Around 59% of the global population is on social media. That's roughly 4.59 billion people glued to their phones, tapping through Instagram Stories, scrolling down Facebook feeds, and sending countless DMs.

Now, imagine if you closed 4.59 billion deals.

Where would you be after you shipped your last order? Probably, somewhere up there with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates — enjoying your riches.

While it's unlikely that marketing your brand on social media will get you that far, at least in the humble stages of starting out. There are still plenty of opportunities that social media marketing opens up to small and large businesses alike.

Read this article to find out why you should add social media marketing to your marketing strategy. Learn 13 actionable social media marketing tips to boost your business growth.

  • Why Is Social Media Marketing Important? 🎯
  • 13 Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips 📈
  • How To Develop Social Media Design Aesthetics For Your Brand 🎨
  • How To Keep Your Social Media Designs Branded And Consistent 🏷️
  • Social Media Design Trends To Incorporate In Your Marketing Strategy 🖌️
  • Ensuring Your Social Media Marketing Is Consistent ⚖️
  • Important disclosure: we're proud affiliates of some tools mentioned in this guide. If you click an affiliate link and subsequently make a purchase, we will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you (you pay nothing extra). For more information, read our affiliate disclosure.

    Why Is Social Media Marketing Important? 🎯

    It's no secret that social media marketing can be quite a challenge.

    The real world is far from Netflix specials, where the most minor, mundane things can make you go viral and get millions of "hits" overnight.

    Yes, who knew that the TV show Emily in Paris did, in fact, lie to us? Snapping random things at random times can only get you so far in the real world.

    To boost your business's online presence and establish your brand on social media, you need to develop a robust marketing strategy, formulate your unique selling position (USP), find an aesthetic reflective of your business's nature, and more!

    Social media marketing requires undivided attention and plenty of expertise on your side. You have to keep up with all the latest trends, adapt them to your business, and be flexible within your social media marketing strategy.

    Nonetheless, despite being a laborious process, marketers worldwide agree that social media is essential for their business success and see social media marketing as one of the top strategies for business growth.

    • Over 63% of American business consumers say that certain brands who possess a social media marketing strategy led them to purchase a product/service.
    • Within the US, 66% of small business owners use Facebook as a social media  marketing tool and 42% said YouTube was their platform of choice.
    • In 2021, Fortune 500 enterprises used at least one social media platform to promote their business and nurture positive communication with stakeholders. Posting by these companies increased by 200%.

    It's undeniable that social media marketing is a must — majorly due to the numerous benefits it brings to those who ace it. Let's examine some of the most prominent advantages of embracing social media marketing.

    It Helps Increase Brand Awareness

    According to studies, consumers are more likely to buy from the brands they recognize. Social media gives you a chance to build your brand and introduce your business to a larger audience.

    Every time you hop on a social media trend, try publish a viral post that features a logo or target your audience with ads, you get more eyes on your brand this way. 👀

    It Differentiates You From Your Competition

    Social media marketing allows you to stand out from the crowd even if the product or service your business offers isn't drastically distinct from the products or services your competitors offer.

    📢
    Social media provides a platform to tell your story and humanize your brand. 

    You can share valuable content, create stunning visual content, or startle your audience with impeccable storytelling skills — just put a name to a face to make your brand more powerful and memorable.

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    As a result, your brand will be the first to pop up in a customer's mind when they face a problem your product helps solve.

    It Establishes A More Robust Connection With Your Target Audience

    Even though social media is a powerful marketing tool, you need to remember that it originated as a channel that allows people to connect.

    Hence, one of the most significant benefits of social media marketing is that it can help you build a community around your brand.

    🧑‍💻
    Social media marketing helps brands establish a two-way conversation between the brand and its target audience. 

    By responding to comments, initiating conversations, and publishing content that drives discussions, businesses get to interact with their audience and, therefore, foster brand loyalty.

