Marketing used to be really expensive back in the day. If you wanted to promote your small business, you had to go through traditional marketing avenues, such as television and billboard advertising.
DIY Social Media Marketing for Beginners
Big brands with huge advertising budgets had no problem spending millions to run large-scale traditional media marketing campaigns but smaller businesses often suffered as they did not have the budget to advertise and promote themselves.
With the advent of social media, marketing costs have plummeted. Anyone can leverage the power of social media and launch marketing campaigns both free as well as on a small budget.
Though the days of expensive costs are pretty much over, social media marketing still has its own set of rules that you must know to take full advantage of its capabilities. Guest author Michelle Thomas shares with us key do-it-yourself (DIY) tips that will help amateur marketers learn how to effectively promote their small business through social media. Learn more about Michelle here.
Gather User Data
Creating an effective social media marketing campaign depends heavily on your audience. If you know your audience, targeting them with a campaign will be much easier. Gathering user data helps you understand who your main customers are, and knowing the things that are important to them will help you reach them effectively.
We suggest paying special attention to your key performance indicators (KPIs). Although you could gather user data manually, the most effective (and easiest) way of doing so is through the use of automatic analytics tools, such as Twitter Archivist.
Twitter Archivist helps you understand which of your posts are gaining the most engagement from Twitter users, allowing you to shape your campaign based on your posts that gained the most traction.
As you learn more about your target audience, the easier it will be to present something that they will find compelling.
Plan Your Content
As a social media marketer, your social media profiles become more than just your personal venting space. Instead of just posting whatever you feel like on a given day, it is essential to put forward a well-balanced feed to engage potential customers. There are no hard and fast rules here, but we generally recommend a blend of 60% curated content, 30% owned content, and 10% promotional content.
Since anyone can use social media to promote their brands, we must caution you to also be careful in publishing and consuming content. For example, there is a lot of online casino advertising on social media in the Canadian market. However, not all of the new online casino advertising can be trusted as some of them promote scam sites. If you are looking for a trusted casino Canada brand, we would recommend you take a few minutes to read this Yukon Gold casino review.
Social Listening
Your brand’s social media presence typically revolves around a few key things. Experts suggest steering clear of off-brand engagements as not to dilute your brand.
Research indicates that a vast majority of customer service-related tweets are negative. Stats show that 93% of customers also indicate that they want speedy responses to their complaints.
If you are a small business owner, it might be tempting to ignore these comments. But as a brand, it is essentially suicide. Your social media presence must have a way to handle customer feedback, and make your customers feel that they are being listened to.
Use tools like Google Keywords Planner to find out your customer’s pain points that you can use to improve your customer service processes.
Schedule Your Social Sharing
If you want to engage customers, you must plan out a schedule of when you post on social media.
Unlike personal accounts, where you can share anytime you want, trying to build a successful social media campaign depends heavily on reliability in the eyes of the customer. You can achieve this by developing and sticking to a sharing schedule that engages customers while making progress on your brand goals.
Prepare for Paid Social Media Advertising
While free social media marketing is possible, its ceiling is quite low. If you wish to bring your brand to the next step, you must prepare to spend for social media advertising. As your brand grows, you will have to spend money to continue to grow. Spending money vaults your brand above other brands that try to keep their social media costs at a minimum.
Conclusion:
One of the key aspects of running a successful social media marketing campaign on your own is to not get bogged down. Pick one platform at a time and learn how to effectively use it to market your brand. Start with a small advertising budget if you are going with paid advertising and test different campaigns. Repeat the same strategy for the next social media platform you want to use.
