How to be strategic and stand out from the crowd?

These days, businesses and brands need to be active on social media. People of all ages use social media every day to discover new products and services. So, if you want your business to be visible, having a presence on a variety of social media platforms is vital. 

Even today, many business owners don’t know where to start when it comes to social media. Often they’re not sure how to incorporate social media into their business strategy. 

By the end of this article, you’ll know six super-secret social media strategies that will make your business stand out from the crowd in all the right ways. 

Set Definitive Goals

Business owners who have used social media to their advantage have set intentional and definitive goals that aim at a specific target every week and month. It builds client confidence.

Every business is different, so success on social media looks different to every company. However, business goals and patterns remain the same. 

For example, If your brand is new on social media, list out three goals that you want your social media presence to achieve. Review the purpose behind it and think about what you want to achieve. Potential goals may include; driving traffic to your website, generating more sales, building credibility or increasing overall brand awareness. These are just a few examples. 

Use the SMART goal system. Be specific and use metrics when possible. How many new customers do you want to gain this month? How many more sales do you need to meet or exceed your financial goals? Applying these kinds of goals to your social media strategy will lead you directly to success. 

Know Your Target Audience

You need to decide who your target audience is before you begin posting on social media. If you do not appeal to the correct demographic, geographic, psychographic and behaviors all of your hard work could be for nothing. 

All social media platforms have algorithms that work to reach a target audience. When posting and creating ads on your social media accounts, you can create ads to reach specific ages, genders and people who “like” and already purchase very specific things. 

By specifying these parameters in every post or ad you create, you’ll be ahead of the game and will reach the right prospects much faster. 

Content creation is another factor behind knowing your target audience. The content you post should all be geared toward your brilliant client avatar. The more you focus on your target audience, the more traffic you will gain on your social media, which will lead to more engagement and ultimately more sales. 

People are attracted to posts that educate them on something they do not know or that entertains them with a topic they are interested in. If you can tailor your content to your target audience, you are definitely heading in the right direction. 

Have a Content Strategy

Content strategy does not end with using content to attract your target audience. There are so many types of content to choose from, and let’s face it, sometimes it’s challenging. For example, you can post images, text, videos, links to articles, podcasts…the list goes on. 

You’re not alone, coming up with engaging content over and over again is a huge task for every business. Yet, If you invest the time to decide which pieces you want to share with your followers every single week, your hard work will pay off. 

DO NOT just blindly post tidbits that you think are interesting. Too many business owners waste their time doing this. Instead, you need to strategize and hone in on your target audience as much as possible. 

The time you post your content is just as vital as the content itself. This point comes back to thinking about your target audience and knowing when they are most active online. You can use free tools to learn about your target audience and post accordingly. You can also research online regarding specific age groups and when those people are active on social media. Also, the platform you post should correlate with your target audience also. For example, some age groups and genders use Facebook, while some are more active on Instagram or YouTube. 

Too many people make assumptions and skip the research phase. Do your research, and before you know it, you will have a fantastic content strategy. 

Know Your Competitors

Analyzing your competition can help you understand which social media strategies work and which do not. Look at what your competition posts every day and look at their websites to see how they incorporate social media with the rest of their brands. Look at the kind of content they post, when they post and how their audience interacts with their posts. 

Looking at this information will help you develop a powerful social media strategy for your own business. Use it as a learning opportunity and a way to dive deeper into your niche. 

Learning from your competitors’ mistakes can help you focus on posting content that will boost traffic and sales and will also save you time and effort. If you learn from someone else’s mistakes, you will not make those same mistakes yourself. 

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt.

Focus on the Visuals

Visual content leads to more attention on social media than anything else. Videos, images, animations and other visual content grab a customer’s attention and draw them to your post and eventually to your website. Plus, there is so much you can do with planning out your visual social media posts. Planning your creatives can be an engaging and fun experience. 

Visual content can be used in any situation. If you want to share your company’s products and services, you can create a short video showcasing that information, if you want to educate on a specific topic, you can make an infographic and if you want to show customers why they need your products and services, you can make a slide or graph. 

When people see your engaging content every day, they will be intrigued and will be more likely to click on your posts. Make certain you have periodic calls to action to navigate them over to your website. Social media is a marathon not a sprint. 

Track Your Progress

The most crucial element of your social media strategy is tracking your progress. Weekly, monthly and quarterly monitoring and evaluation will help you realize mistakes and grow from them. You will be able to see what is working and what is not, and your future social media will be more engaging as you grow. 

Your key performance indicators (KPIs) are what track your progress and campaigns. The metrics to pay attention to are reach, engagement, lead generation and conversion. When tracking these indicators, look at when engagement is at its highest peaks and observe how conversion rates are during those periods. Tracking these details will help you decide what to post, what not to post and how your followers have reacted. 

Every social media platform has analytics to help you understand your progress. It may seem intimidating at first, but after you look closer at the analytics, you will realize how powerful it is. All successful companies use these analytics to increase and optimize engagement. 

Lastly, use your KPIs and other analytics to determine which of your posts are performing well. Don’t be fooled by vanity metrics such as likes alone. Comments and individual inquiries are much more important than likes alone. Understanding your metrics is one way that brands become more popular and begin branching out to new followers and customers. No matter what, keep going. You never know who is really watching. Keep going and your influence will continue to rise. 

Conclusion

Using these super-secret social media strategies with your social media platforms will bring your business to the next level. 

As social media continues to drive the online business world, your brand will thrive as you strategize and analyze your target audience, content and competition. 

Too many business owners are intimidated by social media. It’s not hard really, and in the world today it’s a critical tool that should be in every company’s marketing plan. We can help you apply the six super-secret social media strategies. Contact us today for more information.