    Every interaction with your target audience helps you learn more about their preferences, current wishes, and challenges. However, even without actively engaging with your audience, you can still get to know them a little better.

    One of the most common social media strategies is social listening — you tap into social media user conversations around specific topics and monitor what they talk about daily.

    As a result, you can identify what's important to your audience, which trends they follow, and how they perceive specific sociocultural changes.

    It Establishes Your Thought Leadership

    You can leverage social channels to showcase your industry expertise and establish yourself as a thought leader.

    To do that, you need to enrich your social media content plan with thought leadership pieces: offer valuable insights, publish evergreen content, share expert commentary on current industry news, etc.

    It Boosts Sales

    All the benefits mentioned above of social media marketing lead to this one. When consumers know about your brand, differentiate it from the competition, have a robust relationship with it, and recognize it as one of the best in the industry, they're bound to make a purchase when the time comes.

    🛒
    In fact, according to the 2021 Sprout Social Index™, 90% of consumers will purchase from a brand they follow on social media.

    But there's more to it! Some social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow users to make purchases directly from the platform. Social media channels can provide additional marketplaces for your brand's products and services.

    Nonetheless, you must remember that you won't be able to leverage all the benefits of social media marketing without a well-developed marketing strategy.

    Below, we've compiled a list of 13 essential social media marketing tips that will help you excel at social media marketing, as well as be among the businesses that enjoy the high ROI of it.

    13 Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips 📈

    In the previous section, we discussed the different benefits social media marketing can bring your business.

    However, it would be best to direct your social media marketing efforts toward achieving a specific goal. Otherwise, you're bound to spread yourself too thin and fail to achieve significant results.

    Hence, the first tip is to take a goal-oriented approach to social media marketing.

    There are many different goals effective social media marketing can help your business achieve. Let's look at the most common thereof.

  • Increase Your Brand Awareness
  • Drive Website Traffic
  • Acquire More Leads
  • Increase User Engagement
  • Improve The Quality Of Customer Service
  • Generate Additional Conversations Around Your Brand
  • Gain A Better Understanding Of Your Customers
  • Get To Know Your Audience
  • Choose The Right Social Media Platform Mix
  • Know The Nature Of Your Business
  • Observe Competitors
  • Align Your Social Media Goals With The Opportunities Different Platforms Offer
  • Pay Close Attention To Your Social Media Design
  • Increase Your Brand Awareness

    This social media marketing goal involves increasing your brand visibility and publishing content where your target audience will see it.

    Some potential KPIs and metrics to track include:

    • The number of followers your social media account gathered
    • The total number of social media users that interact with your content on a daily/weekly/monthly basis
    • The number of shares and mentions your content gets

    Drive Website Traffic

    Social media platforms are an excellent medium for driving traffic to your website, blog, or any other online page.

    Promoting your website, either with your own team or with the addition of influencers, your social media publications can shorten the sales cycle, increase conversions, and improve your website's performance in the SERPs.

    Some potential KPIs and metrics to track include:

    • The volume of website traffic referred from social media sites (social traffic)
    • Percentage of overall traffic from social media
    • The bounce rate of social traffic

    Acquire More Leads

    You can also use social media marketing to increase your business's sales opportunities. If that's your goal, you'd have to focus all your social media marketing efforts on converting your audience from bypassers into followers and leads.

    🥇
    The great thing about social media platforms is that it allows you to shorten the sales cycle and get your lead's contact information earlier on in the process.

    Some potential KPIs and metrics to track include:

    • Number of new contacts added to the contact database from social media
    • Downloads of gated content from social media links

    Increase User Engagement

    Another common goal many marketers aim to achieve is increased user engagement. Marketing professionals strive to make their target audience more interested in the brand's content on social media, encouraging them to interact with publications by liking, sharing, and commenting.

    Some potential KPIs and metrics to track include:

    • The number of likes, shares, and comments publications gets
    • The engagement rate of certain publications by tracking time, referrers, languages, devices, and locations using link shorteners.

