Top 8 Practical Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

At the moment, about 3.2 billion people, which is roughly 42 percent of the entire human population, are using social media.

This means that regardless of where you are from, regardless of what your industry is and regardless of how big your enterprise is, the majority of your potential customers is on social networks.

For this very reason, learning how to craft a solid social media marketing campaign needs to become a top priority.

8 Practical Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing Strategy

Here are several tips and suggestions for you to check out.

1. Repurposing content

Repurposing content doesn’t mean that you should just re-upload an old blog post.

It means that you can use these posts for comparisons, references (a great way of earning backlinks), throwbacks or use their topic in order to create a different format of content.

For instance, what you can do is take a popular post and turn it into a video or an infographic.

As of lately, it’s even more popular to use these topics for your podcasts.

When it comes to social media marketing, the easiest way to repurpose your content is to republish it on a different platform.

Finally, in a scenario where your content has a comment section below (or a live chat), you can use some of the positive feedback examples and turn them into testimonials.

2. Choose who you work with

Your choice of influencers that you’re going to work with is what makes all the difference when it comes to the way in which your brand is perceived.

First of all, getting universally acclaimed celebrities is always a plus but this kind of endorsement is most likely not something that you can afford.

Therefore, you might want to go for micro-influencers instead.

Still, the choice of these influencers needs to be what makes all the difference. What you want are people within your niche with a sterling reputation.

There are a lot of influencers out there who would endorse anything for the right price but these aren’t the kind of social media partners that you need.

3. Don’t argue with people online

The next thing you need to understand is that you should never, under any circumstances, engage in social media arguments.

There are several reasons behind this.

First of all, the person in question might just be offering invaluable feedback that you are unable to see because you’ve allowed your ego to get in the way.

Second, they might be trolling, in which case arguing is an even worse idea.

Arguing with an online troll is like playing chess with a pigeon – no matter how good you are, the bird is going to poop on the board and strut around like it won anyway.

In other words, it is a waste of your time and energy and it is just going to make you look non-professional.

4. Looking out for brand mentions

Another important thing that you need to look out for is brand mentions and the way in which they reflect the performance of your business.

The mistake that a lot of people make is focusing exclusively on what people are saying on their page, below their content and when interacting with their brand.

Other than this, your brand may be a subject of numerous mentions.

This can give you a more accurate image of just what people are saying about your brand when they think that you are not listening.

In order to do this effectively, you need to find a proper social mention monitoring platform to help you out.

5. Stay active

One thing that a lot of people will tell you when it comes to running a successful social media presence is the fact that you need to be present on all platforms.

However, what they don’t tell you is the fact that mere presence shouldn’t be enough.

What you need to do is tend to them all. Constantly upload, share and stay in touch with your audience on these networks.

In order to stay relevant, you need to be active, seeing as how. Otherwise, all your competitors might surpass you in social media activity.

If you doubt your ability to do so, find some skilled aid to help you out.

6. Set your priorities

The next vital issue that we need to discuss is the fact that while you need to give your best to be present on all social networks, sometimes this won’t be the best course of action.

If you can’t be equally as represented on all fronts, what you need to do is choose your battles wisely and determine which social networks capture the majority of your target demographic.

Regardless if it is Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube or Snapchat, you need to adjust to the rules of the network and create content that is specifically shaped for the network in question.

Other than this, you might want to check if one of the other networks (like Pinterest) might also contain large groups of your target demographic.

7. Understanding relevant metrics

A lot of people measure one’s value on social networks by the number of followers they have. Still, this particular metric is often quite deceiving.

Instead, you need to learn how to recognize those metrics that really matter, those that really make a difference and track them in order to see your progress.

For instance, instead of just looking at the number of followers, you also need to worry about your reach, audience growth rate, bounce rate and click-through rate.

In other words, there’s so much for you to keep track of.

8. Making your social media presence searchable

The concept of SEO is something that a lot of people recognize as a necessary step in order for one to stay visible online.

A similar thing needs to be done with your social media presence.

Keep in mind that every single social network acts as a search engine of its own, which is why you might want to perform some optimization in this field, as well.

The simplest way to do so is to make connecting and sharing easier. But this is just a tip of the iceberg of all the methods that you have available.

In the end, the only things that differ between industries are the target demographic, the platform of choice and the preferable content format.

Fortunately, the above-listed eight social media marketing tips are useful with any of these alterations, which gives you a significant advantage.