Category: Blog

Social media is an exciting, bustling, and extremely competitive landscape. As marketers, we constantly push ourselves to create a social media marketing plan that delivers exceptional results.

Why does social media occupy such an important place when it comes to marketing?

That’s because 58.4% of the global population uses social media according to a Hootsuite survey. And these users spend nearly 2 and half hours on social media every day, making it a great place to engage with them.

Image via Hootsuite

That’s why brands have moved from asking ‘why do we need social media marketing?’ to ‘how can we leverage social media to strengthen our social media marketing funnel?’

The answer lies in creating a strong social media marketing plan to reach your audience.

In this post, I am listing down 10 expert-recommended steps to create an effective plan to get you started in the right direction.

Let’s get rolling.

Top 10 Steps to Create an Effective Social Media Marketing Plan

You can leverage the power of social media if you equip yourself with the right strategies and tools. Here are the 10 steps I would highly recommend to build your social media strategy and grow your brand with it.

1. Assess Your Current Social Media Presence

To create a good social media marketing plan, you need to begin by assessing your present position. The first task on your hands is to audit your business’s social media presence.

Some of the important elements to take into consideration are:

• Are your social media profiles fully optimized?
• Which social media channels are you active on?
• How successful are you on each channel?
• How successful have your previous social media campaigns been?

When your results and goals for the previous years are aligned together, you get a clear idea of where you stand and what you need to do to create a good social media marketing plan to grow further.

2. Understand Your Audience

Your audience base is made up of different groups and before you create a social media marketing plan, it is vital to gain a good understanding of your audience.

Gather all the customer data that you can and analyze it to create your ideal audience personas. Some of the vital details you should gather include:

• Age
• Location
• Frequently visited social media channels
• Preferred content types
• Pain points
• Job title
• Income
• Purchase behavior

There are several tools that can help you better understand your audience, especially if you’ve got a B2B business.

When you have accurate audience personas in your hand, you can create more targeted social content and powerful marketing campaigns to engage them.

Get that thing right and you can create a strong social media marketing plan that can assure great ROI.

3. Determine Your Social Media Marketing Goals

Now that you know who you are targeting, the next question you need to ask is, “what do I want to achieve with my social media marketing plan?”

You should focus on setting SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Your social media marketing goals should also correspond to your business objectives.

If you want to grow your brand, for instance, your goal would be to build brand awareness. But if you specifically want to generate leads, you should create a social media marketing plan to boost lead generation.

Broader goals can further be divided into more specific campaign goals with specific KPIs. This can help you track the progress of your campaign too.

4. Evaluate Your Competition

Competitor analysis is an integral part of the groundwork when you create a social media marketing plan. Before you get into the game, you should know who you are competing against.

While evaluating your competitors’ social media strategy, you should consider:

• The campaigns they are running
• What kind of content is working for them?
• How are they engaging with their audience?
• Which channels are they most active on?
• What are their weaknesses?

Along with this, you should also analyze the way users are responding to them and the sentiments they have for your competitors.

The insights derived from competitor analysis will help you craft a better social media marketing plan that can cater to the expectations of your audience.

5. Identify the Success Metrics

As I mentioned earlier, when you create a social media marketing plan, you need to have specific goals for it. But goals aren’t enough. It’s equally important to have the right metrics to measure the success of your plan.

Before you execute your social media marketing plan, specify the metrics and KPIs you want to track.

Go beyond the general metrics such as likes and views and identify comprehensive metrics that are specific to the goals you have set.

For instance, if you are tracking engagement, you need to measure the comments, shares, mentions, etc. The percentage of website clicks and sales email sign-ups will help you to build an email list and tell you how successful you are in generating leads through the campaign too.

With the right metrics in place, you can be sure that the social media marketing plan that you create and the budget and resources that you allot to it are utilized for the best results.

6. Identify the Best Channels for You

There are several social media channels out there. As of 2022, Facebook and YouTube are the top two most-used social media platforms.

Image via Statista

Each of these top social media platforms has its distinct demographics, which is why you need to have a clear idea about which platforms you want to target when you create a social media marketing plan.

And how do you decide that?

This is where your audience personas can come in handy. Using them, you can figure out which platforms your audience is the most active on. These are the platforms you need to target.

It is also important to understand that each channel has a specific purpose and will help you achieve specific goals, so choose the platform by taking them into account too.

For example, if you are going to target YouTube and want to get the desired result then you can do a collaboration with a YouTube influencer marketing agency that can help you develop an effective YouTube marketing strategy.

Once you finalize the channels, create a powerful social media profile for each platform and optimize it. You can then start publishing content on the platform.

7. Create an Effective Content Mix

You want to be anything but boring or monotonous on social media. And that’s why it’s essential to come up with a top-quality content mix that consists of your branded content, curated content, and user-generated content.

This way, you won’t come across as a brand that’s hard-selling itself on social media.

You can also mix up content formats like Stories, Reels, animated graphics, etc., and content types to further add variety to your feed. Some of the most popular types of content are

• Product news and updates
• Inspirational and educational content
• Product demo videos
• Contests
• Giveaways
• Live stream shoppable videos
• Influencer posts

Irrespective of the content type, though, remember to maintain your brand voice in every post you create for your social media marketing, influencer marketing, and brand ambassador marketing campaigns. This consistency helps you stand out from your competition and also keeps your brand image intact.

For instance, note how BMW uses a mix of Reels, posts, carousels, and other formats to engage their audience on Instagram.

Image via Instagram

8. Determine the Best Publishing Time and Frequency

Irrespective of your content quality, if you’re posting at a time when your audiences are not active, you’ll not be able to generate the buzz that you are aiming for.

When you create your social media marketing plan, you should consider the optimal time to publish your posts and the frequency of posts per week.

Both these elements vary from one channel to another and are specific for each brand.

You should turn to analytics to figure out when your audience is the most active and choose those time slots for publishing the content. Keeping all this in mind, you must create a well-balanced content calendar too.

9. Invest in the Right Social Media Marketing Tools

Many parts of your social media marketing plan can be automated by incorporating social media tools into your marketing mix. Apart from this, investing in wrong social media tools impact adversely on your small business financial plans.

These tools not only simplify the entire process but also boost your productivity. Some of the popular ones that you can consider to assist you are scheduling tools, social media analytics tools, competitor analysis tools, hashtag generator tools, and so on. These include Buffer, Hootsuite, Semrush, and built-in analytics tools of the social platforms.

By automating repetitive tasks, you will be able to give more time for analysis and innovation. Additionally, it’d ensure that you can publish your content consistently at the right times. And that’s how you can create a social media marketing plan that means business.

10. Monitor, Adjust, and Optimize

The moment of truth is when you start implementing your social media marketing plan. That is when you should start monitoring how users are responding to your content. Is your affiliate marketing program driving sales? Are your followers increasing? Are you generating enough leads?

Your social media marketing team should constantly track how your posts are performing and analyze the data to compare it with the goals that you had set earlier. This can help you understand where you stand.

And you can then modify your social media marketing plan on the go based on the emerging requirements. Once you adjust your plan, optimize it to the maximum extent to achieve your social media marketing goals.

Ready to Create Your Social Media Marketing Plan?

There you have it, 10 steps to create a strong social media marketing plan to expand your social media reach, engage your audience, and generate high-quality leads.

It’s now over to you and your marketing team to determine your social media goals and craft a plan based on them.

Go ahead and experiment with some of the top techniques I have shared and create a strong social media marketing plan to grow your business.

Businesses and consumers have become widely connected. It’s gotten to a point where the competition for consumers’ attention has become more challenging. The same can be said for organic website traffic and social media metrics.

Globally, the consumer segment’s share of devices and connections is predicted to reach 74 percent by 2023. There’s pressure to churn out more consumer content, but this pressure clashes with the consumers’ rising demand for authenticity in brands and companies.

Image source: Unsplash

Your best bet is to incorporate certain elements that can add appeal to your social media and company website, including videos. This article highlights the benefits of using embedded videos and some tools to embed high-quality videos on your site and socials.

Some Benefits of Embedding Videos

About 86 percent of marketers said that videos helped them generate leads, according to a 2021 poll of marketing professionals. Also, 81 percent of marketers attributed their increased sales to videos.

If you or your team are considering embedding videos on your social media accounts and corporate websites, use the following benefits to make an informed decision.

1. Increases consumer engagement and online traffic

The benefits a company can get from videos depend on whether marketers embed the video or share a video link. When marketers share a video link, the consumer clicks the link and is redirected to the page where the video is hosted.

A problem with sharing video links is that instead of extending a consumer’s stay on the site, it shortens it. The customer has to go to another webpage to watch the company’s video content and leave the current web page.

In social media, an embedded video is a means to increase a consumer’s encounter with the brand. They get to watch the video on the website and social media platforms. Social media becomes a link to view more videos on the website.

Ideally, the collective video-watching behaviors contribute to the website’s online traffic—an essential element to stay relevant and present on the search engine results page (SERP).

2. Boosts visual appeal without weighing the site down

Videos should be viewed without hassle on both social media platforms and web pages. The accessibility should help increase the likelihood of consumers responding to call-to-action (CTAs). Embedding videos can make a web page and social media genuinely dynamic.

Videos add visual appeal and are more valuable than placeholder pictures. Because embedding videos involve video hosting services, you wouldn’t need to worry about it slowing down your website load. Your customers can watch the video and view the rest of the page without waiting long.

3. Powers your SEO and brand recognition goals

Embedding video can also help you meet your search engine optimization (SEO) goals, particularly searchability in two areas: search engines (e.g., Google) and video hosting platforms (e.g., YouTube).

Customers who watch your videos from the hosting site can see your other content. This content helps them recognize your brand and products. Depending on the kind of video content you upload, consumers can view your site as a reputable source of information.

Valuable information like tutorials can boost your site’s rankings as more consumers access your website and social media accounts to watch these videos. Video titles, descriptions, and transcription can also be great places for integrating keywords.

Different Types of Video Content to Share

Before embedding videos, matching the right call-to-action (CTAs) to video content is necessary.

1. Brand videos. Whether it’s a customer’s first or second time checking out your brand, the bottom line is to make a great impression. Your video content can take your audience back to your humble beginnings, drawing boards, and meetings over coffee.

The video can also be about the company’s growing mission to deliver better products or close the gap. A fitting CTA would be to invite your audience to learn more about your brand by clicking a link to your blogs or news web page.

1. Announcements and events. You can use videos to boost your participants for oncoming events like conferences, annual user meetings, and webinars. Introduce key speakers or panelists, and drop down some fantastic giveaways.

Ensure that the agenda covers what potential attendees would expect from the event. Use an invite to register as a CTA. For after-events, you can make a highlight reel or video showing a peek at memorable moments that transpired during the event. A good CTA should invite people to fill out an event feedback form. These forms are important in order to aggregate feedback, organize it into themes and put it into actionable improvements to your event or product.