    Improve The Quality Of Customer Service

    Social media channels are a great way to communicate with your customers and deliver stellar customer service that's quick, relevant, and personalized.

    Thanks to social media, you can shorten your time to respond to your customers' queries and tackle their problems more efficiently.

    Some potential KPIs and metrics to track include:

    • The time it takes to respond to customer messages
    • The number of complaints or concerns received via social media
    • Your Net Promoter Score (NPS)

    Generate Additional Conversations Around Your Brand

    There are specific types of products and services that can only thrive when they receive a fair share of word-of-mouth marketing. Luckily, social media platforms facilitate that.

    With some extra effort put into generating (positive) conversations around your brand and the products you offer, you'll manage to get more eyes on yourself and boost your sales.

    Some potential KPIs and metrics to track include:

    • The number of people mentioning your brand or the products you offer
    • The number of people publishing posts in your social media communities
    • The number of reviews your products or services receive on social media platforms

    Gain A Better Understanding Of Your Customers

    Finally, use social media marketing to learn more about your target audience. Through social media marketing efforts, you can find the topics your audience cares about, the types of content they respond best to, and the unresolved problems they struggle with.

    By experimenting with your social media content and interacting with your audience directly, you can better understand who your audience is and what they want from a brand like yours.

    How to Set Marketing Goals | SMART Goals Explanation

    Marketing goals and objectives are the guidelines that drive everything you do in your strategy. Once you've figured out what goals you want to achieve, you can craft campaigns with the intention of hitting your targets.

    Regardless of the specific set of social media marketing goals you go for, you need to remember that you have to keep your goals:

    • Specific
    • Measurable
    • Attainable
    • Relevant, and
    • Time-bound

    So, instead of setting a social media marketing goal like this:

    Get more people to like my Twitch Streams!

    It would help if you opted for something like this:

    Increase the brand's Instagram Stories engagement rate by 20% by the end of Q2 2023.

    And remember, according to studies, marketers who write down their goals are 30% more likely to achieve them. So, ensure you put your social media marketing goals and the other business objectives down in your marketing plan.

    Get To Know Your Audience

    If you fail to base your social media strategy around your target audience, everything you do will be in vain.

    After all, your target audience affects everything, from the mix of social networks you should choose to establish your social media presence to the content you should craft and share.

    Hence, before you build a social media marketing strategy, you first need to identify your social media target audience — the group of potential customers on social channels that you want to appeal to — and get to know them better.

    Your social platform target audience can be based on demographics such as age, job title, income level, education, location, or behavior.

    Here are several questions to answer about your target audience on social channels:

    • How old are they? Where are they from?
    • What are their key pain points? What challenges do they face on a regular basis?
    • Where do your ideal customers spend time online? How vast is their social media presence — how many social media accounts do they have? Are they a part of any online communities, e.g., Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups, Slack Communities, etc.?
    • When are your ideal customers most active on social networks?
    • How do they use different social networks?
    • What content types do they enjoy the most? What types of content are they less susceptible to?
    • Who do the members of your target audience trust on social media? Do they follow influencers? Do they follow brands?

    There are different ways in which you can acquire this necessary information about your social platform target audience:

    • Survey your audience.
    • Partake in online conversations (online communities, social media platforms, forums) that feature your target audience.
    • Engage with your target audience by responding to comments on your social profile or other profiles that have a similar target audience.
    • Collect feedback.

    Choose The Right Social Media Platform Mix For Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

    Only a few social media networks can boast a user base of over 1 billion people. However, the overall number of social networking sites and apps available on the market is much greater than that. There are currently over 150 social media sites you can join as an individual or a brand.

    Obviously, it would be a disaster to add all of them to your social media marketing plan 🤯.

    Not only would your social media marketers need more original content to share across all channels, but they'd also need more time to run all of those pages, regardless of how well they automate the process or how advanced their social media management tools are.

