50 Social Media Marketing Tips to Help Launch Your Business

Chances are, that if you’re reading this piece, you are one of the 3.484 billion social media users living in the world today. Given that the estimated total population of the world is about 7.7 billion, that’s a pretty amazing statistic.

Whether your dealings with social media are purely on a personal basis or you run the social media accounts for a major multinational, social media works the same regardless in that it’s primary purpose is to close the geographical distance between us and create an online connection with those whom we choose to connect with.

Social media marketing is a relatively new phenomenon when compared to more traditional forms of marketing but it has quickly become a leading focus for business owners of all sizes when it comes to getting their product or service in front of the right set of eyes.

This is article, we’ve put together all of the best social media tips the internet and its experts have to offer and sectioned them neatly into categories to suit businesses, or indeed individual influencers, of all shapes and sizes.

From social media tips for beginners to the industry’s hottest trends to look out for in the coming year, with the help of our social media marketing tips, you’re sure to find exactly what you need to get your online presence on the best possible path towards your ultimate social media success.

So let’s get stuck in!

Whether you’re completely new to social media or just the business side of the world’s various platforms, it’s always good to start by building a solid foundation on which your content and following can grow.

So to kick things off, we’ve put together our top 5 social media marketing tips for beginners so that you can put your best foot forward on your way to join the big leagues:

 

• Create a Social Media Plan for Each Social Media Channel

Once you have taken the initial leap and set up a profile on all the major social media platforms, it’s time to devise a plan. While it’s incredibly important to create an overarching social media marketing plan, it is equally important to tailor this plan to the various demographics and unique selling points of each of these platforms.

For example, a humorous post that includes a cat on a record player may work on Facebook but professionals who use LinkedIn to grow their network are not going to find it appropriate.

Similarly, posting times vary across these networks and these times are important to have in mind when setting a schedule on each platform. Studies have shown that while 11 am is a good time to post on Instagram, if Twitter is your social network of choice, you are more likely to receive better engagement if you post at 9 am.

Knowing this information will not only help you organise your social media efforts, but will also increase your chances of seeing meaningful results when it comes to creating and maintaining a strong social media presence.

 

• Create a Social Media Calendar

Creating a social media calendar is a brilliant way to start your social media marketing efforts, while also bolstering your overall social media marketing strategy with content that will get people talking.

If you need a helping hand to get you started, there are plenty of resources available online. Twitter released a handy calendar with the year’s important dates and holidays that you can build from and make sure that you never miss an opportunity to promote your business on those all important holidays.

If, for example, you are a new business owner looking to find ways in which you market your beauty salon, you will want to focus on holidays that people may be looking for gifts for their loved ones. Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day and Christmas – while always safe bets, need to built up to in advance of the big day. Make sure you create a content calendar that not only showcases your product or service on the day, but acts as a gentle reminder to social media users that the big day is coming up.

 

• Post Consistently

This next social media tip will get a whole lot easier once you have created your social media calendar. There are only so many holidays in the year so what do you do for those lull days? If you’re hoping to build a social media strategy that works, it’s all about consistency.

Think about your favourite brands that you follow on social media. Wouldn’t it seem strange if they didn’t post for 3 or 4 weeks at a time but then appeared back on the scene with a litany of 4 posts in one day? Or if one day they posted amazing on-brand graphics but then posted low-quality video footage that simply didn’t meet their usual standards?

Maintaining consistency throughout all aspects of your social media profiles will not only make your life a whole lot easier, but will also allow followers to get a better idea of who are you as a brand and therefore help you to gain their trust and ultimately their hard-earned money.

 

• Use Native Tools

Not everyone that jumps into the world of social media marketing will have the knowledge or money to invest in industry leading tools. Luckily, there are plenty of native tools to help get your started.

Once your social media marketing needs grow, it may be wise to invest in automation tools such a Buffer, Hootsuite and Owlead, but if you’re just starting out utilize Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn’s scheduling functions to make sure you are posting at the most appropriate time. It is important to note however, that some of these platforms only offer this function to business profiles so make sure you have your account set up correctly to make the most of this feature.

