6 Business Tips for Social Media Marketing

6 Business Tips for Social Media Marketing

If potential clients aren’t seeking out your online content, you’re already finished.

David Meerman Scott sold 350,000 copies of The New Rules of Marketing & PR teaching that lesson. There are too many companies on the web to rely on one-way, interruption-based marketing. You need to build organic traffic.

One of the best ways to create that traffic is through social media. These business tips for social media can help you seize some of those potential customers.

Business Tips for Social Media Depend on the Channel

The six social media business tips below will help with any campaign, but every social media channel is different. What works on Facebook or Twitter might not work on Instagram or TikTok. For that reason, it’s important to tailor any campaign to your audience and the channel, even when following these tips.

1. Think Like a Publisher

Your social media accounts should be more than a place to push out marketing blasts. You need to produce content people want to read (and share, but more on that later). Consider yourself a publisher. Entertain and inform your audience with posts that add value.

2. Post Consistently

If you’re using social media for business, you need to post often enough that people will return to your feeds. This will make you an influential voice in your area. Services like Buffer, Everypost, or Hootsuite can schedule posts in advance to streamline the process.

3. Balance Content Creation and Curation

It’s tough to post to social media often enough to boost your business if you try to write original content for each post.

Content curation, or compiling interesting content from other sources, can be a great way to keep your account active. Find informative articles that are related to your core content and pass them along with your comments or insight. But, always link to the original source and provide proper credit.

4. Add Some Eye Candy

The next social media tip for small businesses is that every one of your posts should include some visual element: a picture, graphic, or video. This can even double views in some cases.

The best thing you can do is pick an image with what David Ogilvy, the Father of Advertising, called story appeal: The image should make the reader wonder what the story is. Ogilvy increased sales for a small shirt manufacturer by picking a model with an eye patch for the ad.

5. Be Contagious

In Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Jonah Berger studied what qualities make something go viral. When it comes to social media, he found two things that lead people to share posts.

The first is practical value: People like to pass on useful information. Often that involves ways to save money, but it could also include tips on being more efficient — or an easier process for a difficult chore.

Sometimes, information alone is not enough. That is where the second factor, emotion, comes in — especially high-arousal emotions. These can be positive (awe, excitement, amusement) or negative (anger, anxiety, disgust), but such feelings make followers more likely to share content.

6. Devote the Resources

Start thinking about your social media accounts like any other asset. The content you create belongs to you forever.

However, because you will need to build a base of followers, your efforts on social media might not produce an immediate return on investment. So, whether you are opening an online store or starting a service business, you need to create a long-term plan for investing time and, potentially, money.

Commit and Start Now

Social media may seem like a massive project. You may be unfamiliar with the tools and techniques necessary for success. These business tips for social media should help, but there is still way more to learn.

Once you have some experience, check out some of our other posts if you want to enhance your social media with SEO tips or a beautifully designed website.

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