    📱
    So, it would be best if you responsibly approached the question of choosing the right platforms for your social media marketing mix.

    Once you understand who your target audience is, what they like and dislike, and where they hang out online, you should have a faint idea of the social media platforms that would be a good fit for you and those that wouldn't.

    Know The Nature Of Your Business

    Remember that some social media platforms are better suited for B2B brands (for instance, LinkedIn), and some — are for B2C or C2C brands.

    For example, if you're a B2B SaaS company, it's best to embrace LinkedIn marketing.

    At the same time, if you're a fashion designer or a business in the food industry, you might have much better luck on platforms known for their focus on visual content — Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok.

    Similarly, you need to understand that different platforms have different vibes. If you match the vibe of the platform you choose, if you have an ill-fitting tone of voice for the environment surrounding your brand, then you might only perform as well if you choose a better-fitted social networking site.

    Observe Competitors

    Considering the popularity of social media marketing, it's likely that your competitors are already out there engaging in various social media activities.

    It would help if you caught up.

    Research your competition, and see which social media platforms they're registered on and which ones they utilize on a regular basis. Then, analyze their social profile to understand their content mix better — do they share long-form posts or only focus on short-form ones?

    How many content formats do they produce? How do they interact with their audience?

    Make a note of what works well and what doesn't. Scale the social efforts that perform well and avoid the negatives.

    Align Your Social Media Goals With The Opportunities Different Social Media Platforms Offer

    Earlier in the article, we discussed all the different business goals you can achieve through social media marketing. The trick is to pick the most appropriate channel to facilitate all your aspirations.

    For instance, if you want to improve your brand awareness and increase your reach, you might want to create a profile on a platform with native algorithms that allow you to get loads of exposure, e.g., TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.

    If your primary goal is to boost sales, consider Instagram and its Shoppable Instagram posts or Facebook and its Facebook Marketplace, where you add your bestselling products.

    If you want to improve the quality of your customer service, choose Twitter (the most popular platform for customer support) or messengers like Facebook Messenger or WeChat.

    Pay Close Attention To Your Social Media Design

    Another thing that determines whether or not your social content will be a success is the looks. Social media marketing experts claim that the design of your social media publications can drastically increase your engagement rate and how your content performs online.

    But that's granted; you play your design card right.

    There are three crucial design-related social media marketing tips.

    1. You need to develop social media aesthetics that reflect your brand's values.
    2. Once you develop an aesthetic, you must stick to it and keep all the content on social media branded and design consistent.
    3. You need to be wary of social media design trends and allow for variation in your designs to accommodate them.

    Now, let's look at the above three social media design tips in more detail.

    How To Develop Social Media Design Aesthetics For Your Brand 🎨

    You need to cover several bases to find your brand's "true colors," a visual identity that would look good on social media and resonate with your target market.

    First, consider everything you associate with your brand: key adjectives, colors, imagery, and the rest. Compose it all into a mood board to bring order to your aesthetics.

    Consider Your Target Market

    How do they perceive the world? What kind of aesthetics do they love the most? Do your selected colors and visuals have any underlying connotations for your target audience?

    Consider The Social Media You Chose For Your Social Efforts

    You need to take their aesthetics into account, too.

    For instance, if your go-to social network is Facebook, you may favor warmer colors like reds, oranges, and violet so that your Facebook Stories, posts, and covers don't blend in with the environment.

    When developing an aesthetic for your Instagram account, ensure you add blue to the color palette — blue performs 24% better on this visual social media network than reds and oranges.

    If you're looking for Twitter social media marketing tips, you should know that this platform's most commonly used colors are yellow, black, and blue.

    How To Keep Your Social Media Designs Branded And Consistent 🏷️

    The easiest way to keep your social media designs branded is by: Incorporating your brand kit elements, such as brand logo, brand colors, brand fonts, etc., into your social media designs.

