Social media – that one tool every business can benefit from to maintain a real time marketing strategy. Without doubt one of the best ways to amplify awareness of your business online, social media can open the gateways to new business. We may not become Leonardo DiCaprio and have 6 million followers, but we can at least make an attempt to get invited to the Oscar party.

Here are the ten tips that we believe in and really work.

1. Use calls to action (almost) all the time: One of the important features of effective social media presence and communication is not only engaging the readers with your posts, but actually leading them to the next stage. How do you do this? It’s a fact that the posts which receive the most comments, shares or ratings are the ones that include calls to action. It can be something unexpected, a through-provoking question or statement at the end of the post encouraging a response. Or a simple sentence, such as: “Help us spread the word” can be equally effective.

2. Use a multi-media approach: Before you can expect any social media success, you need to understand your target audience. What do people want to read? How do they read? What search terms do they use? There has been a huge statistics showing that people would more readily click on images and videos than on text. On all social media platforms, people want more or less the same – easy to read texts, engaging language and ideas that can be quickly understood. So make sure you use lively taglines and headings, upload photos and videos and ask people to leave their thoughts (comment).

3. Plan your content based on the season: You cannot and shouldn’t expect that everyone will be interested in all your services and products all the time. Focus on the season (incorporate holidays, festivals and events) and use specific search terms to your advantage. When Christmas is coming, make your updates relevant – use hashtags or special Christmas promo codes.

4. Choose the digital channels that really work for you: Some businesses receive better audience response when using newsletters and blog articles, while others are more successful on Facebook and Twitter, with response in real time and retweeting. Imagine you are a gardener and you have seeds to plant in different spots. You will plant them, look after them and see which grow best and where. The same idea applies to social media – take the time to discover which platform is the most effective for your type of business.

5. Give priority to content and make it engaging: The famous quote by Mari Smith that “Content is King but Engagement is Queen, and she rules the house” is what holds key to increased social media traffic and the best marketers already know that. Even the best content wouldn’t receive traffic unless people become engaged with it somehow – by liking, sharing and commenting on it. Content is what should receive your “royal” treatment.

6. Set your KPI/ROI (key performance indicators): You need to set the KPIs that are relevant to you succeeding with social media marketing. These can include growing your Twitter following, increasing your web traffic, converting traffic to inquiries, increasing sales, etc.

7. Assess accurately your KPI/ROI: The things you should look for include: number of clicks on your web page per day; regular visits on your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and blog pages; online and offline sale trends that are directly linked to social media activity; the activity of visitors – comments, likes, discussion forum interactions. Understanding this data is what will help you assess which social media you need to spend more time on and what activities generate revenue.

8. Try using a personal approach: Unfortunately, only posting a link won’t make your customers engage with the content. It is not how social media works. Make each post personalized so you can initiate a dialogue with your audience. A good example of an update on Twitter or Facebook is one that shows there is a person behind the social media marketing. Tag people and businesses, give some piece of advice or recommendation and avoid generic-sounding language.

9. Timing is everything: In order to get the most out of your social media marketing efforts, schedule your posts and updates for the peak times of each social media platform. As a rough guide it seems that most often the content shared on Twitter is consumed a couple of hours before and after lunchtime. The content on Facebook is usually read around lunchtime and in the late afternoon. The content on LinkedIn is also read around lunchtime and in the morning.

10. Special offers work: Use digital marketing to offer fresh deals and promotions and try to build interaction around them. If you make your customers feel that you are offering them a bargain, they will want to come back again – it’s one of the rules of social media marketing.

Help spread the word and let us know which of these tips work best for you or whether you have tried something new. Watch out for our special offer coming soon.