Social Media Marketing: An art within an art

Reputation Defender
4 min readJun 12, 2017

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Featured Image courtesy of Alok Sharma at Pexels.com

It’s important to make it clear that social networking is no longer just a way to connect with your friends. At present, all the social networks that make up the social media are not only the main means of communication, but they have become one of the best marketing tools to attract more visitors to websites and apps, to retain customers, and to increase sales of any type of business.

One of the great advantages of social media marketing is that the costs are much lower than the advertising made through traditional methods. You will need time, knowledge and strategies, but you can plan and execute your campaigns from a simple computer, from anywhere, and with less operating costs. Here are some useful tips for your social media marketing.

The first thing you should do is choosing the most appropriate social network. Be strategic, because each social network has a different audience and their users have different purposes when they access them. This is perhaps the most important tip you should take into account when advertising on social networks since by doing this you will specify your possibilities of action when deciding what the pitch will be, and this will save you a lot of time and energy. So, depending on your type of business or the medium with which you want to generate income (a website, an app, a blog, an online store …) you must choose a social network (or some of them, if this is the case.)

The second thing you should consider is to always include specific hashtags for your audience. In case you do not know them yet, a hashtag is a tag which is used to mention photos or quotes which are published so that other people get interested and can find them easily. It really works as a link inside the social media. Hashtags are used by putting a number sign before the word or sentence you want to write. For example, if you upload a photo of your child’s birth, some hashtags you could use are #father, #proudtobeadad, etc. If you include appropriate hashtags in your updates, you can reach several new customers interested in your products or services.

Read also: Content Marketing: Boost your SEO by implementing these basic tips, by ReputationDefender

The key is to use words that describe not only your business or the image you have posted but also keywords that usually have a large number of searches related to your niche. Once you find around ten and twenty popular hashtags related to your business, point them out on one sheet and do not forget to include a couple of them in all of your posts.

Third, remember to post visual content. It is the best way to promote your brand. Although the text is still important, there is nothing better to promote your brand than publishing impactful content, and really the visual elements are one of the best ways to get it when it comes to social networking. Make sure your posts on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram are accompanied by a good picture that triggers curiosity among your audience or to make them laugh.

Videos are also an excellent option. By uploading brief, compelling videos about what your brand is offering, the odds of capturing your audience’s attention will grow significantly. In the videos, introduce yourself to your followers, tell them who you are, who is behind all that work, and what goals you have as an entrepreneur. Users like to know that someone like them is struggling to excel.

Image Courtesy of Kivi Leroux Miller at Flickr.com

Fourth, never forget to encourage your users to share your content. There’s no better way to advertise on social networks than by encouraging your fans to share your posts with their friends in exchange for giving them a small reward (a webinar, an eBook, etc.) Big companies know this: The best advertising is the direct recommendation of consumers to potential consumers. If you get them to share your content (because it is fun, or because they captivate the public’s attention for any other positive virtue,) you already have a lot of ground won for sure.

Finally, it is essential to repost your content frequently. The reason for it is that because social networks are growing every day, since the number of registered users increases, it is harder to be noticed among the whole virtual crowd. The amount of information that arrives at the feed of each user is very difficult to process, so identify the highest traffic moments of your audience and regularly replace your content. Never post once, because your content will be lost in an ocean of ads, memes and friend requests.

Think that perhaps if you post a news or a new product on Facebook one Monday morning, thousands of users will simply ignore such content because they will be very busy having a coffee before getting ready to work. However, if you re-share the same content on a Wednesday afternoon, your post will have greater visibility.

Good luck!

Recommended: 10 Standout Social Media Marketing Examples From 2016

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