 

• Include CTAs in every post

If you’re a business owner looking to drive traffic to your website through social media, including a call-to-action in each of your social media posts in essential! Not only will this give your audience the opportunity to carry out your deserved action, but it will also move them away from social media and further down the funnel towards your coveted spot as paying customer!

CTAs don’t always have to be bright red buttons placed on top of a graphic. If you are looking to drive customers towards a particular landing page on your website, adding a hyperlink to the sentence “Click here to find out more” within your caption will be enough to give potential leads exactly what they need to move closer to the final checkout.

Social media marketing can be a minefield at the best of times. Something new and shiny seems to appear on each platform every second that holds the capability of going viral.

While it may seem hard to keep on top of all the latest news and updates, we’ve put together a few social media tips and tricks to help you save time and move towards your ultimate goal of social media success:

 

• Schedule your content to save time

We briefly touched on this tip in our social media marketing tips for beginners but it’s time to elaborate on it in a bit more detail. Whether you choose to rely on native tools or select an automation tool in which you can house all of your social media schedule, scheduling your content ahead of time is a sure fire way to make sure that you stay on top of your content and secure that much needed consistency.

Whether you are running social media accounts for a client or ensuring that your own business’ profiles stay consistently updated, by scheduling posts using tools you will allow yourself the opportunity to schedule days, if not weeks in advance so that you can focus on interacting with your customers and creating a strong level of customer service.

 

• Interact with followers

If you’re doing your job right, your posts should be garnering a good level of engagement with your target audience. This is where our next social media tip comes into play. When starting out or hoping to build your social media presence, simply leaving comments sit under your post is not good enough.

Social media marketing allows you to create a one-to-one conversation with your customers and prospects without having to step away from your computer scene.

Answer their questions in a timely fashion, thank them for their support and make sure that you are building a lasting relationship with them because in today’s competitive world, customer loyalty is an integral part of building a brand that lasts.

 

• Don’t be afraid to branch out

The popularity of the various social media platforms available today has a tendency to fluctuate depending on the needs of the world as a whole. That’s why it’s important to explore networks in order to ensure that your business gains its maximum reach.

Rather than just limiting yourself to Facebook or WordPress, try exploring sites such as Reddit and Medium in order to access different audiences. This doesn’t mean that you have to create entirely new content. Be smart and re-purpose the content that exists on your present platforms and adapt in order to fit the desired content on these sites demographics.

 

• Use Keywords in Your Posts

Ranking for specific keywords isn’t just limited to the confines of your blog. Using carefully chosen keywords within your social media posts helps increase your brand visibility to interested parties and your post’s organic reach.

There are many ways to help get your started. Sites such as Answer the Public and Buzzsumo are great resources which will help you find the right well-performing keywords for your business and ensure social media success.

If you’re looking for more information on how to use keywords to accelerate your social media marketing efforts, Neil Patel has published a great article with everything you need to get started.

 

• Post During Peak Hours

Every second there are, on average, 6000 tweets sent on Twitter and 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube. It can be incredibly easy to get lost among the noise so finding out the peak hours when social media users are most active and engaged will limit the chances of your posts from falling on deaf ears.

There are plenty of resources online to help you decipher when the best time to post is according to each social media platform. Our personal favourite is Sprout Social’s article, ‘Best times to post on social media for 2019’.

 

• Consider your international clients

It’s very likely that your customers don’t just speak English. In fact, in the US alone, 58 million people speak languages other than English – this is an entire market you’re potentially missing out on. Global social media isn’t easy – it’s not just about creating multiple social accounts and translating the content. It’s about thoroughly understanding how another culture consumes media, from the specific channels to the tone of voice, and cultural taboos.

Though it may sound like a hefty goal, the benefits of establishing an international social presence make this effort worth it.

As in every other area of life, various aspects of social media fall in and out of favour, depending on what the audience wants in that given period of time.