1. Testimonial or product review. Most people read or watch testimonials and product reviews before purchasing a product. Use excellent video tools for social media to create, edit, and embed video clips that show how your product solves a client’s problem.

The best details to include are figures or stats (e.g., reduced churn rate by 85 percent) and transformation (e.g., from doing something ineffectively to effectively). A good CTA should invite the audience to download a case study or schedule a demo.

1. Explainer, tutorial, or demo. These educational videos have one goal: to help your audience understand your product more. After your product passes the product validation stage, you can show your audience how it can help address a specific issue.

So the tried-and-tested formula involves showing a struggling person (representing your customers) address the issue through your product.

Another objective for these videos is to help the audience learn topics that are indirectly related to a product. Add a link for a free trial, or getting in touch as a CTA for this video content.

Excellent Tools To Embed Videos on Your Site and Socials

Image source: Unsplash

Say you’ve finished editing your video and decide to embed it into your social media accounts and website. The main things you’d need are:

• a hosting site to host your video and provide an embed code
• a scheduler to organize frequent or regular social media posting
• a monitoring tool to determine if your embedded video is performing well or not

1. Hosting site and embed codes

Ideally, you will need a video hosting site that will host your video and provide an embed code that you can use to add the video to your site and social media.

Apart from these basic features, you might consider hosting platforms that are user-friendly and offer other tools such as analytics, SEO, and video player customization. Besides embed tools, hosting sites also offer features that ensure your videos can play smoothly across all devices and browsers.

Below are some top hosting sites:

• YouTube is a popular video hosting service among small businesses and supports web platforms. They use YouTube to embed videos on websites and include share video features for social media platforms:
  • Facebook: Select the YouTube video you want to embed, click Share, and then click the Facebook logo. You will be redirected to your Facebook account, which displays a post draft with the video. You can add a caption, hashtags, tag friends, and a CTA. Then click Post.
  • Twitter: Select the YouTube video you want to embed, click Share, and then click the Twitter logo. You will be redirected to a new tweet with the link. Here you can add a tweet (280 characters) with the appropriate hashtags and then click Tweet.
  • LinkedIn: Select the YouTube video you want to embed, click Share, and then click the LinkedIn logo. You will be redirected to a draft with the embedded video. Type your post, tag people, and use suitable hashtags. Click Post.
• Wistia offers a complete video marketing platform for freelancers and small and mid-size businesses. This platform provides embed codes and includes SEO metadata in these codes; this is useful for optimizing Google searches.

Wistia is used by over 400,000 marketers globally. It features one-click sharing to social channels, including YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

• Animoto is an online video-making software that supports eCommerce businesses. The software offers features for editing and sharing videos across social media platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.

Animoto can help your business create promotional videos. The software provides an Embed API for embedding videos into websites. The embed code will allow you to use the video from the hosting site and display it on the website (content management system) and socials.

2. Scheduling tool for social media posts

Besides using embedded video tools for social media, you can also ensure that your posting matches the active hours of your target audience. You can schedule video-based social media posts on multiple platforms and customize the time using a scheduling tool.

Below are some scheduler tools:

• Sprout Social is a social media tool that supports web, Android, and iOS platforms. This tool gives marketers a comprehensive view of scheduled messages across teams. Users love its mobile capabilities, and explicitly being able to plan and post videos across social channels.
• Viraltag is a social media marketing solution for scheduling posts across social media channels and involves import integrations (e.g., Dropbox and Google Drive). This tool allows customization of messages and posting time, and auto-suggests hashtags, too.
• Hootsuite is used for social media management and scheduling that boasts convenient post-scheduling across multiple channels from one dashboard. Marketers use it for posting videos on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube.

2. Tool for monitoring brand mentions

Marketers must also invest in monitoring tools. This tool can help them better understand how their embedded video performs in social media channels and track brand mentions.

Some tools track brand mentions and provide insight reports regarding these mentions. Other monitor tools include advanced features, such as sentiment analysis. The main thing to remember is that these tools should assist marketers in effectively gauging the consumer’s or target audience’s response to the company’s embedded video content.

In addition, monitor tools can help you respond to consumers promptly. Below are some monitoring tools:

• Mention is a social media monitoring tool that offers real-time monitoring in over 40 languages.
• Awario focuses on tracking mentions of the company’s brands and monitoring competitors. It provides daily and weekly email alerts for these mentions, too.
• Mentionlytics detects brand mentions across all web and social media sources. Marketers can search by using keywords like company name or product name.

3 Things To Remember When Embedding Videos

Creating videos with excellent quality and sharing them using embed tools provides a good start for your video marketing strategy. Other considerations include deciding the critical elements for the video thumbnail, video length, and suitable CTA.

1. Which elements should you emphasize in your video thumbnail? Go for the main details (like a logo, brand color, and brand name) before selecting other added features. Ensure that you follow the same primary elements in all video content to build your business’s brand and become more recognizable to your audience.
2. What is the appropriate length of your video? The golden rule is to keep an embedded video short enough to get the point across without losing your audience’s attention. Your customers will likely watch the full video clip on social media platforms if it’s concise.
3. Which CTAs should you use for the video? Video content or any social media content will only be helpful with a message suggesting the customer click a link, download a report, or use a free trial for its app. This element is a crucial step toward generating leads.

Video Fails To Avoid at All Costs

Below are pitfalls you should avoid when creating videos to embed on the site and social media.

• Poor quality means a lot of things. The visual quality is terrible, and the transcripts are missing; there’s a typo here or background noise, and so on. Either way, low-quality videos ruin brands conveniently because people associate that wrong video with bad companies. Do your research, focus on the essential elements (length, clear, and have a CTA), or work with expert video creators.
• Confusing messages. Some embedded videos contain so much information that it overwhelms your audience. Instead of adding so much, focus on easy-to-digest details and opt for good scripts.

Embedding Videos: In a Nutshell

A company’s video marketing strategy involves creating high-quality content and embedding videos in suitable spaces. Fortunately, embedding videos is less complicated with these tools: a hosting site, a scheduler, and a monitoring tool.

Using the embed code, you can display your video on your website and social media accounts without slowing down your website or downgrading the video’s quality. It can also ramp up engagement and provide a boost to your brand’s online presence.

What are the three magic words for business success?

Social media marketing, of course, aka SMM.

Above 4.26 billion people were on social networks in 2021. In 2027, this number is predicted to reach nearly 6 billion. The popularity of social media is huge, and both small and large businesses hunt for the best promotional methods. In fact, 71% of small-to-mid-sized companies use social media for marketing purposes, and 52% of those publish their posts on a daily basis.

Why is SMM crucial for businesses? How to address it? What platforms to explore? How often should you post? What tools to use?

So many questions may be bothering you right now…

But we’ve prepared all the answers! No matter whether you’re only getting started on social media or have already tipped your toes in it, this article is your all-in-one guide on social media marketing.

Key Advantages of SMM for Business

Here’s a list of the top five leading benefits of social networks for business and the percentage of marketers who cited them as such in the survey conducted by Statista:

• Better brand exposure (85%)
• Increased traffic (75%)
• Generated leads (66%)
• Expanded base of loyal fans (58%)
• Boosted sales (57%)

Source: Statista.com

That’s why as many as 91% of business executives plan to spend considerably more on social media advertising and adjust their budgets accordingly in the next three years. In fact, the majority of them are ready to increase their SMM budget by more than 50%.

Determining a budget is one thing, quite another is designing and executing SMM campaigns to achieve the highest results.

How should you do that? Let’s nail social media marketing from top to bottom and develop the best strategy in accordance with your company needs.

Your Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing

Get going with the below guidelines on how to promote your business on social media.

Work out a social media marketing strategy

Everything starts with a good plan and strategic approach.

Taking into consideration your niche, specific business requirements, ads budget, and other aspects, you should do the following:

Identify your target demographic

Who should receive your marketing message?

Define your target audience: their age, gender, location, income, interests, etc.

Discover you competition

Do competitor analysis to learn everything about your primary rivals: their strengths, weaknesses, and tactics they’ve been applying. You can use competitor data to improve your social media strategy continuously.

Analyze and optimize your profiles

Some of the fundamental tasks to perform for successful social media optimization – review your online presence, spot your weakest places, conduct keyword research, etc.

Set SMART goals

The SMART method is as old as the sea (first mentioned in 1981), but it’s still a go-to for everyone who wants to reach a desirable result in anything. Simply because it works.

Source: Indeed.com

Setting a SMART social media goal, answer the five W-questions:

What result do you want to reach? (Countable: number of followers, leads, sales, and the like)

Why do you need it? (Grow sales, enhance your brand reputation, etc.)

Who will be doing what? (You might need to create an SMM team and dole out the tasks)

Where will it be executed? (In the office or remotely? Which social platforms will you market your business on?)

When will it be achieved? (Exact date)

Arrange your posting schedule

You should know when exactly to post – check the best posting times for TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. and draft a calendar.

But what are you going to post?

Find out how to prepare purposeful content and use some other helpful tips on SMM mentioned in the next paragraphs.

Produce engaging and creative content

One, two, … and it’s over.

You’ve lost your potential customer…

Why? Because the attention span on social media is only two seconds.

Those two seconds should make a lasting impression, and it matters greatly what you put in them. If you haven’t managed to “serve” your post hot, it means that perhaps it wasn’t “hot” enough.

Engaging social media content has its own ingredients that may “warm it up”.

Experimenting with different types of posts, Logan Mallory, VP of Motivosity, emphasizes that “You should deliver value, pick/create high-quality visuals, and make content emotionally resonant and memorable.

For example, you can engage with your audience via a challenge. People love challenges, because they ignite excitement, motivate them to test courage, and become a source of happiness and fulfillment. Our last SMM campaign implied challenging our clients, interacting with them, and promoting our ThanksMatters Card at the same time. The number of social media mentions grew by roughly 430% during the time it was running.”

Source: Instagram.com

Moreover, don’t forget to optimize images and craft eye-catching videos.

Why do visuals matter?

It turns out you can generate 94% more views, if you insert a visual element into your post.

Don’t underestimate hashtags

Hashtags can either skyrocket or tank your SMM campaign for good.

And the quantity matters. If you use 11+ hashtags, the engagement rate can grow by 79%.

What about the quality?

Be careful, because knowing the ideal number of hashtags won’t save you from such a phenomenon as shadowbanning. This measure is actively applied by Instagram to prevent spammy activity. The platform bans particular hashtags that evoke floods of spam.

When your post is “shadowbanned”, it gets “hidden”, and the users who don’t follow you won’t be able to see or find it.

Bookstagrammers have reported numerous cases of shadowbanning. So, if you run a book blog or any books-related business, mind that there’s a ban imposed on one of the best bookstagram hashtags – #books.

Here’s a list of some other Instagram hashtags that will get your post shadowbanned:

• #mustfollow
• #justdidit
• #always
• #snap
• #like
• #women
• #rate

Be on the same wave with your audience

What does this mean?

