Get expert advice for social media marketing success.

Social media marketing goes far beyond starting a Facebook page and putting some product photos on it. Just as an effective website needs excellent content, so do your social media accounts. Excellent content has to go past images of your products – engaging followers with other stories that are of interest to them gives your social media persona a human face. It makes your followers believe you truly understand them.

Here are our best tips for developing an effective social media marketing strategy:

Start with some basic research into your ideal client base. Determine what your average client looks like, and this information will guide you to the social media marketing strategies most effective for reaching those people. Here are a few basic questions to start with along with advice about how the answers might guide your social media efforts:

• Male or female? For example, if most of your client base is female, keep in mind about 80% of Pinterest users are also female.
• Age? If your client base is on the young side, remember that Instagram is most popular among the 18-29 year-old demographic.
• Level of education? Educated 30 to 49 year-olds are most likely to use LinkedIn.

Once you have a clear picture of your ideal demographic, it’s time to create shareable content that’s relevant to your audience. Combine your customers’ needs and interests with the selected social media platform to provide content they will follow, like, share, pin, or retweet. Monitor websites and other social media feeds for content that could be of interest to your followers.

Numerous online tools make it easy to pull content from a variety of sources. Remember, your social media accounts are not sales pages – sometimes you need to include things for pure entertainment value. Offbeat news stories or viral memes are two good examples of lighthearted content that will give your page a human feel.

Another key to social media marketing success is to engage your readers. Ask them questions, take a poll, or solicit their interaction with giveaways. Do whatever it takes to get them to talk to you. This is a golden opportunity for free market research, so don’t waste it. And when they ask you questions or provide feedback on your services, be sure to reply to them every single time. If they reach out to you and they receive radio silence in return, it’s likely they will give up on your company.

Ultimately, you want your social media followers to visit your website and make a purchase. The way to do that is to direct your social media followers to your sales or contact page. Your web address should always be included in your description on every social media account.

A good way to drive traffic to your website is to share a piece of content that illustrates your prospects’ problem, and explain that the solution to that problem is located on your website. Include a link to your contact page to make the process easy, and let your readers take it from there.

PersistSEO can help you to develop social media strategies to support the success of your inbound marketing efforts. Call us at 770.580.3736 with your social media marketing strategy questions today.