Just like traditional “bazaars”, social media is a big, busy marketplace of our digital world. Just like how shopkeepers want to set up their shops in busy places, like markets or malls, because they know more people will see their shop and maybe buy something, businesses use social media to reach people online because that’s where a lot of us spend our time nowadays.
Social media is not just a platform to connect with friends anymore. It has now become a powerful tool for brands to reach their target audience, build relationships, and grow their business. With millions of users active daily, social media offers endless opportunities for businesses to increase their brand awareness, engage with customers, and boost sales.
And this is a powerful tool in such a competitive world! Businesses have never been so directly connected to their customers as they are nowadays. Social media presence lets companies talk directly to people, answer questions, get feedback, and even chat in a friendly way.
So, by implementing the right digital marketing strategies, brands can enhance their presence, target specific groups of people, build trust, connect with their audience more effectively, track their performance and drive long-term success.
10 Must-Try Social Media Strategies to Elevate Your Brand
If you’re a brand that wants to rule the digital landscape, establish their business and get long-term success, now is the time to start optimizing your social media efforts. Let’s read through this article to explore some top social media strategies every brand should be using to succeed:
1. Define Clear Goals and Objectives
If you are a business owner and want to use social media to amp up your presence and get more sales, it’s important for you to have clear goals, just like if you were planning a trip. You wouldn’t just say, “I want to go somewhere.” Instead, you’d say, “I want to go to the beach next Saturday.” That’s how specific goals work!
SMART Goals is a helpful way to set these clear goals:
- Specific: Make it clear what you want to achieve.
- Measurable: Make sure you can track progress.
- Achievable: Set a realistic goal.
- Relevant: Make sure it’s connected to your business.
- Time-bound: Set a deadline for achieving it.
One of your primary goals should be to get potential customers interested in your product or service. However, your next goal could be to increase website traffic by 20% within six months or generate 100 new leads in a month.
Here are some examples we’d like to give you to help you understand your own goals:
- A fitness brand might want to gather email addresses through a special offer on social media, like a free workout guide. Their goal could be, “We want to collect 100 email leads in the next month.”
- Similarly, if a bakery wants more people to visit their website, they might post mouth-watering photos of their pastries with a link to their online shop. Their goal could be, “We want to increase website visits by 20% in the next three months.”
- Another brand might want to have higher engagement rates where they get more likes, comments, shares, or saves on social media. For example, a travel company might aim to boost engagement by encouraging followers to share their favorite vacation memories. They could set a goal like, “We want to increase our engagement rate by 15% over the next month.”
However, setting the goals is not simply enough! It’s even more important to regularly check and update these goals. Suppose you planned that beach trip but didn’t check the weather. Later, it turns out that it’s rainy out there, so, you might need to change your plans!
In the same way, businesses grow and change, and so do their goals. If you’re a brand using social media for digital marketing, you should be:
- adaptive to changes as per the market, social media trends, and/or customer interests.
- track your progress to see if your strategy is working or not. If your audience seems more interested in video content than images, you might need to adjust your goal to focus on creating more videos.
- and grow with your business. If your strategy works, do not sit back and think your sucess will last forever. Keep making efforts to expand your business and offer more value to your customers.
2. Understand Your Audience
Secondly, it’s very important to understand your audience and figure out things that interest them. We mean, you should create content that resonates with your audience and encourages them to engage.
- You can use surveys and social media analytics to gather more information about your target audience.
- You can either directly ask your followers about their preferences, what kind of content they enjoy, etc., or, you could use built-in tools of your targeted social media platform to gain analytics to see how your posts are performing.
- Analytics can also help you understand the age, gender and location of your followers, when is your audience mostly active, and what kind of posts get the most likes, shares, or comments.
- For example, if your audience is mostly students, posting after school hours might be the best strategy for you.
- You can also look at what your competitors as doing. If your competitor is gaining a lot of engagement on certain topics, it can give you a rough idea about which topics you could focus on to bring more audience your way.
Basically, understanding your audience can help you determine what type of content you need to create and which platform might be the right choice for you. Suppose, you’ve discovered that your audience loves funny videos, you should focus on creating more humorous content rather than serious posts. This keeps followers engaged and coming back for more.
3. Focus on Key Platforms
Creating content is simply not enough. You should also focus on the right kind of platform. For example, if you’re throwing a party and all your friends love video games, will you choose a book club to party? Of course, not! Right?