“First and foremost, speak the same language as your audience does and use age-appropriate vocabulary in your social media posts,” recommends Stephan Baldwin, Founder of Assisted Living.

“If you’re targeting iGeneration (Gen Z), you might want to use some slang phrases like big yikes, I’m dead, dang, creps, hangry, and so on. For Millennials, the well-known expressions are: straight chillin, adulting, doggo, sorry not sorry, I can’t even, etc.

Besides the vocabulary, there should be a proper tone and overall stylistics of the messages you try to deliver. On Twitter, for example, we majorly go with motivational and life wisdom quotes, as our targeted audiences are older generations,” Stephan shares.

Source: Twitter.com

Some businesses prefer to keep their social media style formal. Others like to sound casual, bold, and cheerful. To achieve this, they add some pinches of humor and fun to their posts.

Here’s an example of a paid advertising campaign on Facebook by Slack. The company appeals to emotions and uses a bright and entertaining visual.

Source: Elymunt.com

Trying to discard formalities, Missguided, a women’s clothes brand (their intended group of customers are aged 16–35), dared using the F-word in their social media post on Instagram during the pre-Christmas campaign and referred to its users as “babes”. The post gathered around 11,000 likes and tons of comments.

Source: Instagram.com

Blend SMM with reactive marketing

Reactive marketing or moment marketing is a campaign, advert, or any other method used to demonstrate a brand’s prompt reaction to everyday events and phenomena.

Oreo has a knack for it. It’s one of the companies that create compelling social media ads and win their audiences over. When New Orleans had a power outage and a blackout during the SuperBowl, Oreo reacted instantly with the tweet that went viral: 13.3K retweets, 195 quote tweets, and 6,637 likes.

Source: Twitter.com

This tweet is an example of fast-thinking advertising and social media rapid response at its finest.

Find a social media brand ambassador

A brand ambassador program can contribute greatly to emotional engagement with your customers and word-of-mouth marketing.

Who can be your social media brand ambassador?

Consider someone from the below list:

• Influencer
• Affiliate ambassador
• Expert
• Employee
• Investor
• Customer

Actually, 75% of customers are more likely to believe the posts shared by shoppers who tell about their purchasing experiences rather than ads published by brands, while 49% of consumers trust influencer recommendations.

Contact social media influencers and concentrate on a long-term partnership.

Avoid SMM mistakes that can cause legal issues

What if we told you that a single tweet can lead you to the courtroom?

If your post is considered to be libelous, for example.

In 2013, a tweet by Sally Bercow about Lord McAlpine was ruled by the High Court of the UK as a defamatory statement and the former had to pay damages.

Aside from defamation, there may be other social media legal concerns, and Ben Michael, Practicing Lawyer and Founder of Michael & Associates, gives the list of them:

• Copyright and intellectual property infringement
• Fake testimonials
• Plagiarized content (check how to avoid plagiarism)
• Unclear and ambiguous terms of promotions/contests
• Non-disclosure of influencer partnerships

As for the latter, Ben Michael explains that “The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires influencers to reveal it openly on social media, when they have a personal, financial, or family relationship with a brand. Another FTC regulation related to influencer marketing states that a disclosure has to be mentioned before the “More” button.

In case of breaking the FTC rules or posting a fake review, the fines for advertisers may vary from $20,000 to $50,000. For influencers, such violations may result in millions (USD) in fines. For example, in October 2022, Kim Kardashian paid a $1.26 million fine for failing to disclose she had received money for advertising crypto assets.”

Top 5 Social Media Marketing Channels

The following social media sites are ranked by marketers who’ve been using them successfully for promoting their businesses:

1. Facebook
2. Instagram
3. LinkedIn
4. YouTube
5. Twitter

Source: Statista.com

Facebook

Monthly active users: 2.91 billion

Average user age: 25–44 (however, 36% of Facebook users are 45+)

Top features for marketers: Ads Manager (for video/image ads, remarketing ads, carousel ads, etc.), Facebook Pixel, location targeting, saved audiences

What works on Facebook:

The most high-performing content on Facebook is:

• UGC (user-generated content)
• Contests
• Giveaways
• Behind-the-scene stories
• Gifs and memes

To master Facebook branding and marketing, learn from the company that does it right: read how Glovo uses Facebook ads to drive sales.

Keep up with the current Facebook trends and maximize effectiveness of Facebook marketing.

Instagram

Monthly active users: 1.47 billion

Average user age: 25–34 (nearly 49% of Instagrammers are of that age)

Top features for marketers: Reels Template, Instagram shopping, interactive stickers, live rooms, stories highlights

What works on Instagram:

Instagram reels, contests, giveaways, clickable links, and shoppable posts are the best techniques for boosting Instagram sales.

Businesses that do offline sales can also promote themselves on Instagram. How exactly?

“In order to strive for word-of-mouth and virality on Instagram, offline businesses should primarily focus on the instagrammable concept in design and take advantage of photo zones for luring customers to take photos and share them tagging a brand,” recommends Brian Nagele, CEO at Restaurant Clicks.

“For example, in the restaurant industry, instagrammable colors in design can be advantageous for successful social media marketing. They are: terracotta, orange, hague blue, green smoke, deep blue-green, lilac, soft purple, and pink.

Some brands often go to extremes trying to emphasize the visual uniqueness of dishes and drinks. Such bizarre and totally unique variants like Starbucks’ unicorn Frappuccino or Toronto’s toilet-themed dessert bar do work. But the effect doesn’t last long. Normal-looking food is a new Instagram trend today,” Brian notes.

LinkedIn

Monthly active users: 310 million

Average user age: 30–39 (they account for 31% of LinkedIn users)

Top features for marketers: Forecasted Results, slideshows (carousel posts with up to 300 slides), audience polls, creator mode, newsletter tool

What works on LinkedIn:

One of the best LinkedIn marketing strategies is putting the spotlight on your employees, sharing their stories, and connecting better to highlight your people-first organizational culture. LinkedIn is centered on people in business, and that’s why proper LinkedIn etiquette is essential for effective branding.

Besides, a live-stream is a sure fire way to leverage LinkedIn for business, especially when it’s a part of a reactive campaign. For example, Johnson & Johnson launched a live weekly educational series The Road to a Vaccine in 2020 with the advent of the pandemic.

The result was amazing: 1,000,000+ total views of the 8-episode series (see the screenshot).

Source: Linkedin.com

YouTube

Monthly active users: 2.56 billion

Average user age: 18–24 (nearly 35% of YouTube users)

Top features for marketers: YouTube creator studio, YouTube shorts, Fan Finder, YouTube cards, 360-degree feature

What works on YouTube:

“YouTube shorts are priceless for marketers,” believes Daniel Apke, CEO of Land Investing Online.

“We launched our campaign with YouTube shorts in April 2022. Since then, the number of views has increased by 81% and these videos started converting our watchers into buyers.

How to use short-form videos on YouTube? Pretty simple: ensure the high quality of the video and sound, get straight to the point, use attention-grabbers, and avoid cluttering the screen with too much of everything or too many people,” Daniel highlights.

Source: Youtube.com

Then there’s YouTube SEO that can help you get your videos to the top.

Twitter

Monthly active users: 436 million

Average user age: 18–44 (approximately 60% of all Twitter users)

Top features for marketers: TweetDeck, Twitter Spaces, Twitter Moments, Super Follows

What works on Twitter:

If you want to penetrate the realm of Twitter marketing, have a look at the content that works on this platform:

• Images
• Quotes
• Videos
• Questions and polls
• Memes

It’s also worth knowing that messages with less than 100 characters have a 17% higher engagement rate, while tweets with image links can double engagement with your audience. Use these tried-and-tested Twitter practices and get the most out of the blue bird.

Best Tools for Social Media Marketing

For banned hashtags check:

IqHashtags

MetaHashtags

For images:

Canva

Pablo

TouchRetouch

For text/caption:

StoryLab.ai

Rytr.me

Hypotenuse.ai

For analytics:

BrandMentions

Rival IQ

Buffer Analyze

There are also some SMM tools that cater specifically to the needs of SaaS companies. Consider adding those to your toolset, if you’re a SaaS provider.

Additionally, peer into the top social media marketing books. Their authors share some little-known tricks, secrets, and tools for harnessing the power of social networks.

Automate Social Media Marketing With Bulk.ly

Be active, experiment with new ideas, and collaborate with professionals to unleash the power of marketing on social media.

Tap the potential of automation and see how smoothly and easily you can implement the best SMM strategies and make your business stand out on social platforms.

Multiply every effort you make and rock the social media with Bulk.ly!

As today’s internet users have ever-changing needs and preferences, it’s no surprise that social media platforms must continuously adapt to remain relevant. We can’t help it, but the trends come and go in a blink of an eye.

Who would’ve thought we say goodbye to plain simple status updates this fast? And now memes and short videos are everywhere. Oh, not to mention that we didn’t know TikTok marketing would make this very far.

We’re still in the year 2022, but every business already took some notes and is ready to take a headstart to plan the next year’s strategy. From freshly-launched eCommerce platforms to deep-pocket big corporations, businesses try to keep updated with the latest social media trends to remain competitive.

While new social media trends can feel never-ending, they give you opportunities to experiment and connect with your audience in a different, more effective way.

Now, the burning question would be, “what’s on the horizon for 2023?”

We’ve rounded up some of the most promising social media trends for the next year.

Keeping Up with Social Media Trends: Why Bother?

But first, let’s make it clear why businesses need to bother with social media trends in the first place. You’ll understand what you might have been missing out on and why you should consider implementing some of the upcoming trends into your social media strategy.

Reason #1. Better Understand Audiences

Social media is all about understanding your audience’s needs and wants. And what they want changes all the time, so it’s essential to keep up with the trends.

This way, you’ll know what exactly they want from your brand and how you can give it to them.

Reason #2. Show the Audience that You’re an Expert in Your Field

By being one of the first businesses to adopt new social media trends, you can show your target audiences that you’re not only keeping up with the latest industry news but also that you’re an expert in your field. People only connect and trust brands that they perceive as authority.

Reason #3. Expand Your Reach

By trying out new trends, you can open your business to new opportunities and reach new audiences you might not have had access to.

With more people exposed to your brand, you’ll see an increase in leads and conversions in no time.

Reason #4. Reach Your Customers Where They Are

Social media trends can help you reach your customers where they are. As users flock to new platforms, you need to be there to interact with them and build relationships.

If you’re not where your target audiences are, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities to engage with them.

Reason #5. Stand Out from the Competition

If you’re not keeping up with social media trends, chances are your competitors are. So, if you want to stay ahead of the competition, you need to be on top of the latest trends.

10+ Emerging Social Media Trends for 2023

There’s no end when we talk about social media predictions and trends. But we can only focus on the most promising ones that have the potential to change how we use social media for business purposes. Here are some of them:

Trend #1. The Proliferation of Social Media Platforms

There are over 4.2 billion active social media users worldwide. And with the continuous rise of internet users, this number is expected to grow even larger in the next few years.

