Social media has changed the way people connect around the globe. It has also opened new portals for businesses to reach their target audiences, with social media campaigns assisting or reinforcing sales and marketing objectives. Digital marketing programs with a focus on targeting potential customers through social media require careful planning. Feed your upcoming program with the right information to improve marketing success. Here’s what you need to know about social media campaigns.

Social Media Campaigns – What You Should Know:

Set Concrete Goals for the Social Media Campaign

Any offline or online marketing campaign needs clear objectives from the beginning. Do you want to:

• Get feedback from users about your company’s products or services
• Increase website traffic
• Promote brand engagement
• Enhance brand awareness
• Build email marketing lists
• Drive sales

You don’t have to create a lengthy presentation to explain a particular objective. Goals need to be discrete yet measurable. Obtain a baseline measure of metrics based on your goals to track changes and performance throughout the campaign. Shape your social media campaign’s intentions by the means, message, and target market.

Consider using the features of your preferred social media portal as part of your campaign goals. For example, measure the use of hashtags on Facebook or Twitter to check if your target audiences frequently use specific keywords. Hashtags can be trademarked, but you need to associate it with a product or service your business provides to the general public.

Also, pick platforms that suit your target audience. Different social media portals offer varying experiences for targeting potential online customers and site visitors.

Take Advantage of More Than One Social Media Platform

Start your path to social media success by choosing the right social media platforms. Choose from numerous portals, including:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• YouTube

Specific social media platforms can better target business-to-business (B2B) companies, while other choices work best for business-to-consumer (B2C) digital marketing campaigns. If you’re looking to start a B2B marketing program, choose Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. B2C marketing campaigns are better off using Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.

You may notice that Facebook can connect with both B2B and B2C leads and clients. Mark Zuckerberg’s social media platform took the world by storm since the developer publicized the portal. It continues to keep the competition on its toes with its billions of monthly active users. Use Facebook for your social media campaign to target a broad user base and demographics.

Despite Facebook’s overwhelming popularity, it doesn’t mean your campaign shouldn’t use other social media platforms. You can reach more leads and customers if you take advantage of more than one portal. For example, using both Facebook and LinkedIn can become a powerful combination to target B2B businesses.

Branding Consistency is Key

Make sure all business accounts you create for each social media platform you plan on using has the same (or highly similar) handle or username. Your target markets can easily search and identify your firm with the handle or username you choose. Don’t forget to add your social media account names on your business cards and brochures.

If possible, you may even link your social media accounts from different platforms together to make posting and sharing easy. For example, you may want to connect your Facebook and Instagram accounts. Do this simple step, and you only need to post on one portal, and the social media platform will automatically share the content to your linked accounts.

Also, all your profile and cover photos should be the same across all of your social media pages to further maintain consistency. Different social media platforms have varying size requirements for profile and cover photos. Edit your images to fit the required dimensions on your chosen portals or else you’ll see unnecessary cropping involved.

Last, make sure to post the same content across all the social media platforms you use. Don’t forget to include all the hashtags in your text posts and captions, especially when you’re using Instagram and Twitter. Edit and delete all links on your Instagram posts as URLs in post captions aren’t clickable. There is a workaround, however, as you can edit the link in your Instagram bio as the URL placed in that portion is clickable.

Create Convincing Content

Break your social media posting strategy into three parts: Branding, Sharing, and Selling.

• Brand Posts: These are pieces of content with the primary objective of engaging with social media users. You can use a wide variety of content, from contests to inspirational messages, as a brand post. You may even want to ask for reviews and testimonials from previous customers with these posts. It’s a relevant element to your social media campaign, but don’t forget to include a call to action to spark engagement.
• Share Posts: It’s an excellent move to regularly share posts from your website’s main blog to your social media accounts. Doing so will help improve traffic to your site and can aid in increasing Google rankings. Share posts will also help build long-term relationships with your audience since these pieces of content will help build trust.
• Sell Posts: Posts that directly sell to target audiences are precisely what its name implies. Sell posts direct social media users to your website, landing page, or a particular product or service page on your site. It can also lead targeted users to contact your business through email or phone directly. Once again, don’t forget to include a call of action in these posts like “Call us today,” or “Visit our website to learn more.”

Here are other tips to help you create compelling content for your social media posts:

• Keep It Short and Simple (K.I.S.S.) for your headlines.
• Each post should entice users to move to the next stage of the buyer’s journey.
• Post videos to help maintain a user’s attention to a particular post.
• Make content shareable.
• Keep a regular posting schedule.
• Re-share old content.
• Engage with users who comment on posts.

It’s All About the Aesthetics

Social media users tend to interact more with photos and videos on social media as opposed to reading blocks of text. Try it out; do a quick check on the news feed of your personal social media account. You’ll find yourself scrolling past text posts faster than you would look at images and video clips.

