Past the Fundamentals: 20 New Social Media Suggestions for 2021
The complex digital media landscape changes every day and this year is no exception.
Having advanced social media tips on hand certainly has its perks, but finding a no-nonsense list can be quite difficult.
This is where I come in.
Since we're busy, let's dive into our first category and get you started solving your digital marketing problems on a platform-by-platform basis.
Facebook tips
1. Experiment with Facebook ads
Facebook Ads is one of the most popular digital media marketing tools and an affordable way to market your business. Having access to a large audience and the ability to customize your audience makes Facebook ads useful in just about any digital marketing campaign.
With that in mind, choosing the way you interact with Facebook ads can have a huge impact on the performance of your campaign. For example, are you running traditional ads or increasing previous posts?
Are you targeting general demographics or are you building your custom audiences? Developing the most impactful Facebook ads takes time. Therefore, monitor your experiments and test different techniques regularly.
2. Check your target audience
Validation is a priority in social media marketing, but Facebook's ability to customize and experiment makes validation especially important. With hundreds of unique audiences, formats, and content styles available to you, demonstrating the value of each component strengthens the integrity of your campaign.
Reverse engineering an effective marketing strategy makes it easy to disassemble and reassemble your marketing campaign. Take the time to determine the characteristics that make up your ideal audience. Where are you? How old are you? What are you doing for fun?
Once you identify audiences who will respond to your brand, you can save those specific groups. This social media tip is especially useful when promoting future content or targeting that audience again.
3. Retarget with custom audiences
Whenever I point out social media tips for Facebook, I need to explain the value of using ads to redirect warm leads.
Imagine running a Facebook ad on the value of hiking boots. It was presented to a cold lead so they never clicked your link. For most marketers, this is the end of the marketing journey.
Fortunately, in a matter of days you can target the same audiences with a retargeting ad to take full advantage of your previous content. In fact, if you're retargeting with video ads, you can set your ads to only re-target people who have watched at least 50 percent of your hiking boot video. This approach allows you to pre-qualify prospects before you've spent a dollar on them.
4. Investigate link retargeting
Now that you understand the possibilities of retargeting on Facebook, let's go a step further and discuss link retargeting.
If you've never heard of link retargeting, here's what you should know: Link retargeting allows you to add Facebook retargeting pixels to your short link when sharing curated content. Why is that important? Basically, anyone who clicks on your content can be re-targeted with relevant ads.
Regardless of whether someone clicked on reviews, industry news, or media reports about your brand, you can refocus them. This works even if the link is to a third party website! This allows you to leverage your content curation and expand the reach of your retargeted ads while still delivering real value.
Instagram tips
5. Understand the value of storage
Instagram storages were introduced both as an extension of the user experience and as an alternative to the traditional "Like" function. The idea behind saved content is that users can actively save certain content for later reference.
As saving becomes a bigger part of the Instagram algorithm, one of my social media tips is to find creative ways to make revisiting your content worthwhile.
Traditionally a visual-first community, Instagram travel content creators have had success with the mini-blog format. By creating a second, deeper experience for users, these content creators were able to pack more value into a single piece of content.
6. Experiment with content styles
When brands create content for Instagram, they usually focus on creating original images. While it is valuable to have fantastic, high quality images, there are many other content styles to choose from.
Brands can create engaging videos or GIFs to connect with their audience. Everything from memes to microblogs can extend retention time, resulting in greater brand awareness and growth on your social media channel. When it comes to social media tips, it's in your best interest to experiment with a variety of different content styles.
7. Create your own IGTV series
IGTV is fascinating mostly because it shows the growth that Instagram has seen over the years. From images to full blown video productions, Instagram has provided brands with some incredible marketing tools.
By making long-form video series, you can host live streaming events, host Q&A, create tutorials, share reviews, or even host your own live talk show!
Tools like IGTV allow you to experiment with your content style and connect with audiences in powerful and meaningful ways. If you were wondering how to expand your content offering, IGTV is worth considering.
8. Work with micro-influencers
Micro-influencers are possibly one of the most underrated resources in digital marketing and can massively improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.
When brands envision an advertisement or a brand ambassador, they tend to envision celebrities and industry leaders. These are definitely big endeavors, but there's only one problem: most brands just don't have the resources to secure celebrities.
This is where micro-influencers come in. Don't get me wrong, Instagram ads are totally worth using. However, there is no substitute for a micro-influencer with a loyal following by the thousands. You could end up with access to a much higher quality audience with fewer bot accounts and ghost followers.
LinkedIn tips
9. Post updates regularly
As with any social media platform, LinkedIn pays special attention to the connections between users. This may sound strange considering it is usually viewed as a networking area for employees and employers.
The last thing you want to do as a brand is disappear into the ocean of business pages. On LinkedIn, developing your relationship with your audience is vital. For this reason, posting regular updates and content for brands on LinkedIn is a priority.
Establishing this audience connection goes beyond posting updates. Consider setting up walkthroughs, providing news to users, or posting weekly blog posts. There are many inexpensive ways to engage your audience on this platform.