In order to stay up-to-date, we’ve put together our top picks of social media trends to watch out for – ranging from newly established ‘musts’ to those on their upward trajectory to the next hot topic:

 

• Hold a Q&A Session

One of the biggest trends present on social media today is the rise of question and answer sessions in which users can get a direct response, straight from the horse’s mouth, whether in words or via video.

Facebook Live is a great way of getting on board with this trend and is easy to do from any smartphone or device. The most important thing to do is to make users aware that this session is upcoming and promote is across all your social media channels, not just the platform you are hosting the Q&A on. 

This will not only raise awareness but also direct those who may not follow you on every platform to head over to your Facebook profile in order to get their most burning questions answered.

 

• Run Competitions

If you find that your social media posts are not producing the amount of engagement you need to meet your social media marketing goals, then one social media trend to use is to run a competition for your followers!

The prize of this competition is completely up to you but remember that it needs to be enticing enough to make people like, comment, shares…whatever it is you have asked them to do in order for them to be in with a chance to win!

 

• Be Authentic

While social media marketing is a great method with which to deploy your best tactics to get people to invest and invested in your product or services, the days of generic ‘salesy’ campaigns are well and truly behind us.

It is important when creating a social media marketing strategy for you business that you stay true to your brand identity and show authenticity within every post. Whether this is in authentic images captured by your team or the sharing of authentic stories, you need to highlight the people behind your brand in order to succeed.

• Embrace the Power of Video Marketing

While a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is said to be worth a whopping 1.8 million! Video marketing has gained some serious momentum, especially over the last 5 years, with one video holding the potential to go viral and thus change the maker’s life in the possess.

Now while there is definitely no ‘clear cut’ strategy on how to make your video reach viral heights, it is a social media marketing trend that is definitely worth investing in if you’re looking to launch your business online. There are plenty of resources on the web to help you get started and we’ve even created our own video marketing strategy resource to help you launch it all.

 

• Utilize Chatbots

We live in a world where instant messaging has brought the expectation of instant responses. And while it may not seem realistic, there are simple tactics that you can employ in order to make sure that you make the best possible impression when potential customers reach out with a query on your social media profile.

Chatbots are one of the most popular social media trends in the business world at the moment, and it’s easy to see why. 

By setting up a response that automatically sends to the customer once their message is received, this buys you some extra time to create a personalised response and create an instant good impression during those all important early stages.

 

• Account for Dual-screening

One great way to capture the attention of your desired audience on social media is to account for the growing users who are ‘dual-screening’. This is the growing tendency held by social media users to scroll through their feed while watching television; something that we have all been privy to at one time or another!

So in order to take advantage of this social media trend, thing about what your target audience are most likely to watch or do while scrolling through their newsfeed. If you are a fast food restaurant that always sees a surge in orders when the latest episode of Game of Thrones airs, then consider creating a playful Jon Snow meme that ties into your latest offers and schedule it to post during the ad breaks of the show. This will not only stop users from scrolling past your post but always make them and stop and think about their possible dinner plans!

As a small business owner, you may not have the resources or money to invest in social media marketing. That is not to say, however, that is should be pushed onto the back-burner in those crucial early stages of your small business career.

Well begun is half done, so make sure that you get off to the best possible by taking note of our top social media tips for small businesses:

 

• Use a Social Media Management Tool

Once you’ve established your social media strategy and began to build a more popular presence, one of the best pieces of social media advice we can give you is to research and invest in a reliable social media management tool. This will not only help with scheduling your post, but pretty much streamline all of your social media marketing within one easy-to-navigate interface.

In order to implement all of the social media marketing tips we have and will provide you with in this piece, without too much unwarranted stress, you will a tool such as Hootsuite, Buffer or even Hubspot depending on your budget.

A social media management tool will allow you to monitor all stages of your social media marketing efforts; all the way from research to analysis. So have a look online and do your research because there is a social media management tool to suit every need and budget.

 

• Research Your Competitors

As is the same in all areas of marketing, researching what your competitors are doing is the key to stepping up your social media game. And this doesn’t have to be limited to researching what your competitor is doing right!

