Write simple, creative and engaging content. Good readability will be a plus point.
Use mixed content like blog articles, infographic templates and youtube videos.
Why are we doing this?
People have different interests. Some people like to read, others to watch. By using the mixed content, you can grab the attention of everyone.
As a result, it will be more beneficial.
Engagements are all about care. Much you care for them in results you will get more attention. That is a simple process of giving from one hand and taking from others.
Not only apply this method to marketing but follow this method everywhere.
Mix Up Your SMM Content Offerings
Like we discussed mix type content perform better, to increase engagement.
Social media platforms use algorithms in the same manner. The content is getting more engagement.
They recommend it to other users to get more attention. These social media platforms serve what people love to read and share.
That is the simplest way to know which content is better.
Use image and text at the same time. It is the best method. This method works on each social media platform.
Use this method for several weeks and track improvements.
That also helps to rank your social media profiles in search engines.
Always remember when you post on social media add a link to your website landing page. If your post works better, the search engines crawler gets a positive signal for your website.
Use hashtags some users use hashtags to find relevant content.
It helps to get more engagement, to gain followers or your prospective customers.
Social Media Content Calendar
Everyone is busy.
Every day you plan for hundreds of tasks at the end some are still left.
These situations will push you to list down crucial things first.
Can you put social media publishing in the first place?
No, never, Everyone knows the answer. Social media means use it in free time.
But, here, that is not the case.
To avoid this situation, use a content calendar. It may look like a new task, but, when you do, it will reduce your burden for posting on social media.
A content calendar helps to publish at the right time to engage customers and to grow your business.
Think about it, research about it and then plan your calendar. Try to publish long text articles on weekends, shorter on weekdays.
For the first two weeks, test your calendar and then fix it, for the next few weeks. When you need, change your plan.
Timing Matters
Before we dive deeper into timing, first understand why it is crucial.
Suppose, if most of the followers are from India and you lived in the USA. Then you have to take care of the timing. Because both these countries have different time zones.
So first check about your audience and then make a plan for social media post publishing.
Because timing matters.
But all these examples are not words of The Holy Bible, use them as per your need.
If you feel you will not be able to post on social media like this do not worry too much about timing but keep posting.
Publishing posts on social media is your goal and should be.
Be Authentic And Personable
Be careful when you are advising people.
Make sure the information you are providing is accurate. Please authenticate with Its sources.
Add this to your every task. When you do this, users will love you. No doubt that love converts into a sale, hope, one day.
Being authentic is beneficial for your business. It increases the trust of your customers.
Trust means relationships and relationships mean better mouth publicity for your business.
Be bold to give a personal touch to your products, to your content and your marketing strategy.
It will be more satisfactory for your users and as result, they will give better reviews on the internet.
Better reviews mean a better path for a future customer. These are the calling cards of your business for the next customer.
Track And Adjust the Strategy
In online marketing, it is easy to track and adjust the strategy.
Social media marketing is incomplete without evaluation.
If you have given hundreds of days to plan and apply the SMM strategy, give some time to analyze it.
Today, hundreds of tools available to track your marketing strategy. But you do not need all those tools. Use only a few tools to understand the best and worst parts of the marketing strategy.
It is necessary to know what are the Key Performance Indicators. Some perform better others are not able to perform up to the mark.
It will not take much time to know bad areas of marketing strategy or areas that underperform.
Now you know both parts, adjust your strategy as per need and start again, that is all you need to do.
As a result, we can say that evaluation is essential. We can improve the broader segment of our marketing strategy.
Develop A Content Pipeline
Without better content, social media marketing is nothing and online marketing too.
That is why you need to make a strategy that delivers content.
But How?
Pick up simple ways.
Suppose, in the travel business, don’t restrict yourself to publishing only travel content.
Expand your areas. Tell users about foods people will love you they will like, share and comment on your social media posts.
It will expand your reach.
More reach means more followers, the chain continues.
That is only one example. Promote greenery by adding amazing photos of nature. You can use your social profiles to campaign about saving the environment.
The goal is to share valuable information with the users.
When you use these techniques, you will never run out of content.
It is the simplest method to develop a content pipeline for your social media marketing.
Do not restrict yourself to these methods. Share valuable content with others that you can.
Your users will get information. As a result, you will get better relationships in business.
Sometimes when you share other’s content. Others may also like to share your content on their profile. Who knows, your prospective customers are in their network. You can get their attention and more visibility on social media platforms.
Linking Is Important
If, you have created your social media profiles. Link them with your official website.
Also, add links to your all social media profiles on your website. If users want to connect with you on social media, they can connect with you with one click.
Linking signals to search engines that these profiles are of the particular website.