    Then, whenever your followers scroll through their social media feed or tap through Instagram Stories or Facebook Stories, they'll instantly recognize your brand among other publications.

    📣
    Similarly, if your content goes viral, a watermark or brand logo can bring your brand some extra exposure and increase brand awareness.

    Another thing that can come in handy is rubricating your social media content and creating a separate reusable design template for each rubric. For instance, a different template for promotional videos, user-generated content, evergreen educational content, and memes.

    These examples by @bubblegumfringe are a good example:

    Social Media Design Trends To Enhance Your Social Media Marketing Strategy 🖌️

    However, it's also essential to remember that social media is a fast-paced, continuously changing environment. The trends and preferred aesthetics of the social media user base rapidly shift from one thing to another.

    To stay relevant, you should recognize those changes promptly and adapt your visual content to current standards.

    For instance, the three hottest social media design trends of 2023 (expected to roll into 2024) are:

    Y2K Aesthetics

    For the third year in a row, people remain extremely nostalgic for the early 2000s and the late 90s. Therefore, the design elements intrinsic to these eras top social media design trend charts.

    Here are some of the most prominent colors, objects, and motifs of this trend:

    • Sparkles, glitter, and bedazzled borders
    • Bubblegum colors
    • Butterfly, heart, and star accents
    • 3D effects
    • Computer glitches, old-school software visuals — the so-called vaporwave
    • Large, chunky, bold, inflated fonts

    Futurism And 3D Imagery

    While fans of Y2K aesthetics time-travel to the past with their social media designs, futurism enthusiasts draw inspiration from... You guessed it, the future!

    Since one of the hottest sociocultural trends of 2022 and 2023 is the rise of the Metaverse, we'll be seeing a lot of NFT-like designs on social media in the years to come.

    Some of the most notable elements of this trend include:

    • Metallics
    • 3D shapes
    • Chromatic, holographic finish
    • Bold fonts

    Trendy (Maga) Zine

    Another easy-to-follow and easy-to-use social media design trend is the trendy zine.

    Its popularity is its versatility — it doesn't have any strict rules you need to follow, just several signature elements and components that recreate the look of an artsy printed zine online.

    Here's what the trend comprises:

    • Neon–pastel colors
    • Wild, funky shapes
    • Playful fonts
    • Unexpected combinations of objects and stickers
    • Contrasting hues

    You can add trendy zine elements to both static and video content:

    Here's the catch with trendy designs though, every year, there are at least a dozen social media design trends.

    Sometimes, they contradict each other; sometimes, they are fleeting tendencies that go out of style in a season or two; and sometimes, they are the opposite of the social media design aesthetic your brand is known for. So, there's no need to hop on every viral trend.

    Choose the ones that both you and your target market like best, don't replicate the trend exactly (you can only borrow some of its signature elements), and incorporate it into parts of your social media content plan (for instance, Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories, but not feed posts).

    Ensuring Your Social Media Marketing Is Consistent ⚖️

    Take a minute and imagine the following scenarios:

    Scenario #1:

    You're going on a date with the love of your life, and you must find the perfect place for dinner. You want to surprise your loved one with a lowkey local place that serves authentic dishes and marvelous wine.

    And — of course — since it's a romantic date, you want the atmosphere of the evening to be just right.

    After a couple of hours of continuous searching, you find a place that looks perfect. You hop on Instagram to check out their page, only to find that they have about 100 followers, and the last time they published a post was nearly a year ago.

    Scenario #2:

    Several months ago, you were heavily into modern art. So, naturally, you followed your local modern art gallery on Facebook (and even joined their Facebook Group!) to learn more about the subject and stay up to date with the latest exhibitions in your area.

    Unfortunately, the Facebook group and the page have been silent. When they finally posted, you could barely remember who they were and why you followed them in the first place.

