18 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TIPS FROM THE PROS THAT YOU CANNOT IGNORE IN 2019

It is a time for businesses to take full advantage of the following Social Media Markeing Tips when it comes to advertising and reaching out to their target audience.

As every year progresses, the digital marketing space dramatically evolves by the minute and it is something you simply can’t ignore. With the many ever-changing social media marketing trends, there are plenty of opportunities to succeed as a business.

The key is to stay on top of the trends and figure out what is best for your business today.

In the digital marketing landscape, there’s always room for improvement; you may have been doing one thing one year, but this year might be completely different. 2019 means new mediums and tactics. So here are 18 social media marketing tips from the pros:

1. Know How Often To Post

Jumping right into social media marketing tips. Brands need to be active in order to attract followers and boost engagement rates – but how active?

According to studies, the sweet spot is a consistent 1-2 posts a day. Knowing when the best time to post on Instagram is also critical especially when dealing with Instagram’s algorithmic timeline.

Recommended post times can vary wildly depending on which expert you listen to. With some advocating 8 AM – 9 AM or 2 PM – 5 PM for your first post to even 2 AM for your second, this inconsistency can create genuine confusion for content planners.

Instead, uncover your own followers’ Instagram habits by using the Insights feature of your Instagram Business account. This helps you identify when your followers are most active and allows you to schedule accordingly, ensuring your posts continue to appear at the top of their feeds.

For an extra helping hand, consider a free social media audit of your social channels to help your business develop a plan of action that will work for your business.

2. Make Your Social Media Branding Matter

Clarity, creativity and consistency are king for enterprises aiming to build brand awareness on Social Media. An erratic, haphazard approach just doesn’t work.

Try to focus on core areas like presenting your profile, creating style patterns that keep your images looking fresh, and mastering hashtag use. You should also be interacting regularly with your followers to build up engagement and loyalty.

By roadmapping your processes and brand best practices for your Social Media Marketing, you can present a positive and consistent brand to your target audience.

3. Explore The Full Range Of Instagram Video Formats

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a video is worth 1.8 million. While Shakespeare lovers might vehemently disagree with such a stat, there is no challenging the efficacy and popularity of online video content. Instagram recognizes this and offers a suite of video options for marketers to deploy.

From Instagram Stories that can mash up videos and stills into a single ad (see point 16) to standalone 60-second videos ideal for long-form features, make sure you use the strengths of each video format.

For instance, consider Instagram Stories’ live video option for big reveals about new products or services or use a prerecorded ad to offer up authentic, behind-the-scenes stories to your followers to increase Instagram engagement.

Video is an important part of any social media marketing tips you will find through simple Google search.

4. Run A Contest To Amp Up Your Social Media Strategy

#4 of 18 social media marketing tips; Crafting a successful social media contest is one of the most alluring tactics you can use. It’ll increase your online visibility, your followers, and your engagement.

The key to executing a successful contest is offering something of tremendous value while not over-doing it on the the entry rules. Make it simple.

Give away something that will be irresistible to your audience.

Here’s an example of a contest we executed for our client that had great results:

5. Keep Salesy Content To A Minimum

Intrusive, traditional marketing went out the window a long time ago, for good reason.

People don’t want to be sold too.

They want to establish real connections and relationships with you.

That’s the secret sauce to getting your audience or customers to trust you.

And, if they trust you – they’ll buy from you.

Consumers find it offputting when brands and businesses post too many promotions.

As you can see, 57.5% of people found it annoying in this study on Sprout Social:

Alternatively, you can craft helpful content that people actually want to consume. Content that leads buyers to your products or services – without being pushy or salesy. Click the headline for more social media marketing tips on this topic.

6. Utilize Pinterest To Take Your Social Media Marketing Strategy To The Next Level

Pinterest is the third most popular social network among adults. And the second largest search engine besides Google.

A bit confusing, right? Is it a social media platform, or a search engine?

It’s actually a visual search engine, that’s frequently confused with a social media network.

Regardless, Pinterest has the ability to maximize your website traffic, your income, and your credibility and authority in your niche.

