Social Media Marketing Tips: The Beginner’s Guide to Success
Throughout this blog, we’re going to talk about social media marketing tips that help beginners start off on the right foot. With the social network quickly becoming a global hotspot for sharing information and ideas, implementing social media into your marketing plan is vital to overall success. According to jeffbullas.com, the number of people using active social media accounts has reached nearly 1.7 billion.
With so many people interacting online, social networking has become a channel for not only marketing and advertising online, but for customer service as well. Being successful at social media marketing requires numerous factors, meaning there’s never been a better time to research social media marketing tips.
Keep reading to uncover social media marketing tips and tricks for planning your high-converting social media marketing strategy.
Creating Effective Social Media Posts
As to be expected, the most important social media marketing tips revolve around getting your posts read. But before we jump into that, let’s talk about goals.
Goals Before you begin sharing anything on any social network, make sure that you have a set goal in mind, such as increasing brand awareness or generating leads, for example. This goal should align directly with your marketing goals.
The ultimate goal of your social media pages should be to increase the traffic to your website. Similar to paid online advertisements, social networking is used to generate more leads for your company.
Ready to get started? Continuing reading to snag our social media marketing tips.
Consistency
Because these social media marketing tips need to cover a variety of platforms, it is important that you keep your messages consistent in order to avoid contradicting yourself across the various platforms.
Because social media encompasses a variety of platforms, it is important that you keep your messages consistent in order to avoid contradicting yourself across the various platforms.
While keeping your messages consistent in content, it is beneficial to create posts that are unique from one another. This provides your audience with more variety, resulting in more ambition to read your posts. Without at least some variety, readers are likely to become bored and stop reading what you have shared.
Content
Posts should be engaging, but also professional and mindful. This applies not only to written content, but to visual content and links as well. Even hashtags, which are increasingly being used in social media today, must be carefully considered before being integrated into any post. Used in the appropriate context, visual content can have a positive impact on posts, making them appear more attractive and engaging.
Associating your company with content that is in any way negative could have serious repercussions on your reputation. It is vital that your posts are reviewed before actually being posted, as we all know how easy it is to post something without actually intending to. In one extreme example, a U.S. Airways representative responded to a customer in a very inappropriate way. The company removed the post immediately, but not before many people had already seen it and the damage was done.
Analyzing Content In order to create the most effective posts possible, it is important to not only follow the effective guidelines mentioned
In order to create the most effective posts possible, it is important to not only follow the effective guidelines mentioned previously, but also to analyze your previously posted content. By analyzing your content, you should be able to determine which methods worked well and which ones did not.
From there, you can eliminate the poor performing methods and better utilize the more positive ones. This should ultimately help you to improve your techniques and allow you to create more successful posts.
Posting for Success
When to Post While the content and appearance of your posts are without a doubt important, so is when and where you post them. Timing can have a significant impact on how many users view your posts
While the content and appearance of your posts are without a doubt important, so is when and where you post them. Timing can have a significant impact on how many users view your posts
Posting at peak times will likely result in more engagement from your audience. These times each provide a window in which your posts are more likely to be seen. The volume of audience engagement can be easily calculated using analytics, providing you with an analysis of hourly participation.
Where to Post
The sites on which you post are also relevant to the ultimate success of social media marketing. Focusing too much time and effort on social networking sites that attract little attention is much less beneficial than focusing on sites that witness much more traffic, especially when that traffic displays more interest in your company. 
Posting Frequency
The number of posts you create on a daily or even weekly basis can have a substantial impact on the success of your social media marketing. Consider your favorite company on Twitter or Facebook. If they suddenly stopped posting any updates, wouldn’t you lose interest and possibly stop following them? This is why posting frequently is so important when it comes to delighting your audience.
Lack of regularly posted content may even cause you to lose followers who have given up the expectation of being updated regularly. This, in turn, could very well result in the loss of potential sales.
Becoming active on social networks through actions other than posting can be beneficial as well. For example, responding to comments and messages on a regular basis will help to keep your audience interested.
On the other hand, posting too much can present negative consequences. Your audience likely does not have a desire to see multiple posts from you within a short time period, especially if those posts are very similar across one or multiple platforms. Create your own social media marketing tips that are tailored for your business to help employees make smart updates.
Posting too frequently can end up in your posts being lost or passed by in newsfeeds. Doing so may also result in the loss of some followers who find your frequent updates to be overwhelming.
Finding a happy medium for posting is essential, even though it may take some time to determine a routine based on trial and error. It is especially important to remember that in regards to social media marketing, quality trumps quantity. It may be helpful to create a calendar that will track your social media posting in order to prevent too much or too little from being shared.
You will not be taken as seriously if your content is mediocre, especially if that content is posted too little or too much. Always remember, do not post just to post. More important that any social media marketing tips, is that the voice of your content comes from a genuine place. The content and appearance of your posts leave a greater lasting impression than the frequency with which you post.
Looking for ways to improve your social media pages? The Modern Marketer Assessment provides you with an in-depth look at what is missing from your marketing strategies.
Connecting With Your Audience
Audience Interaction Providing your
Providing your audience with regular updates may seem like enough to keep them interested, but that is often not the case. It is extremely beneficial to interact with your audience in order to prove that you are reliable and available to listen to their comments and concerns.
Social media has ultimately become as important of a communication medium as that of the telephone, email and online chat options. Because of this, many people do not hesitate to share their thoughts and frustrations online, where they know they are more likely to be heard.