    Scenario #3:

    Your boss asked you to cover for your colleague from the Social Media Marketing team, so you found the most helpful Instagram page dedicated to social strategy and social media tips and followed it without any hesitation.

    For a while, they were releasing 1-2 posts covering social media marketing tactics every couple of days, and you were more than fine with it.

    Then, suddenly, your feed got flooded with various social content publications about everything and anything, from social media advertising to email list building.

    So, you likely end up feeling annoyed, frustrated, or straight-up angry in all three scenarios mentioned above.

    Why? Because there needed to be more consistency in the business's social media publishing schedule.

    📰
    It's essential that you figure out the appropriate number of publications to make every week — this will differ among different post types and across different social media.

    On top of that, you should also find the most popular posting times and stick to publishing when there's the highest chance of people seeing your content.

    Now, there are some things you need to consider that will help you along the way:

    Different Social Networking Platforms Have Different Algorithms

    You must ensure you know the most popular posting times for each social platform to which you'll be scheduling content. The best time to post on TikTok will differ from the best time to post on Facebook.

    Take Time Zones Into Consideration

    Ensure you know where your audience resides and adapt the best posting times to their realities. This is particularly important to remember when you're using a scheduling tool.

    Remember That The Most Popular Posting Times Are Not Always Popular For Your Brand

    You need to leverage your social media's built-in analytics tools to see when your followers are active users. For instance, Instagram's social media analytics page provides insight into the most popular days and hours for sharing content.

    To make sure you never go a day without sharing content online (unless otherwise dictated by your social media content calendar), consider crafting a series of publications and scheduling content in advance.

    Some platforms offer built-in scheduling functionality, but if you want to keep everything organized in one place, we recommend using a scheduling tool.

    The following five points are also important to keep in mind when developing a successful social media marketing strategy:

    1. Develop A Diverse Content Plan For Your Social Media Marketing

    Once you master the art of scheduling publications ahead, it's time to develop a balanced social media content calendar.

    The post types will majorly depend on the social media site you choose to market your business on — some platforms can boast more content formats, while others only focus on a few key ones.

    However, if your social media site allows publishing video content — either long-form or short videos — make sure you take advantage of it.

    According to statistics from Oberlo, 54% of consumers want to see more video content from the business or brand they support.

    On top of that, 86% of marketers regard video as a powerful marketing tool with a satisfactory ROI, bringing 66% more qualified leads per year.

    (null)

    Learn everything about video marketing best practice with this bumper guide. We cover everything from defining your audience to creating and distributing content.

    ➡️ Learn more about video marketing and the tools needed to master it in this article.

    So, suppose you want to boost your business's sales via social media marketing. In that case, one of our top social media marketing tips is to double on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube efforts.

    At the same time, you shouldn't limit yourself to just one type of content — even if it's video content — it's likely to bore your followers and stall your brand's growth online.

    Explore all the possibilities of your chosen social media network and alternate between different formats in the social media calendar.

    Here are some of the best-performing content types on social media:

    For example, if you're marketing your brand on Instagram, you should spice up your social media content calendar with the following content formats:

    Instagram Reels

    Instagram Posts (Carousel & Single Posts)

    Instagram Stories
    Instagram Lives

    Every single post you put out there will fall under one of the four core categories.

    To keep your social media calendar valuable, you need to balance between the four core content types and offer a fair share of each.

    Here are some of the content ideas for each of the content types:

    Promotional Content

    Product in action, promotional videos, information about new product lines, product updates, reviews and testimonials, flash sales, use cases, etc.

    Educational Content

    How-tos, listicles, thought leadership pieces, checklists, white papers, etc.

    Inspirational Content

    Before and afters (with your product presented as the solution to the problem), inspirational quotes, and your business's steps towards achieving its brand mission.

    Entertaining Content

    Relatable quotes, social media games, memes, jokes, etc.

    To ensure you always have topics to cover, create a backlog of ideas for social content you could refer to when going through a creative drought.