What does this mean for businesses?

This trend means that there are more opportunities than ever to reach your target audiences on social media.

However, with the number of social media platforms increasing, it can be challenging to decide which ones to use for your business.

The key is to focus on the platforms where your target audiences are most active and create content that resonates with them.

Trend #2. Authenticity Is on a High-Demand

At least 88% of today’s consumers say authenticity is crucial when it comes to interacting with or supporting a brand. There will be a big focus on authenticity and transparency.

In a world full of content, people are craving real and relatable content. They want to see behind the scenes and connect with brands more personally.

What does this mean for businesses?

This trend means that businesses must focus on creating personalized and humanized content that can connect with their audiences more personally.

AI-powered social media marketing tools might make mundane tasks a bit less stressful, but they can never replace the human element in social media marketing.

Remember, people want to connect with other people, not with faceless brands. So, make sure you also invest in humanizing your social media presence.

Trend #3. Social Media Will Be More Visual Than Ever

As we consume more and more content online, the demand for visual content will continue to increase. People want to see videos, photos, and infographics that are easy to consume and understand.

What does this mean for businesses?

From short videos to even memes, businesses need to focus on creating more visually-appealing content. All those bulky, text-heavy social media threads now seem like a chore to read. After all, 65% of the population is visual learners.

If you want people to stick around and actually consume your content, make it more digestible and appealing with visual content.

Trend #4. Social Commerce Is Soaring

More and more social media platforms are also incorporating eCommerce features to make it easier for users to shop without leaving the app. TikTok Shop, Instagram Shop, Facebook Marketplace, you name it. No wonder 40% of social media users in the US will make at least one purchase in 2021.

Source: @thetinytassel on Instagram

What does this mean for businesses?

Shoppers will expect to buy your products directly on social media. This is a great opportunity for businesses to increase their sales and reach and go beyond popular eCommerce platforms.

All you need is to set up a shop on your social media platforms and start selling your products or services directly to your customers.

Trend #5. Focus on Growing Community

Gone are the days when businesses could just post anything on social media, and people would see it.

With the algorithm changes and the introduction of paid ads, businesses must now focus on creating a community of engaged followers if they want their content to be seen.

What does this mean for businesses?

This trend means that no business should do a hard sell on social media. You must focus on creating valuable and engaging content that encourages people to follow them and join their community instead.

The key here is to build more personal, meaningful relationships with followers and provide them with valuable content that they can’t find anywhere else.

Trend #6. Social Media as a Customer Service Channel

More than 82% of consumers look for an instant response from brands on marketing or sales questions. And with the rise of social media, more and more businesses jump into the social customer service bandwagon. It’s fast, convenient, and easy to use. No more waiting on the phone for customer service.

Whether it’s a question or a complaint, social media is now one of the first places people go to when they need help from a company.

Source: @StarbucksCare on Twitter

What does this mean for businesses?

This trend means that businesses need to have a presence on social media and be able to respond to customer’s queries or complaints in a timely manner.

In other words, businesses should focus on creating a quick and friendly customer experience so that people will want to do business with them.

Trend #7. The Rise of Micro-Influencers

One trend that is already starting to emerge is the use of micro-influencers. According to Mediakix, they’re accounts with anywhere from 10,000-50,000 followers. Meanwhile, macro-influencers have around 500,000-1 million followers.

Even with a lower opportunity to reach out to more people, they are considered more authentic and trustworthy than celebrities or mega-influencers. They can boast up to a 60% increased engagement rate compared to macro-influencers. Take a look at the chart below.

Source: Later

What does this mean for businesses?

Massive followers and following don’t equal higher influencer marketing results. Rather than working with high-end popular influencers that can cost you a fortune, you can consider working with micro-influencers. They’re more “human” and personal–compared to celebrities or mega influencers who mostly seem so untouched and so far away.

Micro influencers can help you reach a more targeted audience and promote your products or services in a more genuine, relatable way.

Trend #8. The Popularity of User-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content (UGC) is any content created by users, not by businesses or brands itself. This can include things like videos, photos, reviews, blog posts, etc.

Source: Cloudinary

Rather than creating new content every single day, businesses can use UGC to supplement their content strategy. Not only will they help you save a lot of time, but also give your brand more authority and credibility.

What does this mean for businesses?

Encouraging social media users to create and share content about your brand is the key to success in user-generated content marketing.

Use hashtags, run contests, and offer incentives to encourage people to create and share UGC about your brand. You should also make sure to give credit to the original creator whenever possible.

Trend #9. Social Listening Is Becoming Mainstream

People tend to share their experiences, both good and bad, on social media. This makes social media the perfect platform for businesses to listen to what people are saying about them.

Social listening is the process of monitoring social media channels for mentions of your brand, product, or service. It helps you understand what people actually think and feel about your product and how you can improve it.

What does this mean for businesses?

Social listening is not all about you getting praised and hearing good things. It’s also about understanding what people don’t like about your brand and taking the necessary steps to fix it.

You should also be prepared to respond to any negative comments or reviews promptly and professionally.

You can use social media tools like Bulk.ly. This powerful tool allows you to schedule your post, track, and monitor your brand on social media platforms–making it much easier for you to see who’s talking about you and what are they talking about.

Trend #10. The Use of Bots Is Becoming More Prevalent

With the rise of artificial intelligence, bots are becoming more and more sophisticated. 80% of internet users have interacted with a chatbot at some point.

You can rely on them for performing repetitive tasks, such as answering frequently-asked questions or scheduling social media content. Meanwhile, for your audiences, bots mean instant answers. Here’s an example from Sephora that uses chatbots for their Facebook Messenger.

Source: ChatbotGuide

What does this mean for businesses?

This trend means that you can cater to your social media users 24/7 without burning your social media team out. You can use the technology to automate some of their tasks.

This will free up time so that you can focus on more important things, such as strategy and innovation. When it comes to customer service, bots can help you scale your operation and provide a more efficient and consistent experience for your customers.

Trend #11. Increased Use of Augmented reality (AR)

Blockchain games, hotels that offer virtual reality (VR) experiences, and social media filters are just some examples of augmented reality (AR).

Even though they’re still at the very stages of social media marketing, this technology is becoming more and more popular as it offers a unique and interactive buying experience.

What does this mean for businesses?

If you want to stay ahead of the competition, you should start thinking about how you can use AR in your business. Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, have face filters– allowing users to “transform” their faces into animals or add elements like flower crowns or glasses to their images. But face filters aren’t just for fun and games.

For example, you can use it for product demonstrations–try before you buy. Dominos launched its shareable pizza filter on Snapchat.

https://youtu.be/vIEqBATYHO4

Trend #12. Paid Advertising

Social media platforms are indeed accessible for businesses of all sizes– regardless of the industry they belong to.

But, an organic social media strategy requires a lot of time and resources as long as patience and consistency before you finally see the results.

You heavily rely on algorithms to get your content to go viral. Through paid advertising, you can easily reach wider audiences.

What does it mean for businesses?

Paid advertising can be a great option to ensure they deliver the right message to the right people at the right time.

YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram have featured paid ads with targeting options you can invest in when you’re looking for quicker overall social media marketing results. You can deliver the right message to the right people at the right time.

Trend #13. Long-form Video is Bust

Short videos dominated social media. Thanks to TikTok.

With short attention spans, this type of video is more straightforward and digestible as most of them are under a minute. No wonder why social media users love it.

What does it mean for businesses?

The saying “save the best for last” doesn’t really apply to social videos. To get your message across effectively in under 60-second, you have to get the core message right off the bat.

Put the CTA and highlight the pain point of your audience at the very beginning of the video.

Over to You

Social media marketing is pretty much about adapting to the latest customer behavior. While many trends can come along anytime, those emerging trends mentioned can help you understand what the 2023 marketing field will look like. Most of them are not very much different from the previous year. But, the way how you should implement them should evolve.

As a savvy social media marketer, what is important here is to continue to research trends, analyze online consumer behaviors, and pay attention to your team’s social media data to determine which trends or strategies to lean into or how to navigate unprecedented events.

Setting up your eCommerce business for success on social media can seem daunting. There are so many different platforms, each with unique rules and tricks, that it may seem impossible to know where to begin. However, by following a few key steps, you can set yourself up for success on social media right from the start. Let’s get started.

Reasons Why Social Media Is Important For E-Commerce

Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/modern-smartphone-on-yellow-surface-near-earbud-and-phone-cover-4526456/

The first step is understanding why social media is essential for eCommerce businesses. After all, if you don’t know the reasons behind using social media, it will be challenging to create a strategy that works. According to a report, 71 percent of social media users are more likely to make a purchase if they receive a recommendation from their friends on social media. There are eight key reasons why social media should be a part of your eCommerce strategy:

Helps build trust and credibility

When it comes to eCommerce, building trust and credibility is essential. After all, if customers don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. And one of the best ways to build trust and credibility is through social media.

By sharing engaging, informative content on your social media pages, you can help establish yourself as a credible source of information. You can also show customers that you are an expert in your field, which can help persuade them to buy from you. Additionally, responding to comments and questions quickly and politely can create a sense of trust between your business and your customers.

Helps increase brand awareness

Another key benefit of social media for eCommerce businesses is that it can help increase brand awareness. When potential customers see your company mentioned on social media, it helps plant the seed of awareness about your brand. Over time, the more people see your company mentioned online, the more likely they will remember you and consider buying from you.

Allows you to connect with potential customers

Social media also provides an excellent opportunity to connect with potential customers. By joining relevant conversations and providing valuable insights and advice, you can begin to build relationships with potential buyers. This can help encourage them to do business with you in the future.

Helps you keep up with the competition

Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-black-smartphone-on-brown-wooden-table-6016365/

Finally, social media is a great way to keep up with the competition. By monitoring what your competitors are doing on social media, you can gain insights into what strategies are working well for them and adapt them to your business.

Allows you to promote sales and discounts

Social media is also an excellent platform for promoting sales and discounts. By sharing information about special offers on your social media pages, you can help increase traffic to your website and encourage customers to buy from you.

Customer service

Social media can also be used for customer service. By monitoring your social media channels, you can quickly respond to any questions or concerns that your customers may have. This can help create a sense of loyalty and trust between your business and your customers.

Generate Leads

Social media can also be used to generate leads. By sharing valuable content on your social media pages, you can encourage potential customers to visit your website and sign up for your email list. From there, you can follow up with them and convert them into paying customers.

Increase website traffic

Finally, social media can be used to increase traffic to your website. By sharing links to your website on your social media pages, you can encourage potential customers to click through to your site. This can help you grow your business and boost your rankings.

Now that you know why social media is used for your eCommerce business, it’s time to start creating content. But what kind of content should you be creating? Let’s take a look.