Whether they are local or international competitors take a look at their social media posts across all platforms to see what they are posting and how they are differentiating their content to suit each platform. For the posts that are receiving high levels of engagement, look at the keywords and graphics they are using and see how you, as a competitor, can improve upon it and garner the attention you are looking for on social media.

 

• Conduct Social Listening

Social media marketing research goes far wider than just your competitor. After all, the beauty of social media is that you have the ability to have a one-to-one conversation (through your audience’s smartphones or computers) with your desired customers.

If your social media posts are prompting people to comment, this is the best place to start. Are you posts receiving positive or negative comments? Are people liking what they are seeing or do you need to address some issues that they have with your content?

• Showcase Good Reviews

If you are a small business owner looking to establish yourself on social media, a great tip to follow is to showcase reviews left by happy customers!

Let’s say you are a small Italian restaurant looking to bring in those all important Friday night diners. Why not showcase some of your positive TripAdvisor reviews on your Instagram account? Simply screenshot the review and post it to you account. It is important, however, that you don’t simply post a screenshot from your phone in which all of your viewers can see your battery life and unread WhatsApp messages. Use the cropping tool on your phone or laptop to isolate the review and upload it across social media to showcase your amazing services!

Bonus social media tip: Select a day of the week where you will showcase your positive reviews, every week. This will not only help you promote your business’ good reviews but also create a posting schedule that your audience will come to look forward to!

 

• Run A/B tests on your posts

A/B testing has been a long standing favourite within the marketing world when it comes to testing out various forms of content. And if you are still trying to find that sweet spot with your social media content, this is a tip that will help you increase your engagement in no time!

Let’s say you have created an awesome graphic to promote your boutique’s upcoming sale and you want to find out which call-to-action (CTA) is more effective so that you can roll it out across all platforms. 

Simply create two different posts (that includes the same eye-catching graphic), with varying captions and CTAs and schedule them to post at the exact same time, except one week apart.

Once the second post has been uploaded and left to generate some engagement, review the stats behind each one and there you have it – a definitive conclusion on which CTA or caption your social media audience preferred!

 

• Don’t sacrifice quality for quantity

There is a reason that you hear the phrase ‘quality over quantity’ over and over again within the world of social media and content marketing. That’s because quality beats quantity every single time!

In your pursuit to become the world’s next social media sensation, don’t get hung up on the need to post every day, twice a day. In the early stages of your social media marketing journey, that might not be achievement. Simple as. So rather than focus on the amount of content you churn out, take a step back and reassess the standard of the content.

Rather than posting 7 so-so images a week, why not focus on producing and posting 3 high-quality images that capture the essence of your brand perfectly? This can be scaled as your team and following grows, but for now, start small and aim big without sacrificing the quality of your content.

No matter how big or small your business may be, having a clear social media strategy removes the guesswork from your posts and allows you to easily track where things are going right and where things can be improved.

Below are some of our favourite social media tips for businesses of all sizes:

 

• Get Your Team Involved

When it comes to social media marketing tips, or business more generally, it’s all about teamwork. As we mentioned before, one of the biggest social media trends at the moment is audiences craving more authenticity from the brands that they love. One great way of giving them this is to get the people behind the scenes to get involved with the discussion online.

Whether this involved them responding to comments, hosting Q&As or showing their personality in a Facebook Live session, there are plenty of ways to get the whole team involved in your business’ social media efforts.

Not only will this help humanize your brand, but also improve employee morale as they will feel invested in your social media goals and feel that they had a part to play in the success of your strategy.

 

• Set Goals and Objectives

As is with all other aspects of your business strategy, when creating a social media marketing strategy, you need to know what you hope to achieve before you begin posting. What exactly do you, as a business, hope to achieve from building a presence of social media and more importantly, what will your audience get out of it?

Setting clear goals and objectives will not only allow you to measure the results of your social media marketing, but it will also provide you with a clear focus on how to progress. If yourself and your team go into this without clearly defining these, it will pretty much be like the blind leading the blind. By determining goals and objectives, you inform when, how and where you post on social media in order to achieve your desired results.