Similarly, different social media platforms are made for different audiences. Instead of trying to be everywhere or on the wrong platform altogether, focus on posting your content on platforms where your audience spends the most time.
- Instagram is great for visual content, like photos and short videos, and works well for brands in fashion, food, or travel.
- LinkedIn is perfect for professional networking, so it’s ideal for B2B companies or those looking to hire talent.
- Twitter attracts people more interested in impactful causes, serious issues and politics.
Suppose your website is getting traffic, use Google Analytics to see where your visitors are coming from. If a lot of traffic comes from Instagram, you must invest more time, effort and money in that platform.
And once you’ve determined your ideal platform, you can use the social media analytics tools of that particular plaform to gain information about audience demographics, post reach, and the best times to post.
Look for “Facebook Insights“, “Instagram Insights“, “Twitter Analytics“, etc. or you could use comprehensive social media management tools like “Sprout Social” or “Hootsuite” to track performance across multiple platforms, and understand audience engagement better.
4. Create Consistent and Engaging Content
Consistency is crucial in social media but it’s not just about frequency—it’s also about quality. As a brand, you should create a content calendar to ensure you are posting regularly but pay equal attention to posting content that offers value to your audience.
Moreover, planning content in advance saves time instead of scrambling up ideas at the last minute. Create content that engages your followers, and balance promotion content with value-driven, engaging posts.
Here’s what we suggest:
- On most days, offer valuable content like tips, tricks, stories, or educational content that provides value to the audience. For example, if you are a skincare brand, you could share tips for maintaining healthy skin, which establishes trust and authority. As a result, your audience could engage by either thanking you, asking a question, or suggesting more such topics for the future.
- You could do a promotional post once a week to promote your products or services. After all, too many promotional posts can feel overwhelming or pushy to your followers.
- So, apply the 80/20 rule where you create a good balance by offering 80% valuable, engaging content and 20% promotional posts.
This way, you’ll maintain trust among your audience while promoting your offerings!
To maximize your reach, you can repurpose your content across different platforms.
- For example, if you have posted a detailed blog post, create an infographic highlighting key points and share it on platforms like Pinterest or Instagram.
- You can also take popular blog topics and turn them into short videos or tutorials.
- You can also break down longer content, like webinars or podcasts, into short clips or quotes that can be shared on Twitter or Instagram Stories.
5. Leverage Social SEO and Algorithm Insights
This is what is the most important for your social media success! Even if you are posting good and consistent content, you will gain organic traffic only if they are able to see your content on their feed. To do this, you need to leverage social SEO in your posts.
Optimise your content for searchability by doing keyword research and using relevant keywords in your posts. Keywords are words or phrases that people might search for. For example, if a brand sells fitness gear, using keywords like “workout clothes,” “activewear,” or “fitness accessories” in their posts can help them show up in searches related to fitness.
You should also use trending hashtags related to your content to reach out your audience. For example, if you have a food brand that shares a recipe, using hashtags like #Foodie or #HealthyRecipes can attract more viewers.
Do not forget about algorithm-friendly formats because different platforms favor different types of content. For example, Instagram’s algorithm tends to favor reels and stories because they encourage engagement. Brands should create content in these formats to increase visibility. Similarly, on Facebook, engaging posts with images or videos often perform better.
When brands use relevant keywords and hashtags, it makes their content easier to find. When content is more discoverable, it leads to higher engagement rates.
6. Implement Social Listening
Social listening means brands can monitor what people are saying about them and their industry on social media, and what trends are emerging. You can use tools like Hootsuite and Brandwatch to track conversations around your industry and adjust your content to engage in meaningful conversations with your audience.
For example, if your own a coffee brand and notice several customers praising a new flavor, you might consider promoting it more or even developing new flavors based on the feedback.
Similarly, if a brand in the beauty industry sees discussions about a specific ingredient (like “clean beauty” or “sustainable packaging”) trending, they can adjust their product offerings or marketing strategies to align with these trends.
7. Maintain a Consistent Posting Schedule
Your favourite TV show airs at the same time every day or week. So, you kind of wait for it to come and remember to tune in, right? The same concept applies to your social media content! When brands post consistently, it helps keep their audience engaged and ensures they stay top of mind.
With consistent posting schedules, social media algorithms are likely to show that content to a broader audience. If followers know they can expect new content from a brand regularly, they’re more likely to view the brand as reliable and credible. This can lead to stronger customer loyalty over time.
