Social media is as indispensable now as Yellow Pages listings were in the 1990s. It seems like everyone is on social media today—from your grandmother to your local florist!
But if you are ready to take your social media marketing strategy to the next level, you probably want to know how you can get started. We have a few tips here to help you identify the strategies that will bring you social media success in 2019 and beyond.
Budget, Budget, Budget!
If you haven’t already done so, take the opportunity to figure out a budget for your social media plan in the coming year. Believe it or not, social media should be treated like an upfront investment on your company’s future success. Paying to promote posts or secure targeted ads will help you get your content out to more people. More clicks and more eyeballs on your content means that you are more likely to gain a follower or get a sale. It’s math, really: advertising will yield greater returns when done the right way.
...Then Get in the Habit of Analyzing Your Efforts
Okay, so once you start working ads into your monthly budget, what do you do? You have to keep track of their effectiveness. Sometimes the ads won’t be a good fit with your audience. They may not like a specific design, or they may not find the call-to-action intriguing enough.
You can figure out which ads are the most appealing to your followers by running A/B tests. What are A/B tests? Essentially, you can run two ad campaigns at the same time, testing two different factors but controlling for all other variables. Let’s say you want to test two different designs running the same call to action and text—the graphics are just a bit different. Well, you run both of these ads and make sure you monitor the click-through rates on each one. The one that gets more clicks converts better. You can continue A/B testing as long as you like to make sure you’re running an ad that converts as well as possible.
Audit Your Platforms
This might sound a bit scary, and in today’s social-oriented world, it probably is a bit scary. But social media networks come and go, and some are not worth the amount of time you invest in maintaining them.
Let’s say you use Google Plus a lot. Well, Google axed its social media project, and it is slated to be turned off for consumers in August 2019. Well, now would be a good time to focus on updating something like Google My Business rather than Google Plus.
Or, let’s say you spend a lot of time updating LinkedIn with posts and photos related to your other social media efforts, but you just aren’t getting the results you want on that platform. What gives?
You may want to evaluate if you’re presenting your information in a way that LinkedIn users find appealing before doing anything else. But if you don’t think you can change anything else, maybe it’s better to reduce time spent on this social media platform and focus instead on the platforms that give you a better return on your investment.
Redefine Your Audience and Demographics
Every year, it’s worth it to take a look at your business and make sure your target audience and demographics haven’t changed. For example, some businesses discover that they have been missing an entire group of potential customers and they must rework their social media and advertising to include these new groups. (As controversial as the topic might be, one example is businesses operating in states where recreational marijuana has just become legalized—this change will bring in a new group of customers for smoke shops and restaurants!)
Even if your audience remains the same, their tastes might change. It’s always worth it to examine which social media marketing techniques remain effective, and which ones might need to be changed up a bit to get results.
Hire the Experts to Help
If all else fails—or if all this just seems like too much work—just call Zoek, and we’ll be happy to help! You can schedule a demo with us or simply call and talk to one of our friendly personal marketing consultants. We’ll answer all the burning social media questions you have!