If, users search about you on search engines in high volumes. Search Engines create a knowledge panel itself.
And If you are the owner of that knowledge panel. You can claim it later.
They do it to give the right information and links to users.
Create a YouTube channel for your business and link back to website and vice versa.
Users search you in the search engine. Search engine crawlers will index your website with all your social profile.
Remember this when you publish a new video on YouTube. Always use this method to put the website and social media profiles links in the description box.
In email marketing or a simple business mail, use these links in the footer of every email. It is a different way to tell them that you are available on these platforms. That is the secret part of social media marketing.
Coordinate From A Central Dashboard
Logging in all social media profiles and publishing them takes time by doing it one by one.
Instead, Use Social Media Management Tools like Hootsuite, Buffer and Zoho Social.
You can save lots of time in publishing and logging in to different social media platforms.
No need to use many tools to handle and track social media profiles, use only one, which suits you best.
Some tools are free of cost with limited features if you use only three to four social media accounts.
The free version comes with limitations to only publishing social media posts.
These tools provide you with a central dashboard to track social media activities.
You can add more users as per your need.
A central dashboard will help you to save time and work on other projects.
Add Value for Customers
Adding quality to customer life is the best way to judge your product and success in the marketing world.
If your product is not up to the mark, it is a hurdle to get expected results through marketing.
So instead of focusing first on marketing, focusing on the product would be the better choice.
Think and research about what customers are demanding and at what price.
If, you maintain the quality in a budget that suits the pocket of customers. You are better in the competition.
After all, why would a customer come to you give them a reason?
No doubt, with the product, that they needed most in the pocket budget.
This way, you can add quality to customers ‘ life, make them happy. Get expected results through SMM.
Make Valuable Business Connections
Companies that are popular on this planet are successful due to one reason. They are more focused and dedicated to building connections with customers and businesses.
More connections mean better relations with customers and businesses.
When you invest in stronger relationships, you get results in your favour.
It will not only give the trust of customers, but you will also get a market reputation. It needs to survive in a competitive market, with tons of products from other companies.
So, if you are building strong connections with businesses, you are going to win this marathon.
Be Willing To Try New Things
Never restrict yourself at any stage of marketing.
Algorithms are changing day by day to give better user experience.
To perform better and stay competitive in the market, use new methods.
When you do it, your current strategy will tend to improve.
I am not saying that every new method will work better. But by trying new things, you will be able to understand the logic more.
Who knows, after trying many times, you start developing your strategies.
It is also applicable to social media marketing.
Track Social Media Reputation of Your Company
Feedbacks are the best way to understand the market reputation of a particular brand.
Always keep an eye on what customers are talking about you.
You can do this using many channels.
Use feedback systems like social media comments, contact forms, feedback emails and messages.
Offsite channels are google reviews and social media channels that are tagging complaints.
Bad reviews are areas for improvement positives are your strong one.
But use both types of reviews to identify the real social media reputation.
Use tags related to your company put those tags in social media search engines. Any user comments about the company you can get in your feed.
So to understand the social media reputation of your company is necessary. But focus on helping your customers first.
Always reply to your customer’s query, whether it is positive or negative. This way give them a message that you are there to help them in every condition.
This simple step can manage a larger part of your brand reputation on social media platforms.
Your customers will feel comfortable buying with your company.
Measure The Results Of Social Media
Use insights into social media platforms to understand the behaviour of users.
Use a different type of content for each social media platform.
Instagram is best for creators because here, visual content performs better. Facebook is a community platform, so long text content with visuals is right for it. YouTube is a video platform. LinkedIn is for professional connections uses business-oriented content.
So Use the content in the given manner on all these platforms. This way, your social media marketing gives you better results.
While measuring statistics, keep in mind that these platforms are for different purposes.
Measure the results of social media. Note down each point where you feel modification or need improvement.
During the measure, always keep an eye on what works better for engagements and actions.
Posts that have performed better notice why these posts give a better result. By analysis, you will be able to find some categories that are evergreen for your business.
Use them with confidence and freedom. Those are the fruit of your hard work. Hard work that you and your team have put in the box of planning.
Conclusion
In social media marketing, your dedication and hard work will show in the growth of your business.
Marketing on the internet is all about caring for your customers.
More you care, the more love you will get in the form of likes on social media posts, engagements and great reviews.
This love will help you to grow your business on the internet and social media platforms.
Now, you know all the necessary methods of social media marketing. You can create a unique social media marketing strategy for your business.
It will be easy because now you know the methods that work.
You only need a desire, a unique plan and a dedicated team.
As a result, you will get a successful social media marketing campaign for your business.