Types of Content to Share on Social Media

The types of content you share on social media will depend on the platform you’re using. However, a few general types of content tend to perform well on social media, regardless of the platform. These include:

• Blog posts: Share your latest blog post on social media to drive traffic back to your website. Be sure to include a catchy headline and an eye-catching image to grab attention.
• Product photos and videos: Showcase your products in action with photos and videos. This can help customers visualize your products’ use and may encourage them to buy.
• Customer testimonials: Customer testimonials are a great way to build trust and credibility. Share positive reviews and testimonials from your customers on social media to show potential buyers that others have succeeded with your products.
• How-to guides: How-to guides are an excellent way to show customers the value of your products. Share step-by-step guides on social media that show customers how to use your products to achieve specific results.

How to Setup Social Media for E-Commerce Success?

Establish your goals and objectives

Source: https://jakeandgino.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/JG-Blog-Cover-9-1024×716.jpg

It is essential to establish clear goals and objectives at the start. Some possible goals might include increasing brand awareness, driving more traffic to your site, or improving customer satisfaction. Other objectives might include growing your social media following, increasing interaction with your followers, or optimizing your content.

Whether you are a new application development business or an established company looking to revamp your online presence, setting clear goals and outlining concrete steps for achieving them will help ensure that you reach your full potential in the world of eCommerce. With focus, diligence, and a willingness to experiment with different strategies, there is no limit to what you can achieve through social media. So go out there and take on the world!

Choose the social media platforms that are best for you

When it comes to choosing the best social media platforms for eCommerce success, there is no easy answer. Different platforms are better suited to different types of products, and different audiences might respond better to different platforms as well.

With that said, some platforms tend to be more popular with online shoppers than others. For example, Instagram has become wildly popular in recent years thanks to its photo and video-sharing capabilities. It is an excellent choice for brands looking to connect with younger customers or promote visually-appealing products. On the other hand, Facebook remains a top contender thanks to its huge user base and diverse range of features, making it an ideal platform for businesses that want to spread their reach as far as possible.

Ultimately, the best social media platform for eCommerce success will depend on your individual needs and goals. However, by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each platform, you can make an informed decision about which one will be right for your business’s unique needs.

Create valuable and engaging content

To create valuable and engaging content for an eCommerce social media audience, starting with a strong understanding of your target customers is essential. What are their needs, interests, and motivations? By developing a clear picture of who your customers are and what they care about, you will be able to craft content that really speaks to them.

This might include sharing tips and tricks for using your products or highlighting success stories from happy customers. Whatever approach you take, make sure that it is always presented in a positive, helpful light. Not only will this help to drive engagement on social platforms, but it will also help create loyal fans who are more likely to become returning customers. So if you genuinely want to succeed on social media for your eCommerce business, start by creating valuable and engaging content that reaches right into the hearts of your target audience.

Plan ahead and post consistently

This strategy will ensure that you stay top of mind for your target audience, driving SEO and traffic to your website. By scheduling posts in advance and keeping an eye on performance analytics, you can ensure that your messaging remains aligned with your business goals.

Additionally, by remaining active on social media day in and day out, you can build strong relationships with customers and potential clients, giving yourself a natural competitive edge in today’s crowded online marketplace. So if you’re ready to take your eCommerce social media marketing to the next level, start planning now and posting regularly – the results will speak for themselves!

Analyze and track your progress

Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/crop-ethnic-trader-with-smartphone-and-laptop-on-bench-indoors-6347720/

As an eCommerce entrepreneur, it is essential that you consistently analyze and track your progress toward social media success. This involves monitoring various metrics, including engagement rates, growth in followers, website traffic, and clickthroughs. By gathering this data regularly and charting your progress over time, you can gain valuable insights into the changes you need to make to continue succeeding in your online ventures.

Whether you need to improve the content of your posts, increase the frequency of your updates, or focus on improving search engine rankings and backlinks, staying vigilant and monitoring your progress will help you stay ahead of the curve and reach your ultimate goals. So start tracking now, and watch as your empire grows!

Optimize your social media campaigns

There is no single “right” strategy that will work for everyone. Instead, you need to carefully assess your individual goals, the types of products and services you are selling, and the preferences of your target audience.

You may want to focus on increasing traffic to your website through paid ads or boosting brand awareness by creating engaging content. Alternatively, you may want to optimize your social media marketing efforts specifically for conversions and sales. Whatever approach you choose, one key element is ensuring that your messaging is aligned with the expectations and needs of your audience.

With a thoughtful strategy and careful planning, you can leverage the power of social media to boost your eCommerce business in ways few other marketing channels can match.

Stay Updated with Recent Algorithm Developments

It’s no secret that the eCommerce landscape is constantly evolving, with new tools and platforms always coming onto the scene. To stay competitive and stay on top of the latest trends, it is essential to keep up with recent algorithm updates and other changes that can significantly impact your website’s success.

To start, it’s vital to understand some key concepts related to algorithm updates and how they can impact your overall marketing strategy. For example, algorithms are essentially sets of rules put in place by social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest to ensure that content from high-quality sources gets seen more often by users. Trends such as these can constantly change, making it essential for businesses to stay informed about relevant updates for different platforms.

Use both paid and organic strategies

Success in the world of eCommerce requires a careful combination of paid and organic strategies. Paid strategies, such as targeted ads and influencer marketing, can help to increase visibility and drive clicks to your site.

At the same time, it is also crucial to invest in organic strategies to help improve your online reputation and build lasting relationships with customers. These might include social media posts highlighting customer testimonials or blogs providing valuable information on your product or industry topics.

Using a mix of paid and organic strategies, you can gain an edge over the competition and ensure eCommerce success for years to come.

Quick Review:How to Set eCommerce Social Media up For Success

Now that you know how to create different types of content to share on social media for eCommerce success, it’s time to start building your own. Remember to focus on quality over quantity and to mix up the content you share to keep things interesting.

When you use social media as part of your eCommerce strategy, you can enjoy several benefits, including increased brand awareness, improved customer relations, and increased sales. By sharing engaging, informative content, you can help establish trust and credibility with potential customers, persuading them to buy from you. So what are you waiting for? Get started.

Facebook Pages are a great way for businesses to connect with their customers and create a community around their brand. With over 2 billion active users on Facebook, there’s a good chance your target audience is already using the platform.

Creating a Facebook page is free and only takes a few minutes. Once you’ve created your page, you can start sharing content, interacting with your customers, and running ads. In this blog post, we’ll give you a step-by-step guide on how to create a Facebook page for your business.

Facebook Business Pages: What Are They?

Your Facebook Business Page is essentially your company’s or organization’s “real estate” on Facebook. Just as you would use a website to represent your business online, your Facebook Business Page is the perfect place to do the same.

Your Facebook Page not only lets you show off your business or organization to people who might be interested in it, but it also gives you a way to talk to those people directly. By creating and maintaining a dynamic Facebook Page, you can connect with more customers and keep them informed about your business or organization.

It’s important to keep your Facebook Page up-to-date with fresh content if you want to keep your audience engaged. This means making new posts, sharing articles and pictures that are relevant, and talking to your fans. There are some static elements, like your contact information and cover image, but to manage your Page correctly, it should be consistently updated with content.

Creating a Facebook Page for your business is easy, but there are many steps to go through before you can start posting content. To make sure that everything goes smoothly, let’s go through this simple guide on how best to set up and optimize a Facebook Page for your business.

How to Create a Facebook Business Page?

In order to create a Facebook business page, you first need to create a personal Facebook profile. This is the best way to do it if you don’t want to use Business Manager or Business Suite. You can always move the page over to Business Manager later if your needs change. Then, follow these simple steps:

Create a Business Page

To create a Facebook business page, you first need to log in to your personal Facebook profile.

1. Go to www.facebook.com and sign in with your personal account information.
2. Click on “Pages” in the left-hand menu, and then click on “Create a Page” in the top-right corner of the screen.
3. Fill out the required information your business name, up to three categories, and a description of your business, and click on “Create Page.”

Place Your Images

Then, for your new Facebook Business Page, upload a profile and cover photo.

If you’re not familiar with these terms, your profile photo is the image that appears on your page next to your business name. It should be 170 x 170 pixels in size.

Your cover photo, which should be 1640 x 856 pixels, is the image that spans the top of your page.

For their profile photo, most businesses use a logo or another recognizable image. Your cover photo should represent your company’s purpose and/or theme. For example, a photograph of a product you sell, an employee at work, or a satisfied customer

These images should appear on the right side of the Page Creator. When you’re finished editing your profile and cover photos, click “Save.”

Set Your Page Info.

You’ve set up your Facebook Business Page and posted a few photos. It’s now time to enter your company’s information. Customers can quickly find your business’s address, website, contact information, hours of operation, and so on.

The simplest method is to click the gray “Manage” button at the top of your Page. Then, on the following screen, scroll down to the “Set Your Page Up for Success” menu. Simply expand the “Provide Info and Preferences” section to add details.

Go to the main menu and select “About.” This will take you to your page info, where visitors can learn more about your company.

Click the “Edit Pencil Icon” in the top right corner to update this information.

There are numerous fields to be updated here. Here’s what you should concentrate on

Location: If you are a local business, enter your address so that visitors can find you.

Hours: Store hours should be entered by brick-and-mortar businesses because some customers may refer to their page to see when they can visit.

Price range: You don’t have to fill this out, but if you do, it may help you find the right customers.

More information: Add your website, phone number, and email address so that people can get in touch with you outside of Facebook. This data will also aid in driving Facebook traffic to your website and products.

Additional information: Under “About,” place the description you added in step one. Under “Additional Information,” you can add extra details, and under “Impressum,” you can include a mission or vision statement.

Go Through Your Page Settings

Owners of Pages on Facebook have a lot of configuration options. For example, you can decide if you want your content to be public or private, if you want people to be able to comment on and interact with your posts, and if you want to use profanity filters to get rid of offensive words.

We recommend that you go through your Page settings and make the necessary changes. Just keep in mind that it won’t help you much if your Facebook Business Page prevents people from viewing and commenting on your posts. Don’t impose limits that are excessively rigid.

To change your page settings, click your account icon in the top right corner of your screen. From the drop-down menu, select “Settings and Privacy,” followed by “Settings.”

The menu on the left will change to show more specific categories, and the interface on the right will look like it has an endless number of options. Check out these options and learn what they could change or add to your page. We’ll only be unpacking a few key settings.

What Should You Put on Your Facebook Business Page?

Congratulations! Your Facebook business page is operational at this time. It’s time to get to work now. and by work, I mean routinely posting on your page.

You should not have a static website on your Facebook page. Your page needs to regularly receive material updates in order to be properly managed.

Before you start inviting people to join your growing community, you should also have a lot of published work. Use a variety of stuff while posting to your page, such as images, videos, GIFs, memes, shared user content, or graphs.

You can pin a post to the top of your feed if it is particularly noteworthy or engaging. To do this, click the tiny grey arrow in the upper-right corner of the post and select “Pin to Top” to temporarily move it to the top.

This feature can also be used to let people know about new products, company anniversaries, and other important events for your brand.

When your page has enough substance, start thoughtfully asking users to like it.