 

• Invest (however minutely) in Paid Promotion

Organic reach can only get you so far on social media. That is unless you become an overnight viral session – which, let’s face it, might not be on the cards at the moment. This is where paid promotion comes in to save the day.

Many people associate paid promotion with big dollar budgets and multinational companies, but this is not always the case.

Of course, big companies have extra finances to invest in international paid promotion but that doesn’t mean you can’t scale your paid promotion in order to achieve results. Facebook, for example, allows you to set a budget and target your ads so that you know that every cent of your budget is going into getting your content in front of the right people.

In you’re thinking of taking the plunge and investing in your first paid promotion campaign, Disruptive Advertising’s Getting Started with Paid Social Advertising: A Beginner’s Guide is the perfect resource to get you going.

 

• Tie Social Media into Email Marketing

If you’re someone – whether a business owner or employee – that sends a lot of emails as part of your daily interactions with clients, adding helpful links to your social media profiles as part of your email signature can be a great way to redirect traffic to your profiles and gain those all important ‘likes’ or ‘follows’.

Popular websites such as HubSpot offer email signature templates that allow you to hyperlink to your social media profiles, while also elevating the professional persona of your emails.

 

• Be Audience Focused

It goes without saying that when marketing your business or indeed yourself on social media, you need to stay true to your brand. But what is also important to remember is that if you’re not posting content that is relevant to you audience, then it’s unlikely that you will see any engagement no matter how often you post.

One of the best social media tips that we can give you is to find a way to tie the needs of your brand and your audience into your content. Perhaps you run an organic skincare brand that focuses on providing high-quality, affordable skincare to women. Posting images of your products on extravagant sports cars probably isn’t going to grab their attention – let’s be realistic. Instead focus on the natural aspects of your products, and photograph them in settings which reflect their core ingredients.

 

• Pair Google Analytics with other analytics tools

Once you’ve set your social media strategy’s main objectives, you need to be able to find out whether these goals have been met or not. And while all the major social media platforms provide analytics tools for those with business accounts, adding data from Google Analytics can help you get a better picture of how your content is performing and therefore help you adapt and improve.

Not only will you be able to see which social media platform provides you with the best overall traffic, but it will also allow you to track the conversion path of your customers so that you can create a better experience for customers coming to your website via social media.

Let’s not beat around the bush, whether you’re a business or an individual, one of the main reasons you came to this post was to find social media tips to help skyrocket your following. What is the point of posting meticulously created and planning posts when there is no one there to see it?

While a viral following is not achieved overnight, there are a few tried and tested social media tips that will help to steadily increase your following and help you achieve your ultimate goal of social media success:

 

• A picture says 1000 words

The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. So when it comes to building a following on social media, images are a must!

While you may not be in a position to hire graphic designers to create bespoke images for all of your social media marketing needs, online graphic design tools such as Design Wizard can help you create custom images and graphics that are sure to grab some of that must needed attention on social media.

• Cross promote your profiles

We previously mentioned in our social media tips for business section, that one way of driving traffic to your various social media profiles is to include relevant links in your email signature. Another great social media tip to gain followers is to cross promote your profiles.

For example, you may have a very large following on Instagram but your Twitter following pales in comparison. Why not create a graphic that includes your Twitter handle and upload it to your Instagram to drive traffic (and followers) to your Twitter profile? You can be your own biggest promoter by harnessing the power of followers who may be active across all social media platforms and therefore gain a following by offering them content that is tailored to each social media platform.

 

• Don’t be afraid to try new things

Some of the most successful brands and individuals on social media are those who continue to think outside the box and thus create one-of-a-kind content that the public had never seen before.

When it comes to gaining a following on social media, while a schedule is always a nice thing to have, your audience can be fickle and can quickly become bored of seeing the same type of content over and over again.

Switch things up every once in a while and inject an extra bit of life into your content with the unexpected. If engagement with your factual LinkedIn Articles has subsided, try creating a piece in which you tell a personal story about your entrepreneurial career. By trying new things on social media, you will eventually find a sequence that will work for both you and your followers.