Still, it doesn’t mean you should fill your social media page with random photos and videos. Consider allocating time in creating an eye-catching appeal for your feed. For example, if you want your Instagram or Pinterest followers to feel inspired to purchase your products or services, create a feed of photos they’d find desirable. The visual appeal should encourage your target markets with the right push to proceed with the next phases of the selling process.

If you’re looking to prioritize photos over videos in your posts, consider the following quick tips:

• Give proper lighting to the subjects in your visual content.
• Don’t be afraid to use photo-editing tools. Highlight products in a busy background to entice viewers to focus their attention on those items.
• Use white backgrounds for a minimalist and clean approach to emphasize products.
• Always have a single point of interest for each photo.
• Deliver your message as quickly as possible, especially for videos.
• Avoid cluttered backgrounds.
• Spend time in learning how to use your camera (if you don’t plan on hiring a professional photographer or videographer for your social media campaign).

Know the Importance of Using Hashtags

Remember, using hashtags on posts to Instagram and Twitter allows users to locate your social media pages. Hashtags help increase the reach of your social media marketing campaign. These elements also help in improving business growth through social media.

Don’t just blatantly use every hashtag you find just because it may seem to correlate with your content. To have an active social media campaign, you need to learn the proper way of using hashtags. Here are a few tips to get you started in rightfully using hashtags on your posts:

• Use post insights to track hashtag engagement and success.
• Research for the top performing hashtags related to your niche.
• Add clickable hashtags in your Instagram and Twitter bio.
• Add hashtags to your Instagram stories.
• Never use irrelevant hashtags.
• Limit your hashtag use to nine at most.

Don’t Forget to Engage With Your Audience

Engaging with your audience isn’t just about replying to their comments. Reward your followers for their loyalty by giving them the opportunity to grow with your business. Hosting giveaways, enabling guest posting, and offering calls to action are a few options you may want to use to engage with your user base.

If you plan on hosting a giveaway for your target audience, the promotion can help increase followers, boost traffic to your site, and engage with potential customers. A standard set of rules your followers need to do when you’re hosting giveaways include:

• Following your social media page.
• “Liking” or reacting on that post about the giveaway.
• Tagging at least three friends in the comment section.

By giving away something from your company (whether it’s a product or service), you may pique the interests of audiences to join in on the promotion. People like to receive free stuff, and getting the chance to gain items or services without spending a dime will always be an enticing offer.

Timing is Crucial

One of the biggest mistakes of several businesses and organizations regarding their social media campaigns is the timing of their posts. Numerous business owners fail to see the significance of marketing during certain periods. For example, you’d have a higher chance of gaining more viewers and visitors if you publish your posts on 8 AM or 8 PM. It’s during these times when individuals have spare time before they go to school, work, or bed.

Pay attention to relevant times and seasons; don’t publish a promotional photo for a Christmas sale when it’s still in the middle of July. You might not just get laughed at by viewers, but you’ll also miss out on a large number of opportunities. Follow the timelines of events and go with trends. Do it right, and you’ll see the numbers on your social media campaign head to a real scale.

Here are a few tips to help you get the scheduling right for your social media posts:

• Place yourself in the shoes of your target audience. If you’re targeting individuals with white-collar jobs who work at 9-to-5 jobs, your posts should reach your market during periods when they’re free. Eight-hour-a-day employees will most likely be free before going to work, at lunch, and when they arrive home.
• Understand your campaign’s demographics. Remember, quality over quantity; it won’t matter too much at the early stages of your campaign if you somehow can’t reach over 1,000 leads. You might only gain a few viewers from a post. However, a large percentage of those viewers could be converted into paying customers. Use your chosen platform’s fundamental insights or tools to help you understand the periods when the majority of your followers interact with your posts.
• Study a campaign’s past performance. Your business’ social media presence might have already existed for a long time. Use built-in data exporting tools on the social media platform of your preference to pull previous data reports. Check the timing trends of different periods to help influence your current and upcoming campaigns.

You can also use the right timeframes when targeting audiences using paid advertisements services like Google Ads. Choose the right time to display Google Ads for a cost-efficient approach in handling additional costs for your social media marketing campaign.

Promote Social Media Campaigns with Ads

Traditional social media marketing campaigns may become significantly different with the help of paid ads. Paid advertisements can give your business numerous benefits like:

• Enhance targeting
• Gather marketing insights
• Amplify reach of target markets
• Boost brand awareness further

Each published post can only reach a certain number of online users. Use paid advertisements to make your business known to a broader demographic. Costs differ depending on the type of advertisement offered by the service. Different price ranges are available for banner, text, and video ads. Ask a social media ad provider for the services and pricing structures they offer.

The beauty of using social media to boost the chances of business success is they’re useable for all companies regardless of size. You don’t need to possess a large corporation to start a social media campaign. Many small businesses take advantage of the power of the Internet and social media to enhance opportunities for gaining online marketing and business success.