6 Tips to Ace the Social Media Game For Your Brand If you're not successfully using social media in your business, it's time you jumped on the bandwagon to utilize some of these effective strategies for your next campaign

Are you aware that over 80 per cent of businesses today have dedicated personnel that are tasked with managing the company's social media footprint? What makes this figure more interesting is that just a decade ago less than 20 per cent of businesses in the US alone had an active social media presence. Clearly, it is easy to see why the impact of social media cannot be taken for granted.

More organizations are taking up the challenge of growing their businesses across all fronts through concise and deliberate social media marketing.

If you're not successfully using social media in your business, it's time you jumped on the bandwagon to utilize some of these effective strategies for your next social media campaign.

Know Your Audience

It goes without saying that it is important to conduct thorough and comprehensive research of the demographic composition of your target audience. In turn, you will also have to figure out the best social media avenue to get their attention. Attention often translates to sales, as you develop an engaged and interested audience. If your target audience, for instance, is mostly comprised of young adults and teens, then a trendy platform such as Snapchat or Instagram will yield better results than LinkedIn or Facebook. Still on this, you can catch your audience's attention with an array of creative contests, exclusive offers, discounts, unique branding and visually enticing landing pages.

Know the Rules

After selecting the ideal platform for your social media campaign, the next step should revolve around familiarizing yourself with the rules of the platform on which you plan to run your marketing campaign. This will help you avoid dicey minefields such as the entire termination of your business online presence on the platform after inadvertently violating their rules of engagement. It can be difficult to persuade a social network to reinstate your profile and can result in having to restart your presence on the social platform from scratch.

Social SEO is Still Key

While running paid social media marketing campaigns can be relatively costly for a small business, it is important to make sure you avoid neglecting the other important aspects of promoting your online presence such as social SEO. As you probably know, each social network today has its own underlying search engine, on which its users rely while searching for interesting or trending topics. Before going all in for your next social media campaign, ensure you can come up with a list of common keywords that your business can rank for easily and organically. These keywords can then be converted into hashtags when coming up with the subsequent campaign posts.

A Landing Page is Just as Important

Part of a successful social media campaign involves directing traffic to a specific page on your website where prospective customers can be compelled to take a particular set of actions. This could be something as simple as leaving their contact details or purchasing a trial version of the product/service that you are offering. Avoid making the mistake of directing your visitors to something as vague and general as the homepage — this one can be quite confusing. The ideal landing page ought to be as simple and discernible as possible to reduce your bounce rate.

Make Good Use of Influencers

Influencers are thought to be the pathway to new prospects and potential sales in the goldmine that is social media. An influencer, in this perspective, is an authoritative, trusted and influential voice on a given subject that is closely related to your business. They often boast a large, loyal and consistent following that could easily transform your business prospects. So, before embarking on the launch of your next social media marketing campaign, scour for relevant influencers far and wide to give your venture the kind of visibility that it deserves. Start by simply asking some members of your target audience about the person they are most excited to see posts from. It is important to not only consider the influencer's follower count but also the engagement they receive on their posts.

Remember that the unwavering support from just a single influencer can help you get the attention of tens of thousands of new customers. Some influencers can go even a mile further and put together a good pitch to rein in the masses on your behalf.

Don't Rely on Just the Social Network

Supplement your social media reach with useful resources such as email campaigns and cross-promotional ad tactics. Remember that there are already plenty of businesses within your niche with a solid following and a loyal social network. You will have to pull yourself by the bootstraps if you want to rise above this kind of competition.

What's more, don't forget to rope in the services of a reliable social CRM where you can conveniently view and reply to all conversations in one dashboard, and be aware of online chatter revolving around your new social media campaign. Go a step further and use the CRM's marketing and sales automation tools to turn this traffic into clients for life.