You can use tools like Buffer or Hootsuite for scheduling posts ahead of time.
8. Utilize Social Media Automation
There are many social media automation tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Later and CoSchedule to make your work faster and smarter.
Rather than manually posting content every day, you can use automation tools to schedule your posts in advance. This means they can create content for the entire week (or month) at once and set it to go live at specific times. This saves time and ensures that posts are shared consistently, even during busy periods.
Similarly, some automation tools allow you to automatically respond to comments or direct messages without responding to each and every query individually. This can save up a lot of time by setting automatic reply for some predefined criteria.
This way, you can get plenty of time to create future content, analyse your strategies, identify emerging trends and adjust your social media strategies.
9. Collaborate and Manage Approvals Efficiently
In any business, especially in marketing, creating high-quality content often involves multiple team members. Whether it’s writers, designers, or social media managers, everyone needs to work together smoothly to ensure that the content aligns with the brand’s voice and goals.
- When everyone knows their role and the steps involved in creating content, it reduces confusion and ensures that tasks are completed on schedule. For example, if a writer knows when to submit a draft and what the approval steps are, it can speed up the overall process.
- When the approval process is clear and efficient, it helps maintain consistency in messaging and tone. If multiple people are involved in creating content, having a defined process ensures that all pieces reflect the brand’s voice and values.
- When content passes through clear review stages, team members can provide feedback, leading to higher-quality final products. This reduces the chances of errors being published on social media.
Collaboration tools like Trello and Asana are great for managing workflows and keeping everyone on the same page.
- Trello allows teams to create boards for different projects. Each board can have lists and cards representing tasks, making it easy to track the progress of content creation. Team members can comment, attach files, and move cards as tasks progress, keeping everyone in the loop.
- Asana helps teams organize tasks, set deadlines, and assign responsibilities.
10. Prepare for Crisis Management
In the world of social media, things can escalate quickly. A simple mistake or a negative comment can go viral and impact a brand’s reputation.
So, it is better to have a well-prepared crisis management or a predefined strategy to react quickly and avoid panic in such situations. Quick action can mitigate damage and prevent the issue from escalating further.
By dealing with issues promptly and professionally, brands can show their commitment to customer satisfaction and transparency. This can also help maintain trust and credibility with the audience.
Here are some effective tips for proactive monitoring in case of a crisis:
- Use tools like Google Alerts or social media monitoring tools (like Mention or Brand24) to track mentions of your brand online. This allows you to identify potential issues early and respond before they escalate.
- Regularly check your social media channels for comments and messages.
We also recommend crafting a response plan to protect the brand’s image.
- Ensure everyone on the team knows their role in a crisis.
- Assign specific tasks to individuals, such as monitoring social media, crafting messages, and communicating with stakeholders.
- Determine how the team will communicate during a crisis. Whether it’s through a group chat, emails, or a dedicated crisis management platform, ensure that everyone knows where to go for updates.
The Bottom Line
So, we explore ten effective social media strategies brands can use to enhance their presence, build a loyal audience, and achieve long-term success.
If you’re a brand aiming for growth, now is the time to take action! Implement these strategies today, explore the countless opportunities social media has to offer and watch your brand flourish in the digital world!
Which of these strategies have you learnt about today for the first time? Feel free to drop in your valuable comments!
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are the most important goals to set for a social media strategy?
For an effective social media strategy and track progress, you should set clear goals like increasing engagement, growing follower count, or driving traffic to your website.
2. How can a brand identify the right social media platforms to focus on?
Not every social media platform is right for every brand. To figure out where to spend your time and effort, think about where your target audience hangs out. If you’re trying to reach young people, platforms like Instagram or Snapchat are great. But if you’re targeting professionals, LinkedIn might be the right choice. You can also check your existing data to see where you’re getting the most engagement. This will help you decide where to focus.
3. What role does content consistency play in a social media strategy?
Being consistent with your posts is super important. If you post regularly, people will remember you and keep coming back for more. Moreover, consistency helps build trust and keeps your brand fresh in people’s minds. So, having a schedule for when you’ll post can make a big difference.
4. How can brands handle social media crises effectively?
Sometimes things can go wrong on social media, like a customer getting upset or a post not being received well. Having a plan in place for these situations by responding quickly and handling issues well can maintain your audience’s trust and show that you care about their concerns. Basically, you should know how to quickly respond and fix the problem just like having a first-aid kit ready when you go on a trip.