26 Tips for Improving your social media marketing

Do you need to rethink your social media activity? Does your online marketing need improvement?

I will give you tips on how to give your targeted audience a new and improved experience.

If you concentrate your efforts in the right direction, positive results will soon follow. Here are some of the most effective social media marketing tips.

1. Go Audio

We’re so used to reading text and seeing images that we forget about other ways of delivering content.

In order to try out this new approach you will need a recording device and an editing program. Aim for high quality equipment and you’ll get better results every time.

You can combine traditional content with audio, by transcribing the audio files.

2. Increase Blogging Activity

Blogging is a perfect way of delivering content, and being committed to it will bring your audience back constantly.

You can choose the long-form or short-form blog, or even image-only blogs. Try out Instagram for microblogging.

The best way to make your blogging activity profitable is to make it consistent and mobile-friendly.

3. Refresh Old Content

Make the most out of your past high rated posts. Give your most popular content a fresh update and share it to all your social media channels.

Try to set a few reliable sources of information for yourself. It can be difficult, but this research will only be done once in a while. This will make it easy for you to get information fast and with little effort.

4. Use Your Community

If your business is suitable for a forum community why waste valuable information that you can get from your own audience?

Create a forum and let common questions be answered by more experienced users of your site. It will take a lot of work off your hands.

5. Reward Customer Feedback

The easiest way of making sure you get customer feedback is giving your audience a reason to deliver feedback.

Focus on what could motivate your own audience and personalize your offer. You can offer discounts, prizes or free samples.

Try out a few different options on a short term basis and find out what works best for you.

6. Rethink Photo Editing

In this era, images have to be your priority. Editing images can take up a lot of your time if you don’t find the right tools.

Even if you’re already used to using an old editing tool, take a look online and find out what’s new.

There are websites and apps that will offer excellent photo editing tools.

7. Use Infographics

Infographics are a great way of simplifying content and you want your content to be straight-forward and concise in order for it to be shareable.

Make it yourself or hire a professional. The key is to include information about your own business. The users that share your infographic will redirect traffic to your website.

If you share your own infographic, make sure it’s relevant to the content you’ve published.

8. Master the SlideShare

Slide presentations have always been a part of businesses, and usually they are very time-consuming.

If you put that much effort into a slide deck, why waste it? Upload the content to SlideShare and let it continue working for you.

You can add it to blogs, articles, and even newsletters.

9. Add the Pin It Button

Make it nearly effortless for people to share your content. Here is where the image part of your content is vital.

Users can share your post by adding your image to their Pinterest board. A Pin It button is a must!

10. Become a Customer

Although you are the person that is most in touch with your product or service, have you ever tried to put yourself in a customer’s stand point?

Look at each aspect of your business as a customer. Is your customer service good enough? Is the content that you have online reachable by your targeted audience?

Gain knowledge by being objective.

11. Don’t Stop Learning

Over the last few years, marketing has been through incredible changes. This domain will always be a challenge for those who don’t know how to adapt to new situations and environments.

Social media is all about constantly using new methods. Learn new skills by going out of your comfort zone. Try photo editing, creating audio, deliver your ideas through video content. Just try something new as often as you can!

12. Connect to Millennials

You have to realize that by now you are not only dealing with a mature audience that you grew up with, but with millennials too. These are the people that were born and raised in the easy-to-access online world. They have been exposed to new content 24/7.

You have to learn to meet their expectations. They will be very willing to let you know what they expect from your business.

Make your website mobile-friendly, work on fast response times and deliver a good navigation experience to start with.

13. Focus on Visuals

Images are your strongest tools when it comes to social media. The visual content has to catch your audience’s attention fast and it has to be share-worthy.

Use Tumblr to attract users to your text content, by making it easy for them to access your images. Work on delivering high quality visual content.

14. Encourage Content Sharing

Use your most valuable assets in order to improve your activity. There’s no one that know your business better than the people that you work with.

Your company is made up of all the effort that your staff puts into it. Use their stories and insights to create a powerful message.

Get success stories and common solutions from your customer service staff. Keep in touch with the sales department to know which product you should be focusing on. Use the closest resources that you have on hand to improve the content you want to come up with.

15. Include Added Value

Use the customer behavior in your advantage. People love getting more than what they have to pay for.

This doesn’t mean you have to use up extra resources. Come up with added value that will bring you repeat customers. You can offer ebooks that are relevant to your business, discounts or free samples.

16. Start Conversations

In a world based on communication you have the chance to directly interact with potential customers.

Find out where and how they spend their time on social media and start conversations with them. Make a Twitter list, or include more people in a Google + circle.

Read their opinions and respond with your own. Human interaction is still a must when it comes to building credibility.

17. Reassess Social Ads

Since you’ll be spending your money on social media adds you need to be sure your content reaches the right audience. Take the time to study the pros and cons of each social media channel when it comes to advertising.

The online ads world used to have Facebook as the leader, but now you have a lot of options to choose from. Options like Instagram, SlideShare and other popular platforms are great examples.

18. Collect Online Reviews

It is now easier for customers to share their reviews with all your potential customers in a specific location. The opinions that they have after dealing with your business can become public fast. Platforms like TripAdvisor and Yelp are really popular.

You can encourage customers to post reviews on these platforms. If they do make that effort for you, you should respond to their review in the friendliest way possible.

19. Be efficient on Instagram

Instagram is a great place for your social media marketing strategies to really have a positive effect. You can call to action by sharing brand photos, new offers, new products, and using relevant hashtags.

Use your presence on Instagram to bring attention to your business.

20. Log On to Snapchat

Snapchat is a very popular messaging app that can be used for dealing with customers directly. You can share company related news and offers to users that are interested.

21. Make Vines

Vines are a very cost-efficient way of advertising your products. The 30 second looping videos are the new best thing in social media. You can research how other businesses incorporated Vine into their strategy.

22. Review Your Social Media Strategy

Adaptability is all about renewing goals, and making the appropriate changes. The best social media strategy involves a lot of frequent changes.

If something doesn’t have the effects that you planned for, pull back and try again using other methods. There is no time to waste on failed attempts. Fresh content and actions will make your social media strategy effective.

23. Include Twitter in your Strategy

If you’re not a Twitter guru, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t include it in your strategy.

All you have to do is do a bit of research and learn how Twitter can help your business. The platform has advice for companies that want to use Twitter as a marketing tool. You will find all the term you need to know, and how each feature should be used for a positive outcome.

Add photos, announcements, product descriptions and others to your tweets and maintain a constant presence on Twitter.

24. Try something new

If you want to spend your money effectively, you should start with spending a bit on finding out what’s worth the investment.

Use Google Analytics to determine what works best, and what would suit your business best. An A/B testing can be your best option. You can find out what part of your content is more effective.

25. Use Geolocation Offers

Even though we are used to a boundless online world, people still want to get offers that require minimum effort. Customers will share their location in order to get offers that are relevant to their location.

Using Geolocation you can adapt your offers to reach the right audience.

26. Get on YouTube

Youtube can become one of your best ways of reaching your customers.

You have to invest in consistent content, building a channel, growing a fan base and delivering a top notch experience for the viewer.

It’s a very effective tool when it comes to making your brand popular, using a video that goes viral.

After a long read the conclusion:

You have a wide variety of platforms that you need to explore. Choose the best for your business, maximize your online exposure, and when something doesn’t work as planned, rethink and remodel your social media strategy.