You may have heard all of the ways that you can fall into common traps when beginning to market yourself and your brand on social media, but what about the ways to be successful? People love to focus on the negative and learning from the mistakes of others but learning from the victories of others is just as important. So, what are the best ways a company can be successful with social media marketing?

In this article, we will discuss some tips for social media marketing success to address this question.

What is Social Media Marketing?

First and foremost, what are we talking about exactly? This may come as a surprise to you but social media marketing and social media advertising are not the same thing. In fact, social media advertising is just one small part of social media marketing and there is much more to it!

Social media marketing generally refers to the marketing of brands, products, and services online through social media platforms. While this can mean advertising through social media, it can also refer to your general appearance on online social media apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube.

Tip Number One: Define your brand strategy.

When you are setting out to market your business, products, or services, you will find success by first defining your brand approach and marketing strategy.

Here are some questions that you can ask yourself when determining this:

What is my audience?

What are my products and services?

How do I make my audience aware of my product?

The decisions that you make for this will become your brand strategy and you should aim to keep this strategy until you find that it isn’t working and then you may need to consider making a pivot.

Tip Number Two: Create quality content for your new audience.

Social media is not just about throwing your brand imaging out onto the internet and hoping that people like it. Being intentional with your content creation will be far more successful than otherwise. Why are you posting? Your post should be purposeful in order to be relevant to your audience.

As well, take your time on creating your social media posts. Posts with sloppy mistakes such as spelling errors, graphic design errors, or other issues are likely to lose you future engagement and could negatively affect your brand.

Quality over quantity applies to social media marketing as well!

Tip Number Three: Pay attention to your social media analytics.

Do you remember how we mentioned in tip number one that you may have to find yourself making a pivot with your brand strategy? The way to know if this is going to be a necessary move for your success is to pay attention to social media analytics. View counts, follower counts, and number of likes will be huge indicators to see whether or not your content is resonating with people.

This information could not be more valuable to you as a business marketing on social media. Taking advantage of social media analytics as a tool for success will help you to be successful in marketing online.

Tip Number Four: Having a clear goal in mind through social media marketing.

The truth of the matter is that people turn to social media for their business and services for different reasons. You may be wanting to promote community and connection with your existing customers by posting on social media or you may be wanting to increase your online visibility and sales.

Deciding what your goal is will help you be successful with social media marketing by forcing you to be intentional with your online presence. As well, it is very difficult to reach your goals and gain confidence without having set goals!

Tip Number Five: Start small…and then expand.

You may be excited to get started on creating social media accounts for your brand, but it is not advisable to start posting on 10 different social media websites all at once. This is how you create burnout and sloppiness with online social media marketing. Instead, pick a few platforms to begin on and get really good at posting regularly on those social media platforms.

From there, you can consider expanding the number of platforms that you post on as you gain experience and following. You will then be able to point your followers in the right direction toward your new social media accounts.

Tip Number Six: Do your research or hire a professional!

You may be doing this right now by reading this article but remember that social media marketing is a giant. It might be in your best interest to hire a professional to help take the stress of learning such a massive industry off of your plate. However, if this is not in your budget, you will need to bring yourself up to speed.

Familiarizing yourself with the world of social media marketing is a great way to ensure success in this new area. You may even consider learning from a few social media marketing success stories. You will have much to learn but embracing the change and learning about the future of online marketing will be a valuable skill for your business.

Tip Number Seven: Consider partnering with others.

Social media influencing is not just viral, it is the way of the future on social media. Product promotion and brand recognition can come easily from social media influencers who are paid to promote products to their audience. They have an advantage that you are looking for while social media marketing: established trust with their audience.

These people who follow social media influencers have a level of trust with their audience that allows them to market products to them. This trust can transfer from their audience to you if you partner with them and can be a great way to increase your visibility on social media, though it comes with a price tag.

Tip Number Eight: Direct traffic from everywhere that you can.

Making sure that current customers know about your social media accounts is a great way for you to increase your online visibility. Remind customers that you are on social media through your website or email marketing. People love to have new content and product updates right at the tips of their fingers. Following brands that they love on social media can be a great way to get this information without the hassle.

While you’re reminding existing customers that you are on social media, you can also use your social media accounts to direct traffic to your website. This tactic serves as a revolving door to guide loyal customers and new customers from your social media pages to your web pages and spend more time with them.

Tip Number Nine: Engage with your audience!

Social media is not meant to be a vacuum and your posts should not just sit in the void collecting likes. Comments are an important tool to boost visibility on social media algorithms and you can help contribute to commenters leaving more comments. By responding to your audience, you will help build rapport between yourself and them.

You can also use your audience to your advantage by interacting with them! Social media websites often allow you to make polls that ask your audience what they want to see from you. Using these features on social media can be a great way to collect market research from your community to be successful as a business.

Tip Number Ten: Listen to your followers.

This tip goes hand-in-hand with the tip above, but the recipe for success on social media is to embrace change and be open to the possibility of change. Many people will take to social media to voice their concerns because it is easier than a phone call or even an email. You should properly address these customers all the same because they have still taken the time out of their day to give you feedback.

Tip Number Eleven: Learn to live with criticism!

Accepting criticism is a key way to promote success in your business and brand. Your audience has the potential to provide you with incredibly helpful information for your brand. Loyal customers can be the best social media advisors if you pay attention to their voices.

Instead of deleting comments or discouraging the sharing of opinions in your comment sections, be open to what your audience has to say.

Tip Number Twelve: Use SEO keywords.

Keep your social media presence focused and direct by using search engine optimized keywords to allow your social media posts to come up more in the algorithms. Like for websites, SEO is extremely important on social media as well. Make sure to do proper keyword research and avoid keyword stuffing!

Conclusion and Takeaway

We hope that you have found these twelve steps helpful on how to be successful with social media marketing. Please let us know in the comments if you have any additional tips and tricks!