With 33/34 million Facebook/Twitter accounts active in the UK are you maximising Social Media Marketing for your business?

Social media networks were a novelty 5 years ago, but today their importance is no longer debated. Yes, businesses have definitely realized the power of social media and accepted that social media marketing has to be part of their marketing and PR mix.

In Social Media Examiner’s 2013 End of Year Report, marketers now place very high value on social media marketing:

• 86% of marketers stated that social media is important for their business
• 89% of marketers stated that increased exposure was the number one benefit of social media marketing

These are the definitive benefits of social media marketing and you can read our Social Media Marketing Tips below:

• Increased exposure
• Increased traffic
• Developed loyal fans
• Generated leads
• Improved search ranking
• Grew business partnerships
• Reduced marketing expenses
• Improved sales
• Provided marketplace insight

So how do you maximise the use of Social Media Marketing for your business?  Well you can start by following our 10 Social Media Marketing Tips below:

1. Post regular updates on your social media channels.

It seems obvious, but no one likes to see a page that hasn’t been updated for the last couple of months. Your audience and customers want regular updates and that is exactly what will get repeat visits and increase engagement. Updates can consist of news, pictures or status updates about your company, your people and your projects, industry news, local events or even some relevant humour!

2. Develop consistent style.

It’s important to develop a specific and distinct company ‘voice’ that remains consistent across all posts and all channels. You should create some basic style guidelines and stick to them. Your online-offline brand voice should reflect key messaging, brand USP and thought leadership to your audience.

3. Comment on others posts and updates.

Everyone likes to be noticed, always interact with your audience by posting replies on their comments and status updates. Acknowledge good comments and always reply to negative remarks to show that you’re on top of it and not afraid of criticism. Show you have something valuable to offer by providing relevant information.

For example – On LinkedIn show your expertise by offering and sharing informative content that you think others may find useful.

4. “LIKE” often and be generous with your praise.

We all love compliments. If a colleague has updated their LinkedIn profile with a new job or promotion, “like” their post and congratulate them. There is always a possibility that if you’ll like someone else’s page then they might like/mention your brand on their page. Sharing relevant, fresh and usable content of others with your fans and followers will increase credibility of your brand and strengthen your relationship with your fans.

5. Share Content More Than Once.

We often share our blog posts multiple times on social networks, for a few difference reasons. Some of the biggest benefits we get are more traffic, reaching people in different time zones and sharing our content with people who’ve followed us since we last posted it.

6. Help whenever you can.

It seems obvious, but no one likes to see a page that hasn’t been updated for the last couple of months. Your audience and customers want regular updates and that is exactly what will get repeat visits and increase engagement. Updates can consist of news, pictures or status updates about your company, your people and your projects, industry news, local events or even some relevant humour!

7. Limit Your Social Media Platforms.

Find three or four social media platforms where you can build the strongest presence that will be most beneficial for your business.

With countless social media platforms available today, it’s impossible to grow a strong presence on every one. Having a mediocre presence on six or seven social media platforms is far inferior to a strong presence on three or four when it comes to your social media marketing goals.

8. Don’t be shy.

If you want to engage online, you need to be visible. Few social media channels by default have privacy settings for your content. Make sure your social media content is visible to your preferred audience.

You can talk about the company’s achievements, as much as you can, you are the only medium to tell your fans about your company achievements.

For example- if you have a restaurant business, add your menu to the photo album, if you are a recruiter, post every available job that is available. Don’t be shy, your social media channels enable you to establish a greater footprint on the web.

9. Reach your new followers

Something I’ve noticed is that a lot of my posts are still relevant months after I publish them. The other thing that changes after I publish a post is that more people follow us me social networks, so if I repost content from my blog that’s six months old, many of my new followers will be seeing it for the first time, so they’ll get value out of it even though it’s old content.

10. Research Popular Content from Your Competitors.

If a type of content is popular with the audience of your competitors and colleagues, it stands to reason that a similar post will be popular with your audience.

This isn’t about copying content, it’s about crafting content around a similar topic, but with a different slant.

There are a few tools that will help with research:

Social Crawly tics does an analysis of your competitor’s content and shows you how often each post is shared across each of the social networks.

SEMRush shows you what keywords bring your competitor the most traffic so you can target the same keywords in your own content.

Sources : Rose McGrory, Scroll Mantra, Social Media Examiner