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Build it and they will come, is how the popular saying goes, but it’s not entirely accurate when it comes to social media. The general advice for brands now is that they must absolutely have a social media presence. However, this goes far beyond just firing up your favorite social media platform and creating an account.

It’s not that simple. Just having accounts or posting randomly without a defined strategy isn’t going to get you the desired results. With so many different social media platforms available now, brands also need to be more diligent about what they’re posting, when they’re posting and how they can drive the maximum engagement out of it.

Building out your brand on social media, particularly organically, can be a soul crushing experience. That’s seriously not an exaggeration. Many brands that don’t want to throw money on the problem right out the gate struggle with establishing their social media presence. It can be quite draining when you spend a lot of time and effort on creating content only for your efforts to not result in any significant gains in views and followers.

It’s no secret that the key to success on social media is consistency. Even if your content isn’t taking off at first, it’s important to continue posting and gradually building up your audience. It’s equally as important to not neglect other platforms where you could reshare that content to further maximize the value of what you’ve created.

Picking the right platforms will set you up for success

Most of the leading social media platforms offer a lot of similar features these days. For example, the ephemeral “stories” feature may have gained popularity through Snapchat but now you can also find it on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and others. The same holds true for short-form video.

Creating unique content for all of these different platforms won’t be possible unless you’ve got a full-blown media production department and copious amounts of marketing dollars. When deciding which social media platforms to create a presence on, look for the feature similarities between the different options.

This will give you the flexibility to utilize the content that you’ve already created and spread it across all of these different platforms. This approach has a greater chance of setting you up for success.

Extract more out of your content calendar

This circles back to consistency which is a big factor in all successful social media endeavors. Just look at all of the major players in your industry and you’ll find a common thread. They have their posting schedules locked down.

A content calendar is a great way to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. If you’re looking to maximize your content on social media, a calendar can help you divide how much of it you’re going to post on a given day and on which platforms. This can be useful in preventing content fatigue for your audience.

The added benefit of this approach is that you’re able to work on your social media postings in a much more professional manner. You can fine-tune your posts to suit each individual social media platform without having to jump through the sites. Timing them correctly will ensure maximum engagement from the audience.

Avoid inactive social media feeds

For most people who are looking at brands online, an inactive social media feed is a big red flag. It instantly makes them question the brand’s authenticity as it’s unfathomable that a business in this day and age would not be actively promoting itself across all of its social media channels.

This is a pitfall that you can avoid by maximizing your content on social media. For example, even if you’ve just recorded one video for a day, you could post it with minor edits across all of the social media platforms you’re on so that the clip is suited to each individual platform.

The audience there would thus see that the brand regularly updates its feed with content and they’ll likely to continue engaging with it. Dead social media feeds also tend to impact the reach of your content, since the platform’s algorithms will slowly stop pushing the old content to users.

Paid campaigns should always be an option

Social media platforms may position themselves as free services but they are increasingly finding ways to extract more ad revenue out of brands. To truly succeed on social media, paid marketing is inevitable.

As you work through maximizing your content on social media, look at opportunities that you can leverage to further expand the reach of your content. This may be through paid campaigns through the platform’s ad tools or via influencer marketing.

If you’ve created a great piece of content and would like to promote it further, you can always find an influencer in your niche that has a relevant audience. Work with them to put your content in front of more people who could potentially be new customers.

Your interactions are just as important as your content

A clear focus on the quality and quantity of content is required for an effective social media strategy, however, the buck doesn’t stop there. How you drive the engagements that the content brings is equally important. This should be the guiding principle when interacting with the people who engage with your content.

People prefer interactions that feel human on social media. Your brand shouldn’t come off as being a cold, faceless corporation that has no personality. When people engage with your brand’s content online, they’re looking for a response that feels more natural and human.

That’s one of the main reasons why brands are increasingly taking a more informal approach to their conversations on social media, a tone that you wouldn’t expect to see in their professional communications. From making jokes on Twitter to sharing behind the scenes stories on Instagram, your content maximization efforts will only be as good as the quality of interactions that people get from them.

Remember, content is still king on social media

There’s no substitute for great content. Whether it’s a well-produced video, an exceptional image or even a hilarious tweet that goes viral. Nothing beats great content on social media networks.

If you are able to nail that down and spread that content across all of the platforms that you have a presence on, it won’t be long before you see brand lift across all platforms.

The popularity of short form video content has skyrocketed online with social networks like TikTok being the major drivers of this trend. Other social networks have taken notice and launched their own short form video platforms.

Most people wouldn’t associate short form videos with YouTube. It’s the place where they go to watch lengthy vlogs, tutorials, clips from their favorite news shows and more. Yet, the Alphabet-owned video streaming service had to come up with something to counter the rising competition from the likes of TikTok and Instagram Reels.

It’s not like YouTube doesn’t have short form video pedigree. The very first video that was uploaded on YouTube was just 18-seconds long. As vertical video continues to dominate the online landscape, YouTube had to come up with an offering that would capture the interest of both creators and viewers.