 

• Stay up-to-date with the latest news

Whether it’s a Game of Thrones episode or the latest developments in the pop-culture world, staying on top of the latest news stories is an incredibly important social media tip that everyone should get on board with.

The rise of social media has also led to a constant news cycle within the aptly named newfeeds of social media users. By staying on top of the world’s latest news stories, and finding a way to tie it into the marketing of your product or service you will not only grab users attention but also open up a possible avenue towards humour which will make your content even more appealing!

Facebook has long been the bear on top of the mint when it comes to social media platforms and while other platforms such as Instagram are bringing up the rear, it is still a necessity to master when creating a social media marketing strategy.

 

• Build a Community

In a survey conducted by Hootsuite recently, they found that 200 million Facebook users are part of meaningful groups on the platform. Why? Because Facebook has always had community at the heart of its mission statement.

Step away from the business side of the platform for a second and think about why you set up your own personal Facebook account. Was it to engage with the world’s biggest brands? No. It was to connect with friends and family all over the world and in doing that, you created your own personal community on the site.

Now bring it back to business. By building a community on Facebook – whether through the creation of groups or high-engaging content – you will not only create brand loyalty, but also create a way in which users can feel like they are talking one-on-one with your and help spend the word about your brand.

• Post and Host Events

If you run a business that has a brick and mortar store, running in store events can be a great way to drum up business and get extra footfall into your store. Or perhaps you are a creative individual who attends a lot of trade shows where you sell your product. Creating an event on Facebook in which you promote your upcoming appearance will not only help provide interested users with more information but also get the message out to users who may not come across your business on a normal day.

Creating an event on Facebook is quick and easy. Simply head to your newsfeed and hit the ‘Create Event’ button and fill out all the necessary details. This event page will not only act as an invitation to users, but can also be used as a forum page in which you, the business and potential attendees, can come to post updates and questions in the lead up to the big event.

 

• Go Live

The watchtime of Facebook Live sessions has increased 4 times over between 2017 and 2018, meaning that if you are a business looking to have your voice heard on the platform, going live is great way to achieve this goal.

This method of Facebook marketing holds a wide variety of possibilities when it comes to promoting both yourself and your business. Tie it into your event marketing by streaming live from your location or use it to hold Q&A sessions where users can tune in and have their most burning questions answered live, by the people most important to your business.

• Create Custom Tabs

Once you’ve mastered the basics of Facebook marketing, it’s time to work on the user experience provided within your profile. This is where creating custom tabs comes into our social media tips.

Custom tabs can be created to sit next to your page’s ‘About’ and ‘Likes’ tabs where you can create a specific home in which specific types of content live. If you are a digital marketing agency that likes to showcase the many talents of your team, consider creating a custom tab labelled ‘Our Team’. Here you can list each member of your team, their background and their specialties. Don’t be afraid to add a fun fact or two about each member in this tab to help humanize your brand!

Twitter is an incredibly fast-paced social media platform. Millions of users log on every day to explore and voice their views on the world’s most widely debated topics, so why not utilise this momentum by harness the power of the platform with our social media tips for Twitter?

 

• Don’t be afraid to engage directly with users

While most social media tips will tell you to create content that appeals to all audiences, this is easier said than done. Preferences differ, taste change and everyone has a unique way in which they view and engage with branded content on social media.

Engaging one-on-one with followers, both old and new, is a great way to build brand awareness and ingratiate yourself to the Twitter populous.

If you see a user voicing a problem on social media that you can help in solving, why not reply to their tweet? Or better yet, send them a direct message in which you offer your assistance? Be careful how you approach this however as if a message or tweet comes off as overly ‘salesy’, it will have the opposite of its desired effect and can do more harm than good.

 

• Create Lists

Ask any successful social media marketers about their favourite social media tip for Twitter and I can guarantee you that they will come back to you with this answer: Twitter Lists are your friends!

There are no limits to how many lists you can create on Twitter, and they are a great place to start your social listening on the platform. Create a list of followers who love to retweet your content so that you can stay on top of your engagement with them or keep an eye on competitors by creating a list in which your top competition’s tweets are within easy reach.

