Used correctly, social media can be the most phenomenal marketing tool. With statistics suggesting that 3.81 billion individuals are actively using these platforms, it has an incredible audience for aspiring entrepreneurs to tap into.  

However, so few business owners actually understand how to take advantage of it. Most master the basics, but beyond creating a page and posting the occasional photo, they do not fully utilize the many opportunities that social media opens up to them.

If you’re worried you might be among them, this article is for you. Let’s take a look at just a few of the simple and straightforward ways you can improve your social media marketing strategy.

Choose The Right Platform

While we’d recommend having a presence on all major social media platforms, it’s foolish to imagine that you can devote an equal amount of time to each. That’s why you should try and work out which one best complements your business, and then focus the majority of your efforts on getting your strategy right.

The basic principle is to select the platform where your target audience is most likely to be prevalent. So, if you’re a B2B company, LinkedIn might work best; while, if you’re appealing to a younger demographic, Instagram ought to be your go-to. What’s really interesting is to look at the numbers and try to narrow down where your target market spends their time. 

One site you cannot go wrong with is Facebook. That’s because, according to Pew Research Center, this platform is frequented by people of all ages, and has an active user base of over two billion individuals for you to tap into. This makes it ideal for increasing brand awareness and generating leads.   

Actively Engage With Your Audience

One of the major upsides to social media is that it gives you the opportunity to actively reach out to your audience and influence their behavior, so it’s important that you make the most of this by generating commentary and encouraging organic interactions.

One great way to do this is by incentivizing your audience to behave in a certain way, and there are a number of methods you can use to achieve this. If, for example, you want consumers to share your brand with their friends and provide a form of free marketing, you could encourage them to do so by hosting a giveaway, with anyone who shares the post entered.    

Equally, if you want them to purchase from you, you could take a leaf out of the casino industry’s book by offering special promotions or discounts to inspire your audience to purchase. If we take a look at a site like Bonus.net.nz, for example, you can see how widely embraced this approach is within the online gambling sector, which is filled with marketing aces like LeoVegas.

By offering no-deposit spins, this company achieves two things: they increase traffic to their site, and also make it more likely that customers will play, get a taste for their products, and then reward them with repeat custom.  

Take Advantage Of Live Videos

Another opportunity that’s frequently underutilized is the live video feature that’s available on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. These are increasingly popular among big brands, and there’s a good reason for this: 80 percent of audiences prefer watching lives to reading more traditionally produced content like blogs and web pages.

Additionally, live videos can be great for increasing the visibility of your company, as followers are notified whenever you post. This means they’re more likely to watch this sort of content as opposed to videos and images posted on your page in the usual way, thus increasing engagement and helping you to develop a better rapport and more defined brand identity among your clientele.

Isn’t it time that your business took advantage of the many opportunities that social media can offer?