In content concerning your company, it is important that you respond to your followers to let them know that you are listening and aware of their wants and needs. Social networking presents the opportunity for much faster communication than email, so it is best to respond to your audience as quickly as possible.
Responding to Feedback
While social networking is an effective channel of communication among companies and consumers, there may be negative issues that come into play at times concerning your audience. These may be minor complaints or heavy issues, but either way, it is your job to diffuse the situations as quickly and smoothly as possible.
While social networking is an effective channel of communication among companies and consumers, there may be negative issues that come into play at times concerning your audience. These may be minor complaints or heavy issues, but either way, it is your job to diffuse the situations as quickly and smoothly as possible.
While social networking is an effective channel of communication among companies and consumers, there may be negative issues that come into play at times concerning your audience. These may be minor complaints or heavy issues, but either way, it is your job to diffuse the situations as quickly and smoothly as possible.
In order to take care of these problems, it is a good idea to create a protocol on how to handle such situations so that you are not blindsided by them. In the case of either positive or negative feedback on social media, it is to your advantage to create an honest yet professional response that you can use in future situations.
Social Media Interactions
When it comes to interacting with your audience in general, you must be mindful of your actions. For example, be aware of who you are following or connecting with, as those who you associate yourself with can reflect either positively or negatively on you. This, in turn, affects how others perceive your company.
When it comes to interacting with posted content, do not, under any circumstances, like your own posts. It is obvious that if you posted the material, you are supportive of it already. Liking your own posts portrays you as being desperate for audience interaction, which leaves you with a negative representation. Instead, encourage your friends and those in your company to like your material in order to provide it with more credence.
Time Commitment
Making Time for Social Media Because social media marketing can be so beneficial in generating leads and expanding brand awareness, you may question just how much
Because social media marketing can be so beneficial in generating leads and expanding brand awareness, you may question just how much time you should spend on it. The answer to this question is varied, based on the type and size of your company. There are methods, however, to help you determine how much time you should set aside for social media marketing.
As mentioned before, it is a good idea to have a set goal in mind before proceeding too far. With this goal in mind, you can move forward, confident that you are promoting exactly what you want your audience to 
be aware of.
Once you begin composing your posts on various social networking sites, you should be able to gain a better understanding of how long each post should take to create. This will help you to plan how much time is reasonable to spend on social media posts and how many posts you can expect to create on a regular basis.
The Cost of Time Another factor that influences time commitment is that of money. The amount of money you have to spend on social media marketing correlates with how much time you spend on social media. This can lead to more conversion rates because of the time it took to respond to customers on social networks and what kind of information was posted.
Another factor that influences time commitment is that of money. The amount of money you have to spend on social media marketing correlates with how much time you spend on social media. This can lead to more conversion rates because of the time it took to respond to customers on social networks and what kind of information was posted.
Another factor that influences time commitment is that of money. The amount of money you have to spend on social media marketing correlates with how much time you spend on social media. This can lead to more conversion rates because of the time it took to respond to customers on social networks and what kind of information was posted.
It is essential that you have established and understand the results you are aiming for and how much time and money you are willing to spend to generate followers, feedback, and leads from social networking to help promote your company or reach your desired goals.
Assessing Time and Strategies
After determining how much reasonable time and money you are willing to contribute to social networking, your next step in the process should involve building a weekly schedule that dictates the times you plan to devote to your social media marketing. Utilize this system so that you do not forget to take advantage of these helpful tools.
Learning to direct your time will require trial and error, and therefore will not necessarily be set right away. As you work toward better managing your time spent with social media, you should eventually be able to determine where your current marketing strategies stand and learn in what areas you can optimize them.
Measuring Social Media Marketing Success
Monitoring Marketing Methods
It is very important that you measure and monitor the success of your social media marketing efforts on a regular basis. Following social media marketing tips and guidelines will not necessarily bring you the same level of success as others, even if they do create positive impacts. Take your industry into account.
Every company is unique in its own way, and therefore must ultimately determine which methods work best for them and which ones should be discarded. While many of the previously mentioned social media marketing tips and methods may apply to a high percentage of businesses, these methods may be utilized in different ways by different companies.
Increasing Website Traffic
According to the Social Media Examiner, 92% of businesses trust that social media marketing is essential to their companies. However, only 37% of these companies actually measure their social media marketing return on investment (ROI). It is advantageous to measure the traffic from all of your social network pages to your website or blog.
Monitoring Sales and Referrals
You can use a program such as Google Analytics to monitor the referrals from your social media pages to your website. Referrals from your social media pages may be converting into leads through downloading eBooks or signing up for email campaigns.
Tracking how many of your social networking referrals are converting into actual sales for your company will allow you to adjust your marketing budget so that you can focus more time and money on the social media pages that are generating the highest volume of site visits to actual leads.
Maintaining Consistency
Arguable the most important of all social media marketing tips is consistency. As you create and implement new marketing strategies, it is worthwhile to use a checklist on which you record your messages, times and information regarding your social media pages. This not only helps you keep track of successes and failures, but also provides you with an easier way to keep your posted content consistent.
In creating new marketing strategies, it is important to determine whether or not they are leading to success. In order to keep track of your successful methods, you must first determine whether they were effective or not. It may be in the best interest of your company to request a marketing automation assessment in order to find out. From this assessment, you can create your own social media marketing tips to implement across your business.
Maintaining consistent content portrays to your audience that you are competent and reliable. For more advice on how to make the most of these social media marketing tips, check out these useful tips from Enfusen.