If you’re looking for more information on how to utilise this feature in your social media marketing efforts, Post Planner have put together a brilliant post on their top recommended lists to create when starting out.

 

• Create the Right Handle

It is important to remember that Twitter is a two way street. You come to the platform to market your business and engage with followers and in turn, followers will come to your profile in order to engage with you!

This is where having an on-brand and recognisable Twitter handle comes into the equation. This social media tip should also be applied across all of your social media platforms!

If you are an individual who is trying to break into the world of social media, create a handle that is as close to your full name as possible. Similarly, if you are creating a Twitter account for your business, make sure that is can be easily recognised and associated with the registered name of your business so that customers can tweet and engage with you on the platform.

 

• Create polls to increase engagement and feedback

Whether you use this social media tip to conduct market research or simply to get your followers talking, creating a poll on Twitter can be an easy and effective way to find what you’re looking for on the social media platform.

One of the main reasons why polls see such high levels of engagement on the side of the public is because they are fast and easy to take part in. As a poll creator, you input the question along with a selection of pre-set answers of your choosing. This means that users who may be scrolling through the feed on their bus journey to work simply have to tap on the answer most applicable to them and continue on with their day.

Instagram is fast becoming business owners platform of choice when it comes to marketing and selling their product and it’s easy to see why. Instagram users, when compared to Facebook users who ‘friend’ acquaintances, are far more likely to hit the ‘Follow’ button in order to get to know brands through the content they post.

So in order to make sure you are enticing people to add you to their following list, here are some of our top social media marketing tips to use on Instagram:

 

• Don’t make the mistake of running a personal account

This may seem like an obvious Instagram marketing tip, but it is one worth mentioning for those of you who may not be familiar with Instagram and its marketing capabilities for businesses. If you haven’t already done so, switching to a business account is very easy – simply head to the setting section on your account and hit the ‘Switch to Business Account’ button.

Not only will this allow for your account to be recognised as a business on the platform but it also comes with some pretty amazing features. Promote your posts, get real-time metrics and insights on your followers, and add all the essential information (such as business hours, location and phone number) to your profile so that potential customers have easy access to everything they need.

 

• Influencer Marketing is your friend

A recent study showed that 49% of consumers turn to their favourite Influencer to seek their recommendations on social media, so with as staggering a statistic as that, it seems obvious that utilising the power of Influencer Marketing is one of today’s most popular social media tips.

This form of marketing, however, comes at a price and this is a price determined by the influencer. The likes of the Kardashian-Jenner clan have been known to charge up to $1 million dollars for a coveted spot on their recommendation list, but if you are going to harness the power of Influencer Marketing – however local – you should be willing to pay the piper in order to gain the exposure that you need.

 

• Capitalize on hashtags

While Twitter may have been the first platform to adopt the modern hashtag, Instagram has ran with the idea and it is arguably the best way to promote your content organically, if paid promotion is out of your grasp at the moment.

Using at least one popular hashtag in each of your posts – be they video or image – on Instagram has the potential of boosting your engagement by 12.6% so researching top performing hashtags in your area and industry to find the best ones for you.

Be careful not to overload your post with hashtags though, as this can be perceived as spammy and will therefore have the opposite effect on your posts.

Tools such as Later have put together handy and up-to-date guides on how to capitalize on this social media tips so make sure you bring yourself up to spend before you start.

 

• Build Strategic Alliances or Partnerships

We touched on the idea of using Influencer Marketing to help launch your business’ product or service on social media, but it also important to take a look around you – whether online or in your area – to see other non-competitors who you may be able to create a partnership with.

Forming partnerships holds the potential to create a win-win situation between two business, if done correctly. Let’s pretend that you run a business that produces organic protein bars (or maybe you already do!). One possible partnership you could create is with a popular gym or leisure centre in your area. In doing this, you could cross-promote each other’s businesses by posting photos and videos in which their top athletes are captured enjoying your protein bars, and in turn you could photograph your products throughout their gym and tag them in the post to help drive traffic to both of your profiles.