In September 2020, it announced YouTube Shorts. This is a new short form video experience that’s built right into the video streaming service for 15-second videos. The feature was first tested in India where it became an instant hit. The following year, YouTube Shorts would then be released across the globe, bringing in over 6.5 billion daily views.

YouTube Shorts is seeing incredible engagement from the community and thus it provides brands with a great opportunity to further expand their reach.

What is YouTube Shorts?

YouTube Shorts is a new short form video format that enables creators to express themselves in 15 seconds or less. Creation is at the heart of YouTube Shorts and as such, it’s easy and fun to create these short form videos on the platform.

Tools like multi-segment camera that allow creators to string multiple video clips together as well as the option to record with music from a large library of songs provides new creative avenues. It has also been made easier for viewers to discover new content. YouTube Shorts gets its own row on the home page and viewers can easily swipe vertically to move from one video to the next so that it’s even easier for users to keep on watching these short form videos.

Why should you be posting YouTube Shorts?

Most brands already focus on creating a YouTube presence. It’s the leading video streaming platform and as such, it demands the attention of brands looking to expand their presence online. Think of YouTube Shorts simply as an extension of your YouTube presence. The ease with which YouTube Shorts can be created is a big plus point. You don’t really need any equipment other than a smartphone to create this digestible content that viewers can easily consume on the go.

YouTube Shorts enables you to tap into the massive base that uses YouTube through their mobile devices. That’s really when this new experience should be a part of your marketing strategy. As more and more people start using YouTube Shorts, it’s important that your brand maintains a presence there as well.

Why incorporating YouTube Shorts in your marketing strategy is a good idea

1. The demographics may work in your favor

TikTok may be the leading short form video app but its relatively younger demographic may not be suitable for all brands, particularly those in the B2B space. YouTube is home to a more diverse demographic as there’s essentially something available for everyone on the video streaming platform.

For example, brands can share industry insights or thought leadership content through YouTube Shorts even though that same content may not find much traction on the likes of TikTok and Instagram Reels.

2. The content sticks around for longer

YouTube Shorts is fundamentally different from other experiences such as Instagram Stories and Reels. The latter focuses on ephemeral content that disappears after 24 hours. This means your audience may never see all of the content that you produce.

This isn’t the case with YouTube Shorts. The short form videos remain on the page so whenever someone comes across your content, they’ll be able to see all of the short videos that you’ve created, regardless of how long ago they were posted.

3. Gain the first-mover advantage

This is still a relatively new platform and there isn’t as much competition for eyeballs here as there might be on other platforms. Brands that incorporate YouTube Shorts in their marketing strategies now will be in a better position to gain the first-mover advantage.

They will be able to establish themselves as an authority on this platform. YouTube users who view the short form videos will be more familiar with the brand and are thus more likely to gravitate towards their content in the future.

4. Lead the conversation on short form topics

There may be industry trends or events in your niche that can be adequately addressed with short form content. With YouTube Shorts, brands have the opportunity to drive the conversation on such topics.

This content could be anything from short videos that provide quick tips or data points to recap of industry news. It would help build authority among the viewers, particularly those that may have only just discovered your brand.

5. Differentiate yourself from the competition

If you have competitors that aren’t capitalizing on this trend, it gives you even more incentive to dive head first into YouTube Shorts. The competition is essentially giving up the space to you and it’s an incredible opportunity to get a leg up on it.

A brand’s online presence is the first thing that most people evaluate before they decide to try one of its products. By having a presence on a platform where the competition is effectively non-existent, you have a much higher chance of winning more customers.

YouTube Shorts aren’t going anywhere

It may seem like an experiment but there’s no indication that this platform will go away. YouTube is serious about its Shorts experience which is why it has been gradually rolled out to more than 100 markets across the globe since the initial test.

The sooner brands start incorporating YouTube Shorts in their marketing strategies, the higher the chances of them growing their audience on the platform as it grows further in the years to come.

For people running all parts of their business, serving as the sole marketing person, or part of a small marketing team, you know the multiple hats needed to make it work. When this is the case, social media may seem like a non-essential element of your marketing plan. It becomes easy to push aside when things get busy. But do not write it off that quickly.

More and more people spend their free time on their phones and social media apps. You have to be on those platforms if you want to engage them.

Social Media Platforms You Need to Use

While you are likely familiar with Facebook, there are many other platforms your company should consider when running a social media campaign. Here are the five that most companies need to use:

• YouTube
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook

YouTube

YouTube is a video platform with more than 1.9 billion active users monthly. This is a giant social platform with billions of hours of videos watched every day. It is second for searches and traffic only to Google. For these reasons alone, you should be using it. Video is also an excellent means of engaging with your audience.

You need to make sure to optimize your videos to rank, so they reach for people looking for content. Because YouTube is owned by Google, you can run your campaign through Google Ads and reach your target audience. Consider posting “how-to” videos as it is among the top-four most searched content categories on YouTube.

Also, those who use YouTube are as much as three times as likely to watch videos on how to use a product over reading how to use it. You can even reuse existing content from your site to boost the rankings. Keep the videos at around two minutes to maximize views.

You should post as often as your team is capable of producing quality content. Once you have utilized this platform regularly for some time, look at your referral traffic from YouTube. This will let you know if you’re on the right track.

