Author: Manish Shrestha
July 31st, 2023
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Are you a bootstrap start-up company that makes your own social media content and promotes your business through digital marketing?
As the number of social media users continues to increase steadily, you can be sure that this industry will continue to boom for the foreseeable future. That being true, it’s high time for any and all businesses to adopt the latest social media marketing strategies for effective results.
By any measure, social media marketing is one of the most critical aspects of digital marketing today. Social media is a potentially huge platform for every single type of business out there, regardless of industry. It can help to generate more of a buzz around your products and services, give your lead generation a boost, and result in more sales conversions. The right usage of social media makes digital marketing efforts both easier and more effective. Social media is one of the easiest ways to reach your target market because social media is something your audience navigates multiple times every day! Effective social media marketing requires some creativity, a verified action plan, and a stream of quality content production.
And whether your business is interested (or able) to sell directly on social media or not, social media is still a proven technique for increasing your brand awareness and engaging with your targeted community. And a wise social media strategy includes engaging your audience on multiple platforms, in order to multiply both your reach and your engagement potential.
Connecting with your social media audiences doesn’t have to feel like a chore. It’s really just about making a commitment to it, plugging away at on a regular cadence, and finding the most effective approaches for you and your business. Here are some helpful tips for engaging with your audience on social media, without having to spend hours wrestling with some form of writer’s block:
Every business has a story. Finding your voice, knowing your story, and being able to tell your story in a way that connects is absolutely critical.
Telling the story of your business is one of the best ways to intrigue your audience, and also motive your potential customers to want to learn more about you!
Sharing your business’s story is some of the best content you can post on your social media pages.
Start by sharing your business story in your bio. Also, create an About Us section for your website. You could also write a series of “about us” blogs, and then share the links one at a time on your social media accounts. These are all great ways to help your readers connect with you on a more personal level.
Including some photos or short videos in your posts is another way to help your users and followers to understand how your business came to be, and what you’re all about.
Taking the opportunity to share your story through several different status updates is one way to help you speak to your audience more directly. And if you do this well, they will listen!
Followers always get curious about what happens behind the scenes (BTS). By showing them what’s happening in your workplace via some nice photos or short video clips, your followers can get a better glimpse of how you do things, or perhaps learn more about the inner workings of your company culture. Posting this type of content shows that your organization is open & honest, and it also welcomes your audience to share what you’re doing. Instagram Stories or Facebook Live are two great tools for displaying your BTS content.
Sharing basic information about your products and services is an obvious goal for your business, and social media content can be an effective way to spread this information. Social media is a place where many (if not most) of your customers spend a significant amount of time. Many people love to learn new things through browsing social media, and this is a platform built for displaying relevant information in quick, efficient ways. If you’re looking to convey important information about your business and its products & services, you can take advantage of avenues like status updates, story writing, video content, or informational infographics.
You’re probably already familiar with hashtags. You’ve seen them, and you know you need to use them in order to help your posts get seen by others. And you’re right! But how do hashtags work, exactly? Hashtags connect various accounts and different posts across various social media platforms that all touch on the same shared topic. For instance, if a user on any social media platform posts a baby girl’s picture, they might include a hashtag of #BABY. Other users of that platform can then click on this hashtag and see more pictures of babies. Proper usage of hashtags is a great way to get your content to an already-interested audience. And whether some users decide to click on hashtags or not, they’re still a great way to help grab the attention of browsers in general.
It’s helpful to do a little research about which hashtags to use before you add them to your post. See which hashtags are most suitable for the content your post speaks to or includes. Also, check the popularity of the hashtags you’re considering, and think about the best way to incorporate them into your post. You can also get creative and decide to invent your own hashtag, relative to your specific brand, products, or services.
What’s the right number of hashtags to use? Most social media experts will tell you that 2-3 hashtags per post is a good sweet spot to shoot for. Any fewer, and your post may not reach as many viewers as you’d like. But if you put too many hashtags, that can also increase the likelihood that your viewers will click off before finishing your post. Also remember to keep your hashtags as simple and on-brand as possible. For instance, a marketing company might post #business, #entrepreneur, or #marketing to gain more targeted exposure to their posts.
When it comes to making video posts, many marketing experts recommend that you should have at least one to two minutes of highly-produced, professionally-engineered video content, and some perfect choreography to go along with it. They’ll tell you that nothing else in terms of video content will be taken seriously – and they’d be wrong! Honestly, you don’t necessarily need any of that. Many easy-to-use tools like Snapchat, Facebook Live, and Instagram Reels are just as effective, and they’re also a great way to connect with your audience.
Now we come to one of the most critical components of any successful social media marketing campaign: engagement. Viewers are there for a reason: if they find that they connect with your story, they’re much more likely to support your business, even if it’s just through a screen. Encourage your followers, and – where appropriate – try to connect them with a relevant product or service that you offer through your social media networking. But no matter what, respond to your followers: reply to them whenever they make a comment, or share a relevant photo. By choosing to dialogue with your audience, you’ll certainly boost the engagement level of your posts. You can also try hosting different social media competitions to get consumers excited about your brand, as well as about the products and services you offer. Activities like these may help to engage your audience, and will serve to send the message that your business actually cares about them. This will serve to elevate your level of customer retention, too.
If you’ve been using social media for more than a day, you’ve probably already encountered a ton of mems and GIFs. Social media users love them, and can’t seem to get enough of them. Want to show your company’s fun-loving side and attract more social media followers? Get creative and start incorporating more memes and GIFs into your posts! These creative (and often humorous) content pieces work extremely well on visually-driven platforms. They help to create more traffic by capturing your audience’s attention, perhaps making them giggle, and giving them another reason to engage with your business.
It would be worth your while to spend a little time learning more about how to make memes and GIFs a part of your branding & marketing efforts. There are many popular (and free) online tools you can use for making your own memes and GIFs, in fact.
One way to put your finger on the pulse of your followers is by creating some creative surveys or polls. The topics could really include anything under the sun – even if they’re not specifically related to your products and services. Engaging social media users with polls and surveys connects them to your brand, period. This can be a fun way to have an informal conversation with your audience and engage them in an authentic manner at the same time. In addition, whenever you invite social media users to vote for your poll or take your survey, you’re also conveying that their opinions or points of view actually matter. And who doesn’t appreciate that kind of affirmation?
The most validating way to know that someone is actually reading and engaging with your posts is whenever they’re shared, reposted, or retweeted. Whenever folks share a post of yours that they deem to be relevant, that just helps to show that you’re an integral part of their community, and aren’t just concerned about your promoting your own voice or message. Likewise, by choosing to share the content of your followers or people & organizations you follow yourself, you’re opening up the possibility of being able to tap into another group of followers, and increase your reach of social media engagement.
It’s also helpful to “go live” once in a while through your social media platforms. When thinking about the best ways to go live, consider streaming events like a new product unveiling. And if you don’t have something new to unveil? That’s fine. Just choose to host a simple forum inviting your followers to join the conversation around a given topic. This kind of interaction can help to humanize your brand, or simply allow your executives to put on a more personal face while engaging your audience.
Need some more creative ideas about how you can engage your audience through social media? Or perhaps you just need some help in creating a successful social media marketing strategy? The professionals at Cibirix are here to help you with all your digital marketing needs; get in touch with us today!
Since founding Cibirix, Ashish has leveraged his marketing degree to lead the agency in crafting meaningful digital marketing experiences for clients. His results-driven approach is a unique mix of analytical thinking, crisp visual aesthetics and a desire to simplify frontends while developing robust architecture. With a passion for design, technology, & marketing, He leads each aspect of the agency’s business and oversees its talented team of digital professionals.