 

• Utilise Social Stories

One great way to implement one of our previous social media tips on creating authentic content is to harness the power of Instagram Stories. This ephemeral content, which was first started by Snapchat, has been quickly adapted by all the main players on social media. And it’s easy to see why!

There are many different strategies that you can use when it comes to Instagram Stories, but arguably the best and most well received by the public is to use it to show behind-the-scenes footage.

 Because this content has a capped existence of 24 hours, this gives you the freedom to experiment with what works for your brand and what doesn’t. Furthermore, if you find a rhythm that works for you, you can save the footage in your highlights section for new and old viewers to circle back to when they are looking to find out more.

Each social media platform has its own strengths and weaknesses as well as target demographic and interests. LinkedIn has long been in a league of its own when it comes to providing users with a professional space in which they can network with like-minded individuals. If you run a business that has a more corporate focus, utilising social media marketing tips for LinkedIn can help you create and maintain a professional persona.

 

• Get clients to endorse you

One great feature that LinkedIn has, that other platforms do not have is the ability to have connections endorse specifics skills outlined within someone’s profile. This feature, in itself, can act as a home for professional reviews from clients and colleagues and therefore help establish yourself as an industry leader.

If, for example, you run a Search Engine Optimization business from home and are looking to build a client list, getting former clients to endorse your skills and leave a comment will help new customers find the assurance they need to hire you. This is will also provide an opportunity for potential clients to get in contact with the reviewer to clarify any questions they have from the prospect of a paying customer that you might be not able to answer from the perspective of a service provider.

 

• Engage in Thought Leadership

LinkedIn is a great platform to create and digest various forms of thought leadership content. This is mainly done through the Article feature on the platform. This gives individual profiles, rather than company page, the opportunity to write long form content that gives detailed insights into their area of expertise and the unique perspective brought by this person to a particular industry.

Once your create an Article on LinkedIn, it is published using Pulse which is their native publishing platform that allows you to put your content in front of your audience. Publishing articles via Pulse is a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader on LinkedIn and therefore, build lasting relationships with the platform’s users.

If you’re looking for more information on how to get stuck into this aspect of LinkedIn, Neil Petal has put together an article that breaks down the feature in great detail.

 

• Don’t be afraid to engage in sales prospecting

While deploying your very best sales technique can often come across as pushy on other social media platforms, this is not the case on LinkedIn.

Rolling out a sales prospecting strategy on the platform can not only help you level up your sales techniques but also offers a great way to content with interested parties on a more personal basis.

A great way of deciding whether a person could qualify as a lead is to take a look at the vast amount of information on their profile. Connect and engage with those who you deem suitable and don’t be afraid to move this tactic into a group setting, which we will talk about in more detail later on.

For more information on how to successfully carry out sales prospecting on LinkedIn, we recommend reading Blueleadz article on the topic. 

 

• Join or create a LinkedIn Group

This next social media tip for LinkedIn can easily be tied into other tips that we previously mentioned such as thought leadership and sales prospecting. Whether you decide to set up a specialised group or take advantage of the following held by a pre-establish one, you are sure to be given the opportunity to interact with like-minded professionals looking to learn more about the world of business.

LinkedIn groups act as a shared space on the platform where professional users can come to further their knowledge base or indeed join the conversation on a particular topic. It is important to treat this area as you would any normal meeting or conference room and maintain a professional persona that people can come to respect and trust.

 

• Make sure your profile is set up – COMPLETELY!

As we previously mentioned, LinkedIn profiles hold a wide variety of information on a given individual or business and when using the social media platform to your advantage, your profile should be no exception!

Once you have set up the basics of your profile, don’t forget to add all the smaller details to it in order to establish your presence on the platform and allow for your page to be placed in the appropriate native search results. Your profile is, in its essence, your digital first impression and sales pitch to other LinkedIn users and as the saying goes – you can only make one first impression! Make sure you keep your profile updated with all your latest projects and bursting with accurate information that will help drive customers to your business’ website, if that is your goal.