Measure Your Facebook Business Page

Your Facebook Page should require less effort over time. How? by noticing what kinds of content your audience likes and finds interesting.

The left-hand menu’s “Professional Dashboard” can be used to monitor the development and activity of your business page. You can keep an eye on how people are interacting with your Page and content from here, which will help you decide what content to prioritize posting in the future (and what content you can do away with).

To make sure you’re using Facebook for effective marketing, you also need to track your efforts. You should see the following under Insights:

Overview: This page displays a seven-day historical picture of your stats, including Page Likes, Post Reach, and Total Engagement.

Followers: This page provides details about your followers, including their current number and historical trends.

Likes: This page displays the total number of new and lost fans for you. You can compare paid and organic growth if you’re using paid marketing strategies.

Reach: This tab displays the daily reach of your Page in terms of total users. If you find peaks on a specific day, try cross-referencing what you posted on that day to see if you can duplicate that reach.

Visits: This tab shows the Facebook pages that your viewers are visiting. Visits to Facebook Timelines, your information tab, reviews, and other pages can be compared.

You may view detailed activity surrounding different types of Page content on other tabs like Posts, Events, and Stories.

Keeping track of all these metrics may seem tedious at first, but by creating a workflow document, you can easily delegate this task to your staff or VA. It frees up much of your time to focus on much more important tasks, like growing your business.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Facebook Business Page

The essentials have been covered. Let’s now discuss techniques you can employ to boost your Facebook Business Page and make it a significant tool for your business. These Facebook tools will help you make even more interesting content, whether you are marketing an HVAC system, a plumbing business, a law office, or a restaurant.

Facebook Stories

Most likely, you’ve already seen Facebook Stories. They are a method of showing your viewers a video that is not part of your Facebook Business Page. They can be a terrific location to share supplementary content for items on your Facebook business page because you get some space on people’s news feeds in return. Facebook Stories should try to make people feel something, and humor is a common way to do this.

Facebook Messenger

You can offer customer support and give your consumers a way to ask simple questions with Facebook Messenger. You can also activate auto answers, making it function in some ways like a Facebook business manager. If you choose to use Facebook Messenger, you should probably hire a full-time employee or a social media marketing company to handle it for you.

Facebook Ads

A Facebook ad campaign can be a great way to attract particular clients to your Facebook Business Page. You can pay to ensure that your Facebook Ad appears in their news feed after narrowing down the demographics and backgrounds you want to visit your page.

Pin a Post

Facebook gives Page owners the option to pin a post to the top of their Pages so that it is visible to all visitors. Even when you publish new material, the pinned article will remain below your cover image and will assist promote special announcements, limited-time offers, etc. You should anticipate that a post you pin will receive a lot of activity (likes, comments, and views), so make sure it promotes your company.

To pin a post, choose it by clicking the three dots in the top right corner. Then, from the pop-up menu, choose “Pin Post.” The top of your Page will now display this post until you unpin it.

Link to Other Pages

Be social because Facebook is a social network. Follow pages that are similar to yours. Like and comment on their posts. Create an online community for your company.

For instance, a bankruptcy legal company might connect with the Page of a nearby accountant. A plumbing business may connect on Facebook with other home service providers, including HVAC, electrical, and gardening experts.

To connect with other Facebook Pages, all you need to do is visit their Page and click the blue “Follow” icon. Once you do, their posts will start to appear on your news feed.

Wrapping – How to use Facebook Pages for Business

Facebook Pages are a great way for businesses to connect with their customers and create a community around their brand. With over 2 billion active users on Facebook, there’s a good chance your target audience is already using the platform.

Creating a Facebook page is free and only takes a few minutes. Once you’ve created your page, you can start sharing content, interacting with your customers, and running ads.

By following these simple steps, you can set up a high-performing Facebook page for your business in no time!

And, once everything is in place, don’t forget to keep an eye on things by regularly monitoring your insights; this will help you understand what’s working well and what needs improvement so you can continue fine-tuning your strategy over time.

Do you run a D2C small business?

Are you looking to expand your offerings and reach new customers?

Social media can be an effective marketing strategy for your small business, but it can be challenging to keep up with the ever-changing online landscape.

When it comes to social media automation, there are a lot of myths out there. People seem to think that if they automate their social media tasks, they will lose control over their accounts and end up with a bunch of robotic posts that no one will want to read.

However, this may not be far from the truth. Automating your social media tasks can provide many back-end benefits that you may not have even considered.

In this article, we will take a look at 11 of the overlooked benefits of using social media automation.

Let’s dive right into it!

What is Social Media Automation?

Social media automation is defined as the process of automating social media activities for the purpose of optimizing social media results. In addition to saving time and effort, it promotes brand awareness and helps marketers manage social platforms.

With every internet user present on at least two or more social media channels, more than 80% of a turn to these platforms to discover new brands and seek assistance in making a purchase

D2C brand marketers believe social media plays an important role in increasing brand awareness and driving sales but the increasing competition requires better strategizing

To stand out on social media, D2C brands must understand who their customers are, how they want to be addressed and implement campaigns that add value.

Role Of Social Media In E-commerce

Given that nearly 50% of the world’s population uses one or more social media platforms, the opportunity is huge for any e-commerce brand to engage with its shoppers and the target audience at large.

Why Is It Important for D2C Brands?

Social media is an incredibly effective marketing channel. But it can be tricky to use efficiently. With so many social networks, communities, and microtargeting options, brands have endless options for maximizing their social media efforts.

And while this variety has its benefits—such as giving users a lot of choices when it comes to their online presence—it also makes it difficult for companies to stand out from one another.

The good news is that new software tools are making it easier than ever before to schedule a social media post and interactions across all of your channels.

These types of services will help you streamline your publishing process so that you only post content on niche sites when they’re relevant to your brand instead of leaving everything open for everyone. With automation, you can also schedule Instagram Stories and Facebook Posts using Facebook publishing tools, so that they don’t get in the way of your workday.

Which Platforms Support Social Media Automation

You might be wondering if any of your social media channels support automation. Fortunately, the majority of platforms have implemented the feature. Here’s a brief overview of the ones we recommend:

Facebook – Posting dates, times, and words can be set in advance. Depending on your network settings, your posts can also be “bot-ed” so they look like they’re from real people.

Instagram – You can schedule posts to be published at specific times, but you can’t set them to appear on specific dates.

LinkedIn – Automating your posts is possible on the company’s standard plan. With paid plans, you can also create custom post templates.

Pinterest – You can schedule posts, but you can’t set them to appear at specific times.

Twitter – The scheduling option is supported on most platforms, but it’s only available on tweets. And you can’t set tweets to be posted at specific times.

In this article, we’ll explore seven of the key benefits of using social media automation.

1. Grab More Engagement

Above everything, social media marketing emphasizes building relationships on social media. Rather than focusing on sales on social media, sharing engaging information, building trust, and listening to customer feedback are given top priority.

Sustained interaction on social media will ultimately lead the consumer to a product purchase. To build better relationships with customers, brands need to take on a number of activities, such as:

• Interacting with followers
• Participating in groups
• Hosting live chats, and more.

It is vital that eCommerce rethinks its social media strategies more towards building a bond with their customers based on “emotional relationships” than a “transactional relationship” alone.

To make a lasting impression on your audience, you need to make an emotional connection with them.

2. Social Listening

Tracking/monitoring your brand’s online conversations is known as social listening. These conversations can be in the form of mentions, tags, hashtags, and reviews.

Strategy to track your social listening enables you to better understand what your customers/audience want from your products and services.

The top reasons why social listening should be a part of your e-commerce social media strategy are:

• being able to better understand your customers’ preferences and dislikes
• Discover what your customers really want from your business
• Understanding the concerns of your customers that need to be addressed urgently
• Acquire insights into your customers’ minds and get an edge over your competitors.

3. Social Influence of Influencers

Influencers that have a strong followers list on their social media handles can go a long way in providing a big boost to your brand. The aim of this is to reach a wider audience while also building trust with them.

Source: Freepik

Using Influencer marketing, if done right, alone can deliver a double-down social media return on investment (ROI) than traditional methods of digital marketing.

4. Build Trust Through Your Blog

A blog is a digital asset that helps in SEO and makes it possible to share thought leadership and engaging content on social media channels. It also serves as a pitch when you launch new services or products & can redirect a lot of traffic to your website.

By connecting your blog to engaging social media posts, you can facilitate smooth your customers’ buying journey.

The best example of a leading eCommerce company that made the best utilization of its blogs is Myntra, India’s major e-commerce portal for fashion & lifestyle which has curated intriguing articles and has been a leader in its industry and has become an opinion leader.

Placing links to their products strategically within their blog has led to a better conversion rate.

5. Creative Communicating Design

Ensure the entire aesthetics and color scheme of the post while designing social media posts, it should reflect the core values of your business.

Staying true to your brand’s personality can lead to determining your brand values and targeting your content accordingly. This is where having an agile content review process becomes imperative. It helps your team have clear brand messaging across any creatives you create.

Source: Freepik

Your posts could reach beyond your immediate followers when you use well-researched keywords.

Similarly, using hashtags on social media platforms will make your content more discoverable. A/B testing or preference testing of post-creative content will increase conversion rates.

6. Promotional Offers

Discount & giveaway campaigns are really fruitful on social media giving your brand a good engagement for eCommerce marketing strategy.

An ideal example of this is Lenskart, an eCommerce company for eye care and spectacles. They have obtained a lot of success in their promotional social media campaigns where they provide a free coupon of Rs. 150 on new registrations.

One of their campaigns gathered more than 1.6 million Facebook hits and 6000+ Twitter followers, which is no small accomplishment.

Similarly, including polls in your posts will magnify the engagement and provide you with deep insight into your audience’s thought processes and behavior.

7. Provide Better Customer Service

Whether it’s addressing specific concerns or listening to client feedback, social media gives you the ability to provide quick, quality customer care. According to the Sprout Social Index, 53% of brands say customer service contributes to the organization’s social strategy.

As opposed to phone calls or emails, social customer service is quick and to the point. But it still allows brands to have forward-facing and meaningful conversations with customers.

Customers, prospects, and competitors can similarly see how you interact with your audience online. Putting positive interactions left, right, and center is a huge plus for any business.

Social media also provides a prime channel to collect customer feedback. Responding to concerns and concerns signals that you’re invested in serving your audience.

8. Positioning Power for Your Brand

Simply having an active presence on a social channel constitutes positioning power for your D2C small business. Let’s say your closest competitor has an Instagram account that’s booming with customer stories, photos, and sleek snapshots showing off their product.

On the other hand, you have an Instagram profile that’s accumulating cobwebs. Not a good look, right?

Consistently publishing on channels relevant to your business indicates that you’re active and open to new customers.

Whenever someone searches for your brand on social media, you will gain the positioning power of social media. Your Facebook or Instagram could very well be your brand’s first impression on a customer versus your website.

This again speaks to the significance of maintaining an active presence.

