Five top tips for social media marketing

Here are five top tips we recommend following to increase your social media engagement and achieve business growth:

1. Planning is essential 

   To get the most out of social media, you need to identify what you want to achieve. Set yourself SMART targets and conduct some basic social media research to get a feel for what works and where the gaps are. Planning beforehand also allows you to condense the content and make it audience specific. You should also plan and evaluate which social media platforms you are going to use, as not all social media will be beneficial to your business. Does your target audience use Twitter, or are they more interested in video content on YouTube? 

2. Consistency is key 

   Make sure to keep your posts consistent and consider planning how often you are going to post on social media. Scheduling your posts will help keep your feed up to date, and the more regularly you post the better engagement you'll receive from your followers!

3. Adapt to each social media platform 

   Each social media platform is different. Tailor your content for each platform to suit the different needs of your audiences. For example, keep tweets short and snappy, while LinkedIn posts should be longer and more conversational.

4. Include a variety of content 

   Alongside making sure your content is relevant to your business, you should also include a variety of content in your social media posts. Your followers will want to know what you have achieved and what you are working on, so talk about it.  Also, ensure you are ‘on topic’ if there is something big happening in your business sector e.g. in the news / an awareness day etc then be sure to acknowledge it.

5. Engage in social media conversations 

   You should monitor and respond to any social media conversations from clients and prospective customers engaging with your business. More than 80 percent of customers expect a business to reply within 24 hours of a posting on social media. Meet these expectations. You need to show the audience you are interested and value them!  

6. Measurement and monitoring

   Measuring and monitoring your posts and tweets will help optimise your content in the future. Identify which posts performed well and were the most interesting for your audience, as well as content that didn’t achieve good engagement, to help you recognise popular content topics within your industry!