Top Tips: How to Market Your Business on Social Media

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What is the value of social media for your business?

Social media provides businesses with a cost-effective platform to reach and communicate with target audiences, build brand awareness and drive sales.

Tip #1 - Know the Difference

Organic social media: Organic social media is free content published to social media without paid promotion.

Paid social media: Paid social media refers to any actions on social media that you put money behind.

Combine the two for maximum effect:

Using a mix of organic and paid strategies on social media is imperative to long-term success on platforms. Organic reach can be limited, so paid strategies can help reach a wider audience. Paid ads also allow for precise targeting and testing, which can offer valuable insight for your organic and paid initiatives. A balanced mix of both will ultimately help you maximize your impact and

make the most of your budget.

Tip #2 - Create a Content Strategy

1. Know your audience
2. Choose the right platforms for your audience
3. Create your content plan

What is a content plan?

A social media content plan outlines the type of content you’ll be posting. It helps to align con[1]tent with business goals, maintain a consistent brand voice, and ensure a balanced mix of promo[1]tional and engaging content.

Use content pillars:

Content pillars are the core themes or topics upon which a social media plan is built. They serve as the foundation for creating consistent, high-quality content that aligns with a brand’s mes]saging and goals. Content pillars typically reflect the key areas of expertise or interest of a brand. They can help guide the development of content that resonates with target audiences.

Pillars examples:

• Community
• Humanize (engagement)
• Expertise
• Product/Services

A fifth pillar:

Consider creating a fifth pillar (optional guidelines) to ensure you’re delivering your complete brand story and personality.

Tip #3 - Create Engaging Content

At a baseline level, your content must do at least one of the following things:

• Educate
• Entertain
• Empathize
• Engage

There are several content formats across the various social media platforms, the most popular/effective for businesses in 2023 are: static posts, stories and reels.

Static posts:

A static post on social media does not move or animate in any way. It typically includes a still image or text as opposed to dynamic content such as videos or animations.

Best practices for creating static posts:

• Plan ahead (shot list, etc.)
• Capture great imagery
• Edit your images
• Apply graphics and logo
• Write concise, correct and on-brand copy

Stories:

Stories are vertical content (photos, videos, text, graphics) that live for 24 hours, rather than remaining permanently in your feed. Consider your audience’s demographics, interests, behaviours, and pain points to create content that better resonates with them, drives engagement, and is optimized for the platform’s features and audience activity times.

Leverage and play to the fact that these are people who already follow you. They enjoy your content and may want to learn more about you. Stories pieces are often less polished and show a lot of brand personality.

Best practices for creating stories:

• Plan ahead (shot list, etc.)
• Consider your audience
• Look for inspiration
• Encourage interaction

Reels:

Reels are short, looping, vertical videos on Instagram. They allow users to create and share 15-60 second videos. Reels can include a mix of audio, video, and text, and are immensely popular.

Best practices for creating reels:

• Define a clear goal
• Plan your content
• Use eye-catching visuals (do not always need to be complex)
• Add music/trending audio
• Optimize for sound off (captions)
• Incorporate brand elements
• Include a call to action in your copy

Tip #4 - Grow Your Audience

The three easiest ways to grow your audience are:

1. Promote your content (boosting) - When creating content on social media, putting money behind your posts and boosting them will enable a greater number of people to see your content. Most social platforms allow this; the language is typically “Boost” or “Promote”, or something similar.
2. Utilize reels - Currently, the Instagram algorithm favours reels, which can lead to greater visibility and engagement for your business. Compared to static posts, reels offer a more discoverable way for businesses to reach and grow their audience.
3. Engage with your audience - Engaging with your Instagram audience can help grow followers by building a two-way relationship. This also means more interaction, higher referrals (shares to others), and feedback that helps improve content quality. Responding to comments and direct messages shows that you value your followers’ engagement. It also fosters a sense of community which can lead to increased visibility, reach, and loyalty. Engaging with followers yields feedback to create relevant and appealing content, that attracts new followers and retains existing ones.

Tip #5 - Drive Business Results Using Ads

Paid social ads are ads you pay for to show up on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. They can come in different shapes and sizes like sponsored posts, videos, display ads, etc. Advertisers use these ads to reach specific groups of people based on their interests, demographics, and behaviours. They are usually managed through each social media site’s ad platform.

What is the potential reach?

• 83 per cent of Canadians use social media
• 90 per cent of people in Saskatchewan use social media
• Average Canadian spends over two hours a day on social media

Why are they good for businesses to use?

• Targeting ability
• Lower average cost than traditional advertising
• Provide valuable data (examples: on the marketing side - click through rate (CTR), reach and impressions, conversion, etc.; on the landing page - time on page, engagement rate, etc.)

Consider your destination!

Landing pages are a more effective tool (rather than sending people to your website home page) for driving conversions and generating leads. They offer a focused message, optimized elements, improved tracking, and the ability to segment audiences and campaigns.

Next Steps

Just get started.

Getting started with social media, even if you’re not fully confident yet, is important because it provides you with a learning opportunity and helps you start to understand the various platforms better. Plus, starting early gives you a chance to establish a presence, grow your audience, and make the most of the opportunities that social media can offer.

You can’t do it all — that’s okay, just do some of it really well.

Excelling on a couple platforms is better than just being okay on a bunch. By focusing your efforts on one social media platform, you can build a strong, consistent presence and engage with your audience. This will give you better results and make the most of your time and effort. Once you’ve mastered one platform, you can take your skills to the next level and tackle others.

Overwhelmed? Blue Moose Media can help.

Blue Moose Media is Saskatchewan’s award-winning leader in social media and digital marketing training. Our industry-leading Digital Marketing Certification provides students with the knowledge and confidence to effectively market a business online. What makes us different? Our students learn skills and strategies by doing the work in class. Plus, our certifications meet the criteria for the Reskill Saskatchewan Training Subsidy (RSTS) and Canada Saskatchewan Job Grant (CSJG), meaning you could receive funding for up to 100% of your training costs.