5 Keys for an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy

To the untrained mind, social media is just a platform for sharing photos and videos, connecting with friends and being unwitty. But marketers know better – social media is a major business driver! Smart businesses are leveraging social media marketing to supercharge their marketing efforts.
Compared with conventional marketing – print ads, TV and radio commercials – social media marketing is cheaper and offers better ROI.
To find success with social media marketing, a working strategy is needful. Not to worry, you don’t have to be a marketing guru to succeed – only be willing to stay consistent.
Here are 5 keys to reaching your business goals with social media marketing

1. Make Your Content Sharable

Good content is contagious, good content attracts shares. With good content, you can turn your followers on social media to your brand’s evangelist.
The key to making your content sharable is understanding your audience. If your content doesn’t connect with them, they will be averse to sharing your posts. Next to understanding your audience is being creative. Creatively weave videos, photos, and texts into your content.
Be sure to promote your content – it’s as equally important as content creation. Create connections with influencers – they are invaluable to any content promotion strategy.

2. Create Hooks with Call to Action (CTA)

CTA, as its name implies, nudges users to take certain action. Every social media marketing campaign must have an ultimate goal, and CTAs are there to help you accomplish this goal. If you are looking to make sales, have a “Buy Now” CTA somewhere in your ad copy. If your goal is to get subscribers, make it clear you are asking for their subscription.
Never assume anything – make your intent clear, and ask users to take your desired action.

3. Don't Go Broad – Niche Down

Social media is such a noisy place that without focus you can get lost. Just because everybody is targeting a particular demographics doesn’t mean you should. Find a micro niche that best connects with your brand and stay on it.

4. Leverage Cross-Channel Marketing

The dynamics of social media keeps changing everyday – the most popular platform today can go out of the market tomorrow. As such, it’s important to leverage cross-channel marketing.
Cross-channel marketing simply implies marketing your brand across multiple channels. This could be promoting your brand on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram etc., while maintaining your brand message. You could even take things a bit further by promoting via mobile apps and word-of-mouth.
As a business, it’s important to connect with your customers via their preferred channel.

5. Automate as Much as You Can

You don’t have to do everything yourself when it comes to social media marketing. There are quite a number of tools that can help you go auto mode. Buffer, Hootsuite, Coschedule are good examples. With these tools you can automate your post, thus freeing up yourself some time.