Guest Post Written By Jake Moreno
Of all the marketing methods available today, social media is one of the most important. It is also one of the most complicated due to its ever-changing nature, which can make the world of social media marketing confusing and difficult to effectively navigate. One thing about it has never changed and likely won’t ever change, and that is how essential it is in the world of marketing.
From large corporations such as Walmart, Amazon, and McDonald’s, to small businesses and even property management, every company can benefit from effectively utilizing social media marketing. It has a huge list of benefits, including increasing brand awareness and improving customer loyalty, to name a couple.
The companies that successfully use social media as a marketing tool are the companies that stay on the cutting edge, keep up with current trends, and adapt as the culture of social media does. This is much easier said than done, but there are a few general rules that are consistent across the board. Even if you’re a beginner, if you master those rules, you’ll be a social media marketing master in no time! So here is a brief guide to social media marketing for beginners.
Decide Which Platform(s) to Use
Not every platform is effective for every purpose. While every social media performs the same basic task (connecting people over the internet), they each approach it in wildly different ways. This means that every social media marketing platform requires its own unique marketing approach.
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are some of the biggest social media sites, so one of those will be a great place to start. What you’ll need to do is determine who your target market is (their age, gender, location, etc.) then do an internet search to find which social media platform that kind of person uses most frequently. That will be the best place to start.
Start Posting Consistently
Like I said before, the world of social media marketing is always changing. That said, there is no “one size fits all” approach to social media marketing. So where, then, is the best place to start? The answer: Anywhere! Just like with any skill, social media marketing is a learned skill that can only be improved through practice, so the best thing to do is to start posting consistently. It’s been said that you can’t steer a parked car, and that is especially relevant in this case. So, in summary, step to is to start posting something.
Analyze and Improve
Once you’ve started posting, you can use your posts as data that can be analyzed to help you improve your approach to social media marketing. Some of the things you’ll need to analyze include:
- Who is liking and sharing your posts? Are they part of your target market?
- Which posts have been liked and shared more than others? Why do you think that is?
- Are you gaining or losing followers? How quickly?
- How many people interact with your posts (liking, sharing, and commenting) compared to how many people see your posts?
Asking questions like these will help you to understand what kind of content you will need to post to effectively reach your target audience. Comparing your posts to each other will help you determine which posts your audience likes and which ones they don’t, which will give you a great direction to go. This step isn’t a one-time action, this is something you’ll want to always be doing.
Master One Platform
Having a large following on one platform is much better than having a small following on multiple platforms. It might be tempting to start using multiple forms of social media (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, for example), but it is more important that you choose one or two and stick to them. Once you have a decent following, you can branch out to other platforms and expand your approach.
Following these basic rules will give you a great foundation for social media marketing. Remember that there is not a perfect way to do social media marketing, and the best place to start is anywhere. So long as you start somewhere and learn as you go, you’ll build a great following in no time at all.
Let’s Chat : Which social media platform do you use consistently?