To increase your engagement, make sure to optimize videos for SEO, use good titles, utilize keywords, and tag accordingly. Don’t forget to use CTAs or links to get that traffic back to your site.

Instagram

Instagram is a visual platform that can help move your business along. You can make permanent posts or short-lived ones. Therefore, you have creativity in your Instagram presence while still focusing on your business goals.

What to post really depends on the medium you select. You should keep your posts to short videos or images that embody your company and expertise. Speckle these with some promotions.

Stories go live for 24 hours. You can drive engagement with polls or by asking questions. You can choose to create a mood through music or promote an announcement. Instagram is a great way to tag people and locations as well. Stories offer a chance for behind-the-scenes look into your company.

Share consistent, quality content, and you will get a following. Remember, it is all about the visuals.

Twitter

Where Instagram is a visual platform, Twitter is more like a conversation. This is a fast-paced platform that sees more than 500 million tweets daily and 320 million active monthly users. It relies heavily on news and international users.

You only have 280 characters, so keep it short. You have the opportunity to post about contests, funny ideas or thoughts, promotions, sales, industry data, and findings.

Because of the number of tweets, posting multiple times a day is the best way to get seen.

LinkedIn

One of the older social media platforms, LinkedIn still has over 250 million active monthly users. It is best for B2B or business-to-business marketing. With that in mind, keep your content more industry-related and offer business ideas instead of content for individual clients. This platform is ideal for video content as well. Look to post about twice a week.

Facebook

With so many companies moving into the Facebook platform, there is less to say that you don’t already know. You could pay for ad placement with this OG of the social media platforms. It is a conversational platform, but the content still needs to be useful.

Remember to mix it up with videos, images, and text. Also, Facebook business pages offer tons of ways to maximize and determine ROI on posts. You will get instant ideas of what is working and what isn’t.

Conclusion

By using the above social media platforms, you will notice a boost to your digital marketing results. Start by focusing your efforts on whichever platform your customers are most likely to be on. Then, expand to make sure you cover all of the platforms.

6 Ways To Increase Your ROI With Digital Marketing

Some people mistakenly believe that digital marketing is an expensive way to market a business. But it is more affordable than you realize and easily pays for itself. On top of that, it is a necessity. If you don’t create a strong online presence, it can be difficult to grow your business.

You won’t get the full impact of a campaign if you don’t use digital marketing to make it happen. As with any mode of marketing, you will need to see if your digital marketing campaigns are worth the time and money you’ve invested. There are several metrics you can use to determine the ROI of your digital marketing campaigns. This will help you know where to spend your time and when to move on.

Consider the following ways to improve your digital marketing strategy and boost your ROI.

Define Your Campaign Goals

When setting business goals, you need to keep several factors in mind. One way to establish a system is to use the SMART goal-setting method. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound goals. This will help you understand how to set and measure achievement with your goals.

This applies to campaign goals when trying to determine your ROI. Marketing ROI will depend on your industry, market demand, cost structure, and other factors. Your ROI is also determined by the campaign. Make sure that you define the purpose of your marketing strategies in detail and be mindful of having realistic goals.

Create Content People Want

Your clients are exposed to constant information online. You need to give your brand something that sets you apart to see a return. Content is one of the most important tools for you to stand out.

No client wants a sales ad. They want value and a connection. To get this, make sure your content is personalized. Look at your target customers and create for them. This may be based on their demographics, interests, location, or gender.

Moreover, there are a few other key factors to consider when creating content.

Develop Useful Content

Make sure you are providing something your audience can use. Solve a problem, whether by telling them how to care for equipment, how to utilize an item in a new way, or how to clean something, for example. Give them information that solves specific challenges.

Develop User-Centric Content

Whether sharing a service or product to your audience through emails or FB posts, connect with them on a personal level.

Get Regular Feedback

One of the best tools for determining what your audience wants is to send out surveys. These can get you real feedback on what your audience needs and expects your brand to deliver. Be sure to utilize regular Q&A sessions, polls, surveys, and webinars to keep in touch with your customers. This will be used to create more useful content.

Use Influencers to Market

Consider collaborations with influencers to keep marketing and working with your audience. They will know what content you need because they are immersed in it. When collaborating with a partner, you open your business to new leads and prospects.

Let Predictive Analytics Work for You

This essential tool boosts and measures ROI. Through AI and machine learning, you gain insights using models, datasets, and algorithms in an effort to predict future consumer behavior. You can also use predictive analytics for prioritizing leads based on which customers are ideal for conversion. This aids in customer conversion and retention rates by helping meet consumers’ needs.

Predictive analytics also helps fine-tune a marketing strategy by allowing you to focus on needs and spend your energy and time well.

Use Automation to Your Advantage

There are many different automation tools available for you to use to your advantage and reduce costs. That is why the automation industry is predicted to reach $6.4 billion by 2024. These tools perform repetitive tasks like managing docs, images, and email lists. That will give you more time to focus on running your business.

Conclusion

By adding the right strategies to your digital marketing, you will find an improved return on investment. Incorporate the above strategies to make the most of your marketing budget.