How can you optimize your social media strategy to grow your business quickly? Are you wondering what marketing tactics to apply to start getting results from your investments? This article gives you six ways that work.
Social media sites are among the most essential and unifying online platforms for connecting with buyers and potential customers. They offer you a place to build long-term brand/customer relationships.
Moreover, the use of social networks is one of the top online activities in recent years. For instance, over 2.6 billion users were active on social media platforms in 2018. And that number is estimated to rise to more than 3-billion in 2021.
Nowadays, almost every business is on social media, and most marketers rely on a few social media marketing tips for scaling their business. These social media tips could be the use of “hashtags,”which are vital for improving content and brand visibility. Social media management tools also play a critical role in maintaining frequency and brand consistency.
In this article, we will present you with more sophisticated marketing strategies that will help you realize the return on your investments (ROIs). But first, let us look at what social media optimization (SMO) represents.
What does SMO Mean?
SMO is short for Social media optimization. It is the use of various marketing tactics, channels, and communities to create a viable social media strategy that will increase brand awareness and generate results.
In other words, SMO is the use of social media as a stimulus to skyrocketing your business growth. You will be able to:
- Connect better with your social tribe
- Improve brand visibility
- Increase awareness
- Generate targeted leads, and
- Increase your ROIs.
Why is Social Media Optimization Important?
Social media optimization (SMO) is important because it lets you develop a stable social media presence and establish your brand authority. According to research, the primary reason 67% of consumers unfollow a company on social media is that their content is irrelevant.
Further survey reveals that 56% of users cited poor customer service as the reason they would unfollow a brand on social media and 43% would unfollow because of too many ads.
So, to better serve your audience, it is crucial to monitor your social media marketing activities to determine the effectiveness of your campaigns. It will enable you to understand how well your content connects with your target market.
Here are a few more reasons why you should optimize your social media strategy:
- To increase your reach
- To connect better with your audience
- To build a sustainable online presence
- To drive more targeted traffic
- To generate quality leads
So, without optimizing your social media and tracking performance, you will be leaving money on the table. As a result, SMO is critical if you want to establish valuable bonds and make gains with social media marketing.
6 Simple Ways to Amplify Your Social Media Strategy and Grow Your Business
While there are several ways to optimize your social media strategy, we have outlined the top marketing tactics that are proven to work. Below are six social media optimization hacks you can apply today to convert more leads.
1. Pick the Right Social Networks
As stated earlier, social media is one of the top marketing channels for businesses and individuals. There are several of them today with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and others taking the lead.
Business owners are always searching for different ways to connect and network with consumers and eventual customers. These social platforms offer marketers the ideal channels to establish long-term business relationships.
But the question to ask is: Do you need to have a presence on all the social media sites available? No! Instead, you should search for and pick the ones where your audience is always hanging out. That is where they consume content, and that is where you should be.
So, with all these options, how can you choose the right platforms for your business? It is advised to start with the top three or four most popular ones. Given this, there are three questions to consider before choosing your social sites:
- What are the most popular social media sites?
- Where does your target market consume content?
- What do you want to achieve?
The answers to these queries will help you find the right platforms. Nevertheless, use these pieces of information below as a guide to selecting the right social networks:
- Facebook is the most prominent social network, with over 2.4 billion active users. Using Facebook correctly will enable you to reach your business goals.
- Twitter is a “live-tweeting social media network. That is because its feed is instantaneously updated. The prominent use of hashtags helps increase your brand visibility, and also let potential customers find you.
- LinkedIn is considered a professional social networking site. It is the top lead generation platform for B2B and B2C marketers.
2. Define Your Target Audience
Digital marketing undertakings without a defined audience is a waste of your time. You need to know who you’re selling to─your ideal customer who can buy from you. That is how you make money and grow your business.
So, do you know your audience? This process is essential because it helps you identify what content excites them, and the social media channels where they are always hanging out.
In this way, you will be able to group them according to interests, buyer behavior, demography, and more.
Also, understanding your marketing persona enables you to speak in a language that relates to them. The data you collect from learning about your ideal buyer will aid you in fine-tuning your social media audience targeting.
But how can you identify your audience? Here is how:
Use social media analytics, such as Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, etc. You can also use the analytics of social media management tools, such as:
These reporting tools will help you gain valuable insights about your audience. With the data, you can create the most relevant and personalized content pieces your targets will love. In other words, if you can’t define your audience, you have no brand.