So if you’re not utilizing it to its full potential – you’re missing out, big-time.

7. Social Media Marketing Tips – Start A Facebook Group

If you’ve thought about creating a Facebook group – now is the time.

With the drastic changes occurring within social media – Facebook was hit the hardest. Facebook’s algorithm changed,  making Facebook pages more challenging to grow or profit from.

Basically, Facebook is saying you’ll be seeing more from your friends, family, and groups in your newsfeeds. And less “public content”, such as from businesses or brands.

Benefits of running a Facebook group:

• An increase in your website traffic
• Promote your products and services in a non-salesy way
• Engage and connect with your audience in an authentic way
• Build your email list
• Grow your business and earn more money

Launching and growing a Facebook group is a top-notch strategy to add to any social media marketing plan and maybe share some tips with your audience. 😉

8. Chatbots And Messenger Marketing

Are you utilizing Facebook, let alone Facebook messenger? This is one of our more prominent social media marketing tips that we implement in our own business as well. Messenger marketing is the new email marketing. Facebook messenger is used by millions of Facebook users monthly and smart brands are taking full advantage of it – while realizing it’s a great tool to use when connecting with existing and future customers.

Also, Chatbot’s are quite handy – they give customers the opportunity to get answers and/or interaction quickly which feels very personal. So if you haven’t already, 2019 might be the year to test Chatbot’s for your business and figure if it’s right for you and you!

9. Influencer Marketing

If you haven’t jumped on this bandwagon, you must this year! Influencer marketing is a type of word-of-mouth marketing that focuses on using key leaders to drive your brand’s message to your specific niche.

So instead of your business getting the word out on a specific launch of a product or service, you instead work with influencers to get out the word for you.

Nowadays, using influencers is a very effective marketing tool that works to attract customers. Influencers can be anyone from celebrities and Instagram and YouTube stars to well-known bloggers and journalists who help spread the word about your business or product through their social channels.

10. Online Reviews (Another Best Of Our Social Media Marketing Tips)

Nowadays people rely heavily on online reviews prior to purchasing a specific product or service. As a brand or business, you obviously want to receive regular positive reviews in order to contribute to your popularity and likability for your particular service or product online.

Get your best long-time customers to leave you a positive review and/or send out incentives like discounts to get people to leave you reviews.

11. Use Images To Amplify Your Facebook Updates

Let’s face it. If you’re posting on Facebook and not seeing engagement in the form of likes, shares or comments, you’re wasting your precious time. You need fan engagement if you want to continually be seen in the news feed (which is where all the action is on Facebook!).

One simple way to boost your engagement is to use images to amplify your status update. Here’s what I mean: Search for “blank” images like talking bursts, chalkboards and signs, and then add text to the images, in the form of a question for your followers to answer.

Here’s an example where soda bottles were used as a fun way to amplify a question and grab attention. Almost 200 people left a comment!

Want to preview the author for this section of our social media marketing tips? Click the headline!

12. Focus On The Platforms Where Your Customers Are

Social media overwhelm is one of the biggest challenges for small businesses. They think they need to have a presence on every social platform including the latest “shiny object” that comes along. This spreads them too thin and causes wasted time and effort.

The solution is rather simple: if social media makes sense for your business, be where your customers are. Find out where your customers are hanging out online, choose 1 or 2 of those platforms that you enjoy and that align with your business objectives and then focus deeply on those platforms.

There are a number of tactics to help you find where your customers are online such as: ask them (so simple, yet so many business don’t do this), use the search functionality in each of the social channels to see if there are communities talking about your business or topic of interest and use Google Alerts.

Set up alerts for your name, business, industry and topics of interest. This will give you insight into the conversations happening that are relevant to your business, so you can join the conversation where appropriate.

13. Build Online Influence

I have a simple philosophy when it comes to social media marketing tips: build online influence.

Influence is the secret to social media success. It’s the sugar in the cake. It’s the foundation for building an authentic following online that can ultimately lead to new clients or customers.