    2. Humanize Your Brand

    Another type of content you need to make room for in your social media calendar is the content that humanizes your brand, allows you to connect with your audience on a deeper level, and makes your brand more relatable.

    Now, you can take many steps to "humanize your brand."

    • You can develop an online (and soon — an offline) community around your brand.
    • You can focus on engaging with your followers and building lasting relationships with them.
    • You can foster your brand voice and add more and more personality traits to it along the way.
    • You can put a face to a name and show off your team.
    • You can share behind-the-scenes content and let your audience take a peek at how things are done at your company.

    Here's a helpful infographic with content ideas for social media if you need some inspiration!:

    If you choose to take your audience backstage, you can do so via Instagram, Facebook Stories, or Instagram or Facebook Live.

    In fact, social media live streaming is great for humanizing your brand.

    Since everything on Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook Live happens — well — live, the audience resonates with it on a deeper level as it sees the live content as more genuine.

    📅
    So, don't underestimate the power of social media live streaming, and come up with several enjoyable live stream ideas you could spice your social media calendar up with.

    Another minor thing that can significantly impact how your audience sees your brand is whether or not you use emojis.

    As straightforward as it might seem, using funky emoticons (where appropriate) can drastically change your audience's perception of you. See? 😉

    The trick here is that emojis help your followers to interpret your messages better. You have to agree with us on this one; there's a difference between:

    • This is a disaster! 😂😅
    • This is a disaster! 😡🤬

    3. Engage With Your Audience To Build A Dialogue Between Your Brand And Your Followers

    Make sure to keep your social media marketing social. There's no point in scheduling content your audience won't engage with.

    Many things can help you establish a dialogue between your brand and your followers:

    • Publish discussion-evoking content: Share controversial opinions, ask your followers for their thoughts on something, and start conversations that are only vaguely related to your niche or industry.
    • Encourage your followers to message you via direct messages. Not only does contacting your followers via DMs give you more control over where the conversation goes, but it also signals to the social media where the conversation is taking place that your profile is of interest to your target audience.
    • Prompt your audience to share their experiences with your brand in the comments section.
    • Ensure you respond to every comment under your publications.
    • Engage in social listening and tap into conversations elsewhere on social media — if you leave an interesting and valuable comment, it can help you grow followers!

    4. Make Use Of User-Generated-Content

    Don't forget the power user-generated content (UGC) holds — it can make or break your brand online.

    According to studies, consumers are 2.4x more likely to say that UGC is more authentic than branded content.

    The truth is that people trust people. So, when your followers see a consumer like themselves recommend your products or share their positive experience with your brand, they're more likely to believe it and become interested in purchasing whatever you offer.

    Et voila!

    So, definitely make sure you include UGC in your social media calendar.

    There are many ways in which you can acquire user-generated content:

    • Run contests
    • Repost every Instagram or Facebook Story that tags your account
    • Regularly share your customers' photos on social media
    • Start a rubric that features customer reviews and testimonials

    5. Analyze Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

    Finally, remember that social marketing isn't a set-it-and-forget-it type of process.

    You should constantly pay attention to your content strategy, check whether it's still well-aligned with your business goals, and ensure your audience finds your content valuable.

    Turn checking social media analytics into a habit — you can either do so separately for each platform you run an account on or use dedicated social media management tools.

    Then, spot the trends, and identify the strongest social media marketing tactics you should scale and the processes that need to be revised.

    All in all, tweak your strategy following your findings.

    Key Takeaways

    Now, after thirteen social media marketing tips later, you should have a better understanding of what your social media strategy should look like to boost your business online.

    Your content should be goal-oriented, led by in-depth target audience research and popular posting times, aided with high-quality targeted social media tools, and a robust content mix.

    Now, plot twist! Everything we discussed in this article is merely tips for organic growth on social media. Once you master those — granted that you have a social media budget — you can try tread the waters of paid social media advertising.