9. More Top-of-Funnel Leads

Acquiring more top-of-funnel leads is another key social media business advantage. Social media platforms are used by billions of people every day, so your target audience may already be on the platform.

Increasing brand awareness can help you attract more top-of-funnel leads, regardless of whether you use paid ads or content marketing.

Source: Unbox Social

A social presence allows you to introduce your product to more people and gain more sales. Even if these leads don’t make purchases directly through social media, raising awareness could lead them to become full-fledged buyers later on.

They cannot buy your product or service until they know your brand exists.

10. Stronger Talent Acquisition

Almost half of the marketers say finding experienced talent is their biggest challenge this year, but social recruiting can make it easier.

Applicants are utilizing social media to network and conduct research on companies. Candidates often follow brands to stay on top of potential job opportunities.

Leveraging social media platforms allow for stronger talent acquisition because it opens up your sphere of applicants. Employee advocacy is one way to make your company stand out from the crowd.

When current employees rave about your company on networks like LinkedIn, it builds up your brand’s reputation. When a company posts a “we’re hiring” announcement on social media, many applicants use social media to research the company’s culture and values.

11. Build a Great Brand Reputation on Social Media

Social media users are not shy to share their customer experiences, singularly if they are not satisfied with the quality of your products or customer service. The eCommerce market is filled with high-risk orders, so it’s almost inevitable that you have to deal with bad reviews from time to time.

Word-of-mouth marketing works extremely fast. When people read negative comments, it influences consumer perception of your business. Thus, eCommerce businesses should take care of keeping up a positive brand reputation on social media.

People buy from brands they trust, so you have to deal with negative feedback briskly, whether you check out business tags, read comments, or monitor Facebook ads comments.

Thankfully, the right social media automation software can help you maintain a positive online reputation.

Wrapping up on Benefits of Social Media Automation

Automation can help your social media efforts by saving time and promoting consistency in your posts.

It can also help you expand your social media reach by reaching new audiences on secondary networks and only have to remember to post on your main channels.

Aside from creating better content, social media performance should also be analyzed.

The most important thing when choosing social media management tools is knowing your needs. Understanding your brand needs will help you identify where improvements can be made.

We suggest you try using Bulkly and hopefully you will see higher results soon.

No matter the size of your website, it must engage your intended audience to produce the desired results of your marketing efforts. If not, many content professionals will correct this by adding new content.

However, a better option is to perform a content audit to optimize your existing website for your audience. What does this entail?

This guide will lead you through all the aspects of a content audit, including what it is, how to do one, and how to ensure you get results that help you focus your marketing strategy.

What Is a Content Audit?

Image Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/FlPc9_VocJ4

A content audit allows you to review the content on your website with a critical eye to assess its value and worth.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be deleting low-performing pages. Nor does it mean you’ll be keeping all of them. The auditing process will help you and the appropriate team members make these decisions case by case.

How long this process takes depends on the size of your website. It can take months to audit and optimize a site with over 500 pages. You determine how much you review. However, if you believe your website is underperforming, a full analysis helps.

With proper planning, a content audit does not have to be an arduous task. Organize and break down the steps to create a plan of action so you can improve your marketing efforts.

Who Can Benefit From a Content Audit?

By creating and implementing an improvement plan based on the audit, your content will better serve your audience.

But internally, your departments will thank you too:

• Search engine optimization team: A complete review will find gaps in your SEO strategy and help your team to address those issues in existing pages.
• Marketing department: This process will help them sharpen and fine-tune their marketing strategy for more effective engagement, eliminating tactics that are not working well.
• Content contributors: An in-depth audit shows them which content is the most successful so they can focus their craft.
• Social media team: This audit will help them discover the most engaging web pages and allow them to repurpose that content.

As mentioned, an underperforming website can benefit from an audit. But even if your site is doing well, this process can help you refine and retarget your audience, focus your marketing strategies, and help you improve content for even more success.

Why You Should Do One

Still not convinced? Here are more reasons from digital marketing guru Neil Patel on why you should do a content audit:

• An audit is a great way to inventory all your site content to better plan future content.
• In addition to improving SEO, an audit can help you improve accessibility, readability, and inclusivity, allowing your business to serve a broader audience.
• Find opportunities to create new content that your audience is seeking but that your current site lacks.
• You have an older site but have never done a content audit.
• Your company does not yet have a clear digital marketing strategy.
• It can also be helpful if you are redesigning or have run out of content ideas.

A content audit provides an excellent opportunity to optimize your website, improve your digital marketing strategies, and better serve your audience. In short, there are a few downsides beyond the time you are willing to commit.

Image Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/online-marketing-internet-marketing-1246457/

Setting Goals for Your Content Audit

Larger websites and those in need of a first-time audit present a challenge. Numerous pages present the challenge of analysis paralysis that comes with large amounts of data. To avoid this issue, take charge of the information rather than letting it overwhelm you.

You can accomplish this by setting goals for your content audit. If you miss this critical first step, the data leads to confusion. Setting clear objectives allows you to select and prioritize the data, providing clear direction for this process.

The goals you choose will impact what data you collect. Here are a few examples:

Search Engine Optimization

Review your current site analytics and set a goal of where you want to be in one month and one year. You will need to review your keywords and how they are integrated on each page. It requires a more technical look at your content, including header tags, featured snippets, keyword phrases, canonical URLs, no-follow implementation, indexing, internal linking, and more.

Image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-pen-on-top-of-notebook-3183170/

Social Media Strategy

Here, you will be seeking content to repurpose. Review the body of your page to pull keywords, critical points, and other engaging content for social media. Content is the key to creating a strategy that leverages trends, establishes your company’s voice, and builds authority in the marketplace.

Next, optimize the layout for readability and best practices for image options, sizing, and variety.

Content Quality and Accessibility

This goal also requires a deep look at the content. Focus on topics that cover your niche, the pages that have the most traffic, and which pages have fewer visitors and engagement. Are there topics people are asking you about or are trending that you’ve missed?

You also want to ensure that pages are readable and accessible.

Site Performance and Optimization

Site performance requires a technical review. Relevant data includes site speed, load times, and overall performance. Make sure that images are optimally sized and formatted.

The goal of improving website performance requires the following information: page redirects, CSS and JavaScript rules, broken links, platform performance, and bounce rates. These backend issues can have a devastating effect on website reach and will require a plan of action.

Backlinks and Shares

Overcome search engine competition and social media challenges such as low engagement by ensuring that content is visible. You can achieve this by improving backlinks and shares, also known as an amplification strategy. It involves looking at both individual pieces of content and the quality of your backlinks. Content should strive to be authoritative, original, accurate, and trending, while backlinks must only come from quality sites.

These are just a few of the reasons to perform a content audit. Take the time to plan a goal for the audit and then research the data required to attain that goal. Once that is completed, it is time to start your audit.

Image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/apple-laptop-notebook-office-39284/

How To Perform a C​​ontent Audit

After determining all the categories of data you need to mine for your blog, you will need to scrape your website and get the information into a spreadsheet. Of course, you can do this manually, which will take more time and effort. Manual scraping works well if you have a few pages. But if your website has 100s or thousands of pages, a web scraping tool will save you hours of labor.

On the other hand, using tools and getting your data into a CSV format to import into a spreadsheet has drawbacks too. The code can malfunction, making it difficult or impossible to read or format the fields you need.

Note that you should only perform web scraping on company websites. Scraping someone on another site involves legal and ethical considerations. However, you can perform this action to understand your competition if you abide by certain limitations. Talk to your SEO team to learn more.

Here are some best practices for these two options.

Manual Scraping

Manual scraping involves copying and pasting your data into a spreadsheet by hand. If you have an XML sheet or another tool that lists all the pages of your site, allowing you to easily access this information in your content management system.

Manual scraping provides you complete control of the process. However, this is time-consuming and could lead to man-made errors. This technique is not practical if you have more than 20 pages.

In that case, a tool is going to be your best bet!

Tools For Web Scraping

Several tools can help with this process. Each one depends on your company’s budget, in-house capabilities, and how much of the audit you prefer to outsource.

SEO Spider Tool by Screaming Frog: This UK-based company offers a tool that downloads and formats all your data. There are both free and paid options, making it useful for small businesses as well as larger websites.

SEO Spider formats your data directly into a spreadsheet for easy analysis. As you can see by the title, this is primarily useful for SEO content audits and has a range of other options to help optimize your website.

DYNOMapper is a visual sitemap generator. In addition to content audit and inventory capabilities, it can track URLs, files, links, word count, keywords, and more. You will need to invest beyond the basic plan to access this tool. However, DYNOMapper also offers keyword tracking and website accessibility testing.

WooRank is another SEO tool that uses a site crawler to help you optimize performance and eliminate technical errors. It also allows you to perform keyword tracking and analyze your competition. WooRank is a for-pay service, however, it does have a free trial.

ContentWRX was created with content auditing in mind, making it a tool you should consider. This tool provides analysis and reporting based on the goals you set for your audit. Custom services are offered for the needs of your organization.

Be warned: there is no pricing on their website. They require you to give your information to download a sample pricing packet and to meet you to assess your needs.

More Tools for the Rest of Your Audit

Once you have organized a list of your pages and data with a specific goal, you may need additional tools to complete your tasks. Some options to consider include:

Image Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/electronics-mobile-phone-screen-1868708/

• Google Tools: Google Analytics, Search Console, and Keyword Planner are free tools that help you determine the health of your website’s SEO and traffic. Every company should use these tools.

Analytics and Search Console tells you what visitors are doing on your site and provides data on page performance. Keyword Planner helps you adjust your SEO keyword strategy to discover whether or not it is working. Taken together, these are necessary to show the complete performance picture of your website over time.

• SEMrush provides similar tools as Google tools but goes into more depth. You can also run website audits, track competitors, and create and schedule content, depending on the package you purchase. This tool is one of the most popular to help improve website rankings.
• ContentKing provides real-time SEO auditing. One advantage of this tool is that it can track changes while they are entered. This live tracking gives an instant alert to errors, such as broken links, so they can be fixed before the search engines record these issues. That can save a great deal of trouble for your SEO campaign.
• Hot Jar is a free and paid tool that tracks what users click on the page using heat maps. It can help you target whether content is helpful for visitors or ignored.

There are many more options, both paid and free, but these are the top tools to help you run your audit and analyze the data.

What’s Next?

Once all or a number of pages are complete, create an action plan to optimize your site with your primary goal in mind. You should do this even if the results were better than expected. Use the data to improve your digital marketing business efforts, including building customers’ trust, creating brand recognition, and following the user journey to improve customer experience.

Sit down with all your relevant team members to discuss the results. First, have the SEO team fix errors that are dragging your site down as quickly as possible, including poor backlinks, broken links, or bloated images. Consult with their opinion on what to address next.

The social media and content departments should optimize top-performing pages by repurposing existing content and developing more relevant content. Make a plan to address low-quality pages. Mass deleting too many pages can harm your SEO so proceed with caution.