3. Develop a Social Media Strategy
So, why is a social media strategy valuable to your business? Because it assists you in building a robust online presence.
Your social media marketing strategy will allow you to plan and create value-added content ahead of time. You’ll also succeed in scheduling your content, posting frequently, and maintaining consistency.
Lack of consistency is one reason why consumers may stop following you on social media. Your social strategy helps you remain active even when you’re not there.
In view of this, start by creating a calendar for content creation, curation, and posting frequency. Then assign team members their respective responsibilities. In that way, each person knows what is expected.
Your content calendar should be a primary part of your social media strategy because it will detail everything from identifying your audience and interests to content creation and publishing.
Several editorial calendar tools will help you create a functional content calendar. Some of the best in the marketplace are:
- Evernote
- Trello
- Google Sheets and Excel
- SEMrush Marketing Calendar
- WordPress Editorial Calendar
Your schedule will also let you maintain an ideal posting frequency that will not anger your followers. According to WordSteam, the #1 social media marketing mistake to avoid is not having a plan for your campaign.
It is like driving without a roadmap or writing on a broad topic without a specified audience. Your strategy shows you who you are selling to and how to market your brand for optimal results.
4. Conduct Keyword Research for Each Platform
All social media sites may look alike, but they are different. For instance, Instagram is an image sharing website with an audience who is more about identifying engaging visual materials. But LinkedIn is a professional networking site with a more business-oriented audience.
So, the content that works on Instagram may not perform well on LinkedIn or Twitter. This is where conducting keyword research for each social channel comes in. Note, however, that a profitable content marketing strategy involves SEO and keyword research. Similarly, to make gains on social media, you must apply SEO with result-driven keyword research at the core.
This social media marketing tip will help you understand what keyword terms and phrases your target market is using on different social media websites. Then, with a list of keywords in place, you will be able to develop highly-informative content pieces that connect with your followers.
This approach includes identifying niche hashtags, keyword phrases, and topic ideas that excite your followers. You don’t want to be posting random content and hashtags, hoping to get eyeballs on your materials.
They must resonate with your audience to attract clicks and improve engagement. But you cannot achieve that without optimizing your social media strategy with the right elements─keywords, hashtags, and the right topics for your posts.
That is how you can increase conversions. When doing keyword research for your posts, look for those with high search volume, and add them to your social media posts.
5. Invest in Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies for optimizing your social media campaigns. Most businesses, including tops brands, depend on influencer marketing for generating results on social media. Why?
Because 92% of consumers trust personal recommendation over traditional advertising. Small and medium-sized businesses and big brands have been investing in influencer marketing agencies and individual influencers across channels that include social media.
The latter help companies to generate publicity and increase brand awareness. In fact, over 90% of marketers confirmed that influencer marketing helped them increase brand visibility.
If you’re a small/midsize business owner, you can leverage influence marketing platforms, where you can find the right influencer that will connect you to your target audience and increase conversions. Or, take advantage of these influencer marketing tools.
6. Set Relevant Marketing KPIs
Why should you establish key performance indicators (KPIs)? Because your success relies on the performance of your marketing initiatives on social media. But you cannot define your progress if you can’t quantify the metrics.
So, that’s the reason for setting relevant marketing KPIs to monitor. The KPIs will aid you in measuring your social media marketing return on investments (ROIs). In this way, you can figure out how you are performing─whether you’re making gains or not.
The SM KPIs you set are marketing metrics that are most vital to your campaign. You can quickly measure their success and failure since they create a connection between your business goals and social media activities.
In view of this, if you can understand these metrics, you will be able to determine your social media ad spending and better allocate your budget.
So, to follow your social media performance, you should establish marketing KPIs, measure your metrics, and monitor your results.
Wrapping Up How to Optimize Your Social Media Strategy to Improve Conversions
There several other ways to optimize your social media strategy, but the six steps above will help you boost engagement and conversions. Don’t forget the following as well:
- Share compelling content
- Live videos
- Stories
- Use calls-to-action, and
- Engage with users and respond to their queries.
By optimizing your social media strategy with these tips, you will build a remarkable online presence and convert more leads. What more can you add to the tips above that will increase value? We want to hear from you!
