Starting a social media marketing plan in 2022 can be a bit nerve wracking. With over a million different social media tips circulating in the internet, chosen specific ones to implement on your platform can be very intimidating.
You don’t want to create contents that neither attracts nor engages people, do you?
For your marketing efforts on social media to yield positive results, you have to be deliberate about sifting through the numerous social media tips available online and finding the ones that not only relate with your brand but also speaks to your target audience.
To optimize your social media contents, there are some golden rules that you have to pay full attention to.
There are Do’s and Don’ts of social media marketing that every brand or business should adhere to if they want to achieve business growth.
Dos Of Social Media Marketing
Research your audience
Targeting the right audience is a crucial factor while marketing in social media. If you do not conduct a detailed research, you risk attracting the wrong audience. Worse, you can attract the right audience but you will be unable to truly give them what they want because you have not conducted a proper research to find out their needs.
You have to understand your audience, what they want and what kind of contents they engage more with so that you can tailor each message to connect with them.
The aim of your social media marketing campaign should be more than just attracting or appealing to an audience. People should be able to engage with it and performa specific action at the end.
To make researching your target audience easier, these are 3 important things you should note down;
- The demographics of your social media audience
2. The best active moments
3. The content form they engage with more
You can make use of analytics and the insights tools on social media platforms to track this list.
Measure your performance frequently
You can have the best social media strategy in place, however, if you’re not measuring the performance on a consistent basis, you will not be able to realize business or brand growth. Measuring your performance are the building blocks for constant social media growth.
Some key metrics to look out for when measuring your performance include;
1. Your Reach
2. Your Growth rate
3. Your Engagement rate
4. Your Click through rate
And Your Conversion rate
Schedule your content ahead
A truth; social media growth relies heavily on consistency. Another truth; you’re not always going to feel like posting on social media. Sometimes, you might not even feel motivated to create contents that are helpful. This is why it is advisable that you schedule your contents ahead of time, so that you remain consistent even on days when you do not feel productive.
A great and easy tool you can use for scheduling content is Canva.
Cross post content across different social media
Make sure that you are spreading your content across more than one social media platform. The more you are able to post on different socials, the more visibility your content gains.
While posting contents on different platforms is great, you should not post exactly the same contents. The can have similar ideas but you can tweak it to fit the social media platform.
For example – posting a Tiktok content on your Twitter feed, will not perform as well as posting a tweet would.
Ask your audience for feedback
The best feedback you can get regarding your social media strategies is the one given to you by your target audience. This is because their response will be an honest one, you see, they are particular about addressing their needs and wants.
You can ask them for their feedbacks through polls on your social media stories, normal posts or even message them privately for more personalized feedbacks.
Respond directly to comments and DMs promptly
Let me ask you a question.
Whose content are you most likely to engage in; A content creator who responds to your comments quickly and consistently or a creator who hardly responds to you when you comment?
The answer is obvious. It’s natural to chose the former.
Everybody wants to feel heard or seen. If people are engaging your contents regularly and they don’t feel appreciated, they will eventually stop or feel discouraged to continue.
Always respond to your comments and interact with the audience that engage your contents.
Sell more emotions and Less “Content”
Good Content appeals to logic, but it is emotions that sell.
Most people who make buying decisions or respond to CTAs do so with their emotions not logic. It is not based on how great your content is.
Always appeal to the emotional side of your target audience.
A great way to do that is by using personalized words, more of “you” and less of “general terms”.
Use words and publish contents that your audience can easily understand. Refrain from sounding too formal in your posts.
Another powerful way of selling emotions through your contents is storytelling.
Who doesn’t love a good story? If you’re a good narrator you can capture the interest of people and have them invested in your brand.
Tap Into The Influencer Marketing Scene
The influencer marketing scene is an aspect of Digital marketing that a lot of people are still on the fence about. If you’re still on the fence concerning it in 2022, it’s time for you to take a deliberate action into leveraging it for your business.
The right social media influencer can take your brand to new heights. Researching influencers that are specific to your niche is key to great influencer marketing.
Create Easily digestible Content
Save your riddles and complicated posts for never.
If you think your audience will find your post hard to grasp, then, you should not be publishing that content.
Every single idea can be communicated in a way that can be easily digested by people. No matter how complicated you think creating certain contents can be, there are options to chose from to simplify them.
You want your target audience to get your content idea by just glancing at the content.
Every single word should take your audience on a seamless journey.
Go live occasionally
Going live is a great way to grow your social media and attract people to your brand. Most brands are scared to go live because they feel they do not have much followers and will therefore get low views, regardless of those fears, go live as frequently as you can.
When done consistently, you will realize significant progress in engagements and followers.
Don’ts Of Social Media Marketing 2022
Ignoring video contents for social media
If you want to grab the attention of your social media audience, use videos. It is the easiest way to grab attention. With videos, you are able to attract, communicate and engage with people in a few seconds.
Look for ways to include some sort of video content in your brand story.
Posting contents that have no value
Every time you push out a content on your platform, it should contain helpful information that will be beneficial to your target audience.
What’s the need of posting a content that is not valuable? You might even lose followers and your brand’s trustworthiness.
It’s best to publish contents when you’re fully ready to push them that to publish contents consistently that has zero value to your target audience.
Ignoring your analytics
How will you be able to tell if you’ve reached new heights with your marketing campaigns if you’re not constantly monitoring it? He would you know what to tweak and what’s working if you’re not regularly evaluating your performance?
Paying attention to your social media metrics is a no brainer.
Downplaying its role means you’re invariably setting your brand up for future failure.
Not directing people to your website or email
You can get easily lost in creating contents for your audience that you can forget your real reason for creating and marketing the contents.
It is very possible that you can create the most valuable content in the world but without a strong CTA you will not be able to generate any leads for your brand.
Your main focus while creating any content on social media should be to direct them to your website or to get them to perform a specific action at the end of each content.
Repeating the same content exactly across all social media
You can post the same message on various platforms but communicate it to people using specific content forms that will appeal to that social media group. Posting similar contents will only be monotonous and boring.
Using hashtags excessively
As much as using hashtags during social media campaigns are great but using them excessively can be counter productive.
You can over optimize using various hashtags and your content might look unserious or even worse, like a scam.
Being inconsistent on social media
Consistency breeds result. If you’re not consistently publishing contents on social media, you will be unable to achieve your desired results or goals.
The most successful brands and businesses are not necessarily the “smartest” they are the ones who have built their strategies on consistency.
Not using stories daily
Stories create a personal experience for your followers on social media. It is a more intimate aspect of a brand.
You can use your stories to feed them with behind the scenes contents on a regular basis.
Give them a feel of the emotive side of your brand. Allow them relate with your content on a personal level. This also encourages brand trustworthiness.
Posting without proofreading
Critical editing should be done before posting any content. Grammatical errors should not be the only thing you should be on the lookout for.
You should pay attention to the format and structure of your content. How easy is it to read? Create content that is devoid of ambiguity. Also you should pay attention to the message you’re trying to pass across to your audience.
If you can, for a moment, wear the shoes of your potential customers so that you can find out if your message really addresses their needs.
Conclusion
If you’ve read this piece to the end, we hope it was worth the read as well as your time.
If it is a lot for you to digest all at once you can always save this post and come back to it later for specific social media pointers.
Remember, these rules should be combined with other social media strategies for you to fully reach and experience your brand’s growth.