Performing a content audit from time to time is necessary for the health of your website but is even more critical to successfully reaching your audience. While this task takes time and effort, this evaluation is valuable to improve your marketing efforts. The actions you take to optimize your content based on the data can attract new visitors and turn your current followers into raving fans.

Statistics show that marketers will spend about $350 billion to fuel their social media advertising campaigns in 2023. This massive number doesn’t even account for ad spending across the global economy.

Does all this money evaporate into thin air? Probably not. It’s invested to build communities, thus producing more engagement and driving sales. With users worldwide spending about two hours and 27 minutes per day on social media, the potential is huge. But why does your business need a social media strategy in the first place?

Why a Social Media Community Is Essential for Businesses

The keyword of social media is “social.” By being social, you build a community of people who love to interact with your brand. Once you’ve achieved that, it becomes much easier to increase your brand awareness and sell your products or services.

When we observe carefully, we notice that social media communities can benefit your business in many ways:

They Spread Brand Awareness through Brand Ambassadors

In the age of influencer marketing, brand ambassadors can make your brand popular without having to spend much money on paid advertising. Differently from paid influencers, brand ambassadors who are current customers of your brand are more authentic.

Building a social media community attracts potential brand ambassadors who can spread the word about your brand via multiple media channels. They do it by sharing your content or posting customized content, among other ways.

They Become Repeat Customers

Once you’ve built a community on social media, no matter how small, some of them will eventually decide to purchase from you. But what happens after the first sale? Do they forget about your brand or keep purchasing? By educating and engaging with them through your channels, you’ll turn them into repeat customers who purchase from you again and again.

Social media is one of the best ways to stay in touch with your community of customers, and it can be used to positively influence customer retention. Knowing that acquiring new customers is five times more difficult than retaining current ones, building a social media community that strengthens customer retention is worth your time and money.

They Drive Recommendations

A loyal social media community is powerful because it drives recommendations in the most natural way possible. Social media is used by your customers to share snapshots of their daily lives. If your product or service is an integral part of their routines, they’ll recommend it to their audiences (especially when you incentivize them).

Even when they don’t share anything on their profiles but simply leave positive comments on your pages, potential customers who were on the fence about buying will find it easier to decide. 44% of people surveyed say that their purchasing decisions are influenced by brand conversations on social media more than by paid adverts.

They Bring New Customers

Views eventually turn into purchases. Your goal on social media is to get as much exposure as possible at the lowest cost. A loyal social media community helps you achieve this successfully.

With just the click of a button, they can share your content with their friends and bring more potential customers to your social media channels. From there, you can even encourage sharing by allowing them to build customized referral links.

They Provide UGC

“Content is king,” they say, but not all types perform the same. That’s why you should aim to create top-performing content for your brand. In this case, user-generated content (UGC) has an increased performance of 29% when used in advertising campaigns.

By building an engaging social media community, you’ll automatically start getting UGC. If you run contests to encourage users to produce content, you’ll have an endless amount of unique content to repost on your channels, use as testimonials, or incorporate into adverts.

11 Tips to Supercharge Your Social Media Marketing Community

Building a strong community on social media is challenging because the algorithm is not always on your side to start with. Less than 10% of your audience will see your content, which is not a lot if you have a small audience. But is there hope?

Sure there is. As long as you take the right steps while producing your content, you’ll achieve a lot more than you expected. Here are 11 tips to help you in the process, even if you’ve just started building your social media community.

1. Conduct Thorough Research

When you create a profile on social media, you’re a stranger. Even though you can craft your personalized bio and logo and introduce your business via stories and posts, the vast pool of social media users is global. You need to be specific in the way you present yourself, including whom you reach out to and engage with.

Here’s how to research your target communities on social media:

• Define the targeted demographics and their interests.
• Get market insights via surveys and social media listening.
• Participate in discussions in industry-related forums and Facebook groups.

2. Create Contests to Increase Engagement

By organizing contests, not only do you attract new followers, but you also win user-generated content (UGC) to enrich your social media strategy. User-generated content is proven to increase engagement since it shows strong authenticity.

A fundamental principle for successful contests is to prepare a relevant offer. The prize you’re offering should ignite a burning desire to win it among your audience. At the same time, this prize should align with your brand’s theme.

You may think no one would say “no” to an iPhone, but if your audience is businesses in the retail space, it makes little sense that they would engage with your contest. As a result, you’ll end up attracting the wrong audience. So, center your contests around your industry’s needs.

3. Set a Clear Objective

When we’re talking about objectives, we’re talking about progress. Progress is hard to measure if you don’t have milestones to achieve. That’s why, when you’re outlining your daily, weekly, or monthly social media strategy, your objectives are crucial.

For instance, a clear objective looks like this:

I will post once per day on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for at least six months. After posting, I will spend 40 minutes engaging with the best-performing accounts in my industry. At the end of six months, I expect a growth in engagement of at least 5%.

4. Diversify Your Content Strategy

Your content needs to be diverse to match the best-performing types found on your target platforms. Reposting the same video on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook won’t work. It’s best to publish content customized for each platform once a day, rather than posting the same content across all your channels three times per day.

Diverse content is crucial, especially when your audience is diverse in terms of interests, demographics, and beliefs. Besides content formats, you should also have diverse content that caters to each segment of your audience. Publish with the larger demographics in mind, and then have some pieces that speak to your smaller audiences.

5. Use the Right Tools to Cater to Your Community

Well-researched content is powerful, but posting consistently and analyzing your performance on an ongoing basis is what guarantees the steady growth of your community. To achieve success on this journey, the right social media tools will be your best friends.

The proper tools can track the performance of your content, and they come with scheduling options, so you don’t have to stay pinned to your devices to post at the same time daily. Moreover, by using such tools, you’ll be able to manage multiple accounts at once.

6. Post Video Content for Your Community

If you’re not yet taking advantage of video content, you’re missing a lot of growth opportunities. Over 86% of marketers say video content has helped them collect more leads and grow their social media communities. The effectiveness of video content can be seen in the booming of apps like TikTok.

Video content works best in short-form formats (these excellent TikTok ad examples testify to its success). That’s why most popular social media channels offer special options dedicated to short-form video content, similar to TikTok.

• YouTube offers Shorts.
• Instagram and Facebook offer Reels.
• Snapchat offers Multi Snap, etc.

7. Make Use of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing helps you promote your products and services without directly paying the platform for ads. Instead of spending money testing Facebook ads until you find out what works, you can pay an influencer to promote your brand to their audience and encourage more users to join your social media community.

Some other characteristics these influencers should have include:

• Their audience matches your ideal audience.
• They’re not currently promoting your competitors.
• Their fees are affordable and reasonable.
• They’re ready to commit to a long-term partnership.

8. Avoid Being Too Pushy on Social Media Platforms

The fastest way to lose the trust and respect of your audience is by being over-promotional with your content. No one likes to be asked to buy all the time. Even if they like your products, they will get bored with your promotional content and probably unfollow you.

Social media content, just like highly converting email copy, deserves proper attention from you as a content creator. If you’re not yet ready to sell, your posts should end with a CTA that encourages comments, likes, and shares.

9. Engage with Your Audience Regularly

When growing a community around your brand on social media, ticking all the boxes that include content creation and posting isn’t everything. Don’t forget that you’re interacting with real humans behind their screens, and these humans all have different opinions to express.

Some of the best ways to engage with your audience are through quizzes, polls, questions, and stories. Facebook reports that 58% of its users claim they’ve been enticed to check out a brand’s website after seeing its stories.

10. Promote the Content You Share

Many talented creators are forgotten in silence — not because they’re not good enough, but because they don’t want to promote themselves. For them, marketing resembles an annoying salesman who knocks door-to-door, and everyone hates him. But speaking about your business doesn’t harm anyone. The truth is different.

There will always be people who feel annoyed and others who appreciate what you do. With or without marketing and promoting yourself, these two categories of people will always exist. So keep in mind to confidently promote your work and reach those who need what you offer. In this way, you’ll start building your own unique community of followers who love your craft.

11. Observe the Latest Trends and Changes

The ones who build large social media communities of loyal followers are those who follow the trends and adapt their strategies fast. With the ever-changing nature of algorithms and the engineers working to refine them day by day, updates are rolled out quicker than we expect.

Check out some of the trends shaping how we approach social media marketing:

• Social search is growing steadily as people use TikTok or Instagram to find answers to their questions instead of Google.
• Social commerce was expected to grow rapidly, but it’s slowing down, leaving time for businesses to catch up.
• Famous brands like Nike and Starbucks are throwing a lot of money into the Metaverse, disregarding the mass skepticism of its fate as the future of social media.
• Short-form videos are triumphing as the most captivating content format.

Even though important updates quickly become noticeable on social media, it’s best to stay informed by following official sites, such as the Meta Newsroom, Instagram Business blog, or Twitter blog, to learn about a recent update as it launches. This allows you to revise your social media strategy instantly and provide your community with recent content.

Top Social Media Tools for 2023

The savviest community management teams would agree that social media tools save time and make their jobs easier. They come with great features that allow you to schedule posts, moderate comments and messages, track performance, and produce seamless reports.

Here are four of these tools you must try in 2023:

1. Buffer

Coming with a free plan that lasts forever, Buffer has an intuitive interface that is easy to navigate and tons of helpful content on its site. Suitable for small to medium-sized businesses, Buffer offers the fundamental options of sharing and drafting posts for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter. By scheduling posts, you’ll have more time to engage with your users and reply to their comments.

2. Bulkly

Buffer offers so many options that sometimes you may need to combine it with another tool like Bulkly in order to cater to your communities. You’ll be able to revise old social media updates, automate the process of adding social media content, upload CSV files detailing these updates, shuffle posts, and utilize many other convenient features. For instance, Bulkly helps you generate multiple social media updates from your blog posts to keep your community updated.

3. Hootsuite

Over 18 million people rely on the power of this content distribution software. Hootsuite allows you to schedule and tracks the performance of your content starting at $49 per month. The platform helps you measure your social ROI, schedule content, run ads, and manage multiple accounts across 35 different social networks. Moreover, you’re able to respond to all messages from multiple social media accounts from a single unified inbox.

4. Sprout Social

If you’re committed to making your social media channels thrive, you should incorporate Sprout Social into your community management strategy. Even though it costs slightly more than its competitors (around $89/month), it comes with many useful features. It includes all the functionalities of the platforms mentioned above, and it also produces outstanding moderator reports. It allows you to perform social media listening and monitor the conversations about your brand across your channels.

Quick guide on how to build social media community

Building a social media community starts small, but it can grow steadily, depending on the work and content quality you put into it. Once the community starts growing, you should be more careful about the content you post, the contests you launch, and the influencers you work with. These are some of the best strategies used to grow your community.

At the same time, they can backfire if not done right. The wrong content encourages your audience to unfollow you, and unrelated partnerships might cause divisions between your fans. Always do your research properly to avoid mistakes while producing content, and use social media tools to schedule your content and spend less time on automatable tasks.