A beginner’s guide to social media marketing

By Darren Gilbert

Perhaps this is because of a lack of knowledge. It could also be due to a fear. Either way, it’s important that businesses see social media for what it is: a sales opportunity.

Choose your channels wisely

There are literally hundreds of thousands of social media platforms available to you. Fortunately, you don’t have to be on all of them. However, you do need to be on at least a few. You just need to be careful. When choosing a channel, don’t go according to the popularity but rather according to where you target audience lies.

For example, a brand that is visually-orientated should seriously consider a platform such as Pinterest or Instagram. Matthew Toren, a serial entrepreneur, writes: “When you first begin to formulate your social-media plan, you may be thinking about what outlets to get started on. However, sometimes a more important conversation to have … is which outlets to avoid.”

This is not to say that a visually-orientated brand should avoid a specific channel. However, it would be better if they focused most of their efforts on a platform that will produce the best ROI.

Optimise your social profile

After choosing your preferred channels, you need to have a look at optimising them. This is where consistency first makes an appearance. You need to consider how you want to appear to your audience.

“By optimizing your profiles you increase your chances of getting more followers and it is also a good way to boost your SEO efforts,” writes digital marketing consultant, Alex Chris. This means using a real photo (or logo), writing a proper description of what you do, and telling people what type of information you intend to share.

In doing this, you will be attached the people that you want to talk to. And isn’t that the overall purpose of using social media – engaging with like-minded people. In not optimising your profile, you are limiting your opportunities.

Consider ‘The Rule of 7’

If you’ve been in marketing for a while then you would have heard about ‘The Rule of 7’. To give a quick overview, it states that people would need to see or hear about your product/service seven times before they take any action. While this is a traditional marketing maxim, it works perfectly for social media.

Kruse Control Inc. founder Kathi Kruse explains: “Social Media affords you the opportunity to touch the customer often 7 times every day. You do that by sharing content, interacting with prospects and using specific marketing and advertising tactics to drive leads and sales.”

At the same time, social media combines the best of visual and audio, which leads to a deeper and thus richer experience for your consumer. Why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of that?

What are your thoughts? Do you have any other social media marketing tips for businesses? Tells us below.