Did you know there are around 4.33 billion social media users around the world?

Top Tips to Optimize Your Social Media Campaign

Harnessing even a small amount of that userbase can vastly increase leads and sales. But do you know how to really use social media to achieve this goal?

With so many options, it can be daunting. Read on as we discuss our top tips for a successful social media campaign.

Know Your Goals

All your great social media campaign ideas are useless unless you know what your goal is. There are a number of reasons people start social media campaigns. By knowing what their desired outcome is, they can measure the success and improve upon it.

• Increase brand awareness
• Acquire leads/make more sales
• Increase engagement
• Get more followers on social media

Very often, you may find that these objectives bleed into one another. Once you know them, you can become even more specific. For example, if you want to make more sales, is it in a particular area or on a given product?

Be Unique on Each Channel

Each platform has its own unique quirks and ways of operation. Thus, your social media marketing ideas should reflect the platform you have chosen.

For example, Pinterest and Instagram are image-focused and require high-quality pictures to grab attention. Tiktok is much more interactive and works using challenges and dance routines.

You also need to be interacting with people on the social media channel you have chosen. This involves responding to questions and feedback. The language you use should be tailored to the audience that the platform attracts, from the wide appeal of Facebook to the younger audience of Tiktok.

Check the Competition

Many people forget about this fountain of knowledge when creating social media ad campaigns. Instead, they dive headfirst into a campaign, analyzing what works and what does not. By this point, they have already dipped into their budget, when they could have simply looked at their competitors.

You can see what is working for other companies and adapt it to your needs. Perhaps you may spot gaps in the market they have missed, or audiences they are not targeting. Look at what they are doing when creating content, knowing what works well and what does not.

Create a Calendar

The best social media marketing campaigns are about using time wisely. Firstly, you have to realize that social media is an ongoing process that takes time. It can’t be rushed or done overnight then forgotten about.

You are also going to need to post regularly, and a calendar can help you do that. At the least, it should contain updates, saying what you are posting and when. You may want to pencil events in so you can prepare special posts in advance, for example when the holidays arrive.

After this, add when content creation will begin. This can let you pencil in projects and know when they will be ready to schedule. By creating content in advance, the quality will improve making it more relevant and sharable.

Use Promotional and Non Promotional Content

Going for the hard sell has a negative impact on social media. People don’t want an account that is just trying to promote products and services. They want something that is social.

Many social media platforms are also altering their algorithms to penalize accounts that only have promotional material. Thus, you can end up struggling to get followers and engagement from real accounts, and the operator can penalize you at the same time.

Instead, make sure you share content from external sources. Anything related to your niche or industry will work well. Then, when the time comes for your promotional content, people will view it as just another engaging piece.

Use Hashtags

Though primarily a Twitter tool, the hashtag has now been incorporated by a number of social media platforms. It is an easy way to group your own posts and that of others in categories. For example, adding #art to a piece will bring up your post whenever anyone searches for art, along with others that have been tagged.

There are a number of relevant hashtag finders online to use. However, one of the best methods is to use hashtags that are trending. This puts your content or post in with current topics, making them more likely to be seen and commented upon.

Another trick is to create your own. You may decide to hold an interactive competition and get people to tag their entries with your hashtag. This is one way of making content go viral, but it can be hard to get off the ground.

Analyze and Adapt

The beauty of social media campaigns is that they can be adapted and modified in real-time. However, to get a good overview you want to allow your campaign to run for at least five days. After this, you can begin delving into the analytics.

Check to see which posts didn’t do well. Are you posting at certain times where people are less likely to see? or was it just the content itself that did not work?

Do you have certain posts that are performing better than others? If you can identify them, you can try to replicate them in other ways. Soon, you will have a firm grasp on what makes your customers tick.

Social Media Campaign Longevity

Once you find a social media campaign that works, don’t just rest on it. Social media is constantly changing and adapting, and you need to go with it. Go back to the drawing board when you feel the campaign reaches a natural end and start over again using everything you have learned.

If you enjoyed our article, we have many more to help. From marketing to finance, we can help you thrive in the digital economy.

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