With the social media landscape constantly evolving, new networks, tools and tactics are always going to come and go. You will hear of new tips and tricks daily regarding “what works” for building your brand and your business through social media.

However, without a strong foundation in place that positions you as a person of influence, it will be difficult to sustain success. You can try every social media tool, strategy or tactic available, but without influence at the core, you likely won’t get too far.

If you focus on becoming a person of influence in your market, you’ll build more trust and loyalty. People will know that you are sincere and that you truly care about helping them.

Building influence through social media doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long-term investment in helping others solve problems, get smarter, and achieve more. If you consistently spend your time on these influence-building activities, you can achieve great things with social media that will benefit you personally and professionally for many years to come.

14. Bypass ‘Leaky’ Landing Pages

Call them what you will – flows, pipelines, journeys – but most marketers are obsessed with “the funnel.” However, leads often take a hike just at the point when you’re trying to get them to convert. Luckily, certain PPC and social media advertising formats allow marketers to bypass the leakiest part of the funnel – landing pages – entirely.

On the strong end of our social media marketing tips is to eliminate the possibility of losing potential leads at the landing page stage. One of the most effective ways to do this is by using Facebook “Call” buttons in your Facebook ads. This powerful feature allows mobile users (which Facebook users overwhelmingly are, in many cases exclusively so) to call your business directly simply by clicking your Facebook ad – no landing pages, no load times, no vast, gaping chasm into which potential leads disappear forever.

15. Use A Story Telling Tool

Find a tool that helps you create visual content that you can use to promote your core content on social media with visual storytelling. With so much content out there, it’s important to create visuals that catch attention and encourage your followers to take action.

I write about and speak about a lot of visual content creation tools and Easil is one of my favourite tools for this right now.  Here are some of the reasons why I love it:

• professional quality templates for everything from social media images to posters, banners, ads, business cards and more.
• awesome templates for visual storytelling with visuals such as infographics and Instagram story templates including multi-page Instagram story templates.

• you can easily re-size your images and create multiple pages.

• you can print your designs (in Australia but coming to the US soon)

• cool filters, text-effects, color palette matching and more!

Easil is super easy to use and is very “drag-and-drop”. It was (apparently) developed for use with clients within lifestyle and entertainment industries so it’s real-world tested. I was getting a little tired of the same layouts everywhere and I wanted something that wasn’t cookie-cutter.  Easil is fresh and unique so it can definitely help you stand out with your visual storytelling.

16. Don’t Be Afraid To Pay For Social Media Advertising!

Most people see social media as a pure organic play, but I’m using it more and more frequently as a paid marketing channel. I’ve tested paid ads on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

All of them have their strengths and weaknesses, but if I were to provide one tip to people who are using social media, it would be this — don’t be afraid of paying for social media reach and clicks. It’s often a good investment!

17. Authenticity Is Key

BE Authentic, don’t just ACT it. This might seem obvious… but authenticity is on the verge of becoming just another buzz word in the social/content marketing world. TRUE authenticity (not just using that word often in your tweets and posts) will set your brand (product or personal) apart in today’s highly competitive market. Followers/Advocates are attracted to REAL, and can sniff out fake in a heartbeat.

REAL trumps PERFECT because REAL creates TRUST

18. Try Newsjacking

What is Newsjacking? It is the art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story to generate tons of media coverage, get sales leads, and grow a business.

When there is news in your marketplace reporters and analysts are looking for experts to comment on the story. Newsjacking gets you media attention. With little effort! As the story develops in real-time, buyers become interested in products and services based on what’s happening now.

Newsjacking generates sales leads and adds new customers. For free! Newsjacking is a great way to grow your business and become a part of the online conversation as it happens in real-time.

These free social media marketing tips can be easy for your marketing department or if you’re a tech-savvy business owner, then it should come as no problem for yourself to implement on your Social Media Marketing Strategy and when it comes to 2019, they are all must-haves!

Or, just let us handle all the hard work for you. CONTACT US. We’re a fast-growing Marketing Company in Winnipeg interested in helping drive your bottom line. Let’s set up a free strategy session today!