10. Test LinkedIn Ads
When it comes to social media tips, experimenting with paid ads usually makes perfect sense. You use the reach of social media with a targeted marketing tool.
When it comes to LinkedIn, the rules change a little. To start with, LinkedIn ads are notoriously expensive. They also have low click-through rates (which is usually due to the idea that there are fewer leads but higher quality).
Still, the problem is bigger than budgeting. The reality with LinkedIn ads is that you can find much cheaper pay-per-click (PPC) ads on a variety of other platforms if you're not targeting a specific audience.
Test ads on LinkedIn and another platform at the same time. Determine your CPC (cost per click), reach, and conversion rate to make sure LinkedIn ads are a good investment for your business.
11. Avoid hard selling
Traditional sales language and tactics aren't your friends on LinkedIn.
Trying to brutally become an industry leader just doesn't work. Instead, focus your attempts on building relationships with your audience and selling your brand, not your product.
Users will be browsing your content in less than a second if it is not immediately valuable to them. Instead of taking the typical hard-sell approach, prioritize honest communication with users above all else.
12. Create multimedia content
Videos and other multimedia content are great for LinkedIn when handled properly. Ideally, the content should begin by teaching your audience how to solve their problem in an immediate and tangible way.
Additionally, as a brand with a lot of expertise, you have the chance to establish yourself as a thought leader by using the right content and helping users address deeper issues in your industry.
Post videos, infographics, or any other valuable content you can think of. Experiment, test and discover what really works.
Twitter tips
13. Social listening on Twitter
Twitter is always changing. As conversations evolve over time, it may be impossible to keep track of each new update. My social media tip is to focus on social listening and see where your brand is on the latest relevant topic.
As well as trying to understand what your audience is thinking, you should also take the time to be part of the conversation in real time. The last thing you want is not to have meaningful conversations with past and current users.
14. Develop a clear brand voice
Your brand voice on Twitter is pretty important. Authenticity and brevity are crucial to the relativity of your brand. So take the time to clarify exactly what your brand voice is.
Are you casual Are you funny? Do you teach? Identify your strongest options and start experimenting.
15. Conduct surveys
Surveys are interesting because they accomplish two goals at the same time. The first goal is user-generated content (UGC). Not only that, but surveys can also help you increase your engagement with minimal effort.
If that's not enough reason for you, keep in mind that you can do these surveys for anything you want. Try different landing pages or test different offers. The choice is yours.
16. Use Twitter ads
There are several types of Twitter ads (Sponsored Tweets, Sponsored Accounts, and Sponsored Trends). However, for this list of social media tips, we're just focusing on the value of Twitter ads.
As with most social media marketing tools, this is where you pay for the performance. One of the most valuable aspects of this platform is that you can start creating certain social media ads based on what's going on around the world. This gives your ads a sense of urgency and authenticity that you won't find anywhere else.
Pinterest tips
17. Use Pinterest ads
Much like LinkedIn, Pinterest is a fantastic place to connect with a specific audience. If your market research shows that your audience is populating Pinterest, then you can have a compelling experience for them.
Once it turns out that your audience is a good fit for you, you can use images, make them interactive, and tweak your Pinterest ads for brevity.
18. Start using rich pins
For those unfamiliar with it, rich Pins are essentially a way for users to collect more Pins without thinking about it.
There are several types of Rich Pins:
- Product pens: Includes real-time pricing and availability
- Recipe Pins: lists ingredients, cooking times and even portion sizes
- Item Rich Pin: focuses on the author of the pin
The point is simple. Create content tailored to your specific audience and develop that relationship over time.
19. Optimize for mobile devices
Mobile is huge on platforms like Pinterest, so you can make some safe assumptions about the user experience. For starters, it is unlikely that you will be using desktop computers to review content.
To properly optimize for mobile devices, you should set up vertical images in a rectangular shape. Set these images to a ratio of 2: 3 to fill the mobile screen. In this way, your Pinterest account is ready for the modern age.
20. Focus on keywords
When you think of Pinterest, the term “search engine” may not come to mind. However, when you consider how easy it is to look up almost anything on the platform, it is no surprise that it has become such a useful search engine for others.
My final social media tip is this, once you are on this social media platform, take the time to focus on the keyword feasibility of the words you are using.
Conclusion
Navigating social media marketing can be as confusing as it is stressful. Don't worry if you are having problems growing your marketing campaigns and need tips on social media. You are certainly not alone in this.
When using Facebook, make sure to properly validate your target audience and use link retargeting regularly. Take advantage of the diverse content formats with Instagram and create something unique.
Use LinkedIn to develop a relationship with other users and actually be ready to chat with them.
Twitter is a great way to stay tuned and it's time to update your audience regularly. Use Pinterest if you want a keyword-focused mobile ad experience.
Regardless of which platform you use, you will know that you will get one step closer to mastering digital marketing by listening to these social media tips, taking control of your marketing campaign, and thinking critically about what works and what doesn't.
Which platform would you like to see next? Let me know in the comments below!
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