Social media has been a vital channel to reach, engage, and convert customers for a long time now. From what we have seen last year, social media marketing will be more important than ever in 2021.
Along with other plans, you’ll be working on your social media marketing strategy for this year.
We have put together 7 social media marketing tips that you should leverage to make 2021 your best year ever.
1. Develop a Social Media Content Calendar
Developing a comprehensive content calendar will help you achieve your long-term social media objectives. It’s a detailed plan of the content you plan to share and promote across various social media platforms.
Creating a content calendar is a methodical exercise; you plan every posting, the content type, the content theme, and the right day and time to publish. Every minute detail is aimed at improving engagement with the target audience. Planning a social media content calendar also leads to a smart allocation of resources and better teamwork.
You might be using several social media platforms to boost the reach of your business. Each platform is different; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc – all cater to the different needs of their audience.
Having a content calendar will help present the content differently to suit the platform’s audience.
Why you need a social media content calendar for 2021?
Keeps you organized and your marketing efforts on track.
You’ll gain valuable insight into the audience and your strategy while creating the content calendar.
Social media marketing is all about consistency. A content calendar will help you maintain consistency in your marketing efforts.
Help you keep track of the performance across the various platforms.
2. Diversify Your Content
Content diversification helps you keep an engaging presence across multiple social media platforms. Although there is audience overlapping in these platforms, each user visits a social media channel with a set expectation.
For example, users join TikTok for short, authentic videos, Instagram for photos, and those interested in long-form videos head to YouTube. The content that works on one social media channel might not work elsewhere.
Furthermore, we all have been told at some point ‘not to put all our eggs in one basket.’
This is very much true in social media marketing. By diversifying content, you grow your audience and revenue streams on multiple platforms.
At present, the competition on social media platforms is quite high. Most businesses nowadays have a presence in all major SM platforms because that’s where the consumers are.
To survive and thrive in a highly competitive climate, you have to be like water, flow where the audience is, and provide what the users want.
How to diversify social media content?
Convert blog posts into infographics, slide shows, and videos.
Start a podcast.
Create and share fun, light-hearted, and behind the scene content.
Add case studies, white paper, and webinars into the content mix.
3. Don’t Pitch but Engage with the Audience
While businesses are on social media to create brand awareness and sell their product (or service). The consumers throng the platforms for engagement and value.
Hence, businesses must focus on offering value to improve engagement, besides trying to sell. That’s why in 2021, your efforts on social media marketing must be aimed at developing messaging strategies. This means developing multiple pillars of content.
Develop content that introduces your brand to the audience, educational content that explains the product or service, explainer content that showcases how your brand solves the customer’s problems, and testimonial content that builds brand trust.
Nowadays, consumers want to associate with brands that share their values. Business introduction videos and company culture videos talk about the brand’s history, the vision and mission of the company, and the people behind the brand.
People also want to know whether a brand is involved in community-building efforts and how their support for the brand will benefit the local community.
Such content on social media will not only earn you views and followers, but it’ll convince consumers to connect and engage with your brand.
More ways to create engaging social media content
Show, don’t tell (Showcase your product, features, and functions).
Use only high-quality photos and videos.
Use animation videos to explain difficult concepts and topics.
Create the content on the current social media trends and hashtags.
Host contests and add quizzes and riddles about your brand and industry.
4. Utilize User-Generated Content
Posting content regularly is a well-known and highly effective social media strategy to boost engagement. But, developing fresh content isn’t easy; it’s time-consuming and expensive.
Nowadays, marketers have added user-generated content to their content mix. Research shows that user-generated content is highly effective in customer engagement.
A study by TurnTo Networks found that 9 out of 10 people trust user-generated content more than promotional emails while making the buying decision. Consumers trust user-generated content because it’s authentic.
For them, UGC such as customer testimonials, product experience videos, product reviews, and customer unboxing videos, are better ways of evaluating products than the brand’s promotional content.
In a survey, more than 75% of the participants felt product and service ads were exaggerated.
Posting User-Generated Content: The Best Practices to Follow
Request permission from the original content creator.
In the social media post credit the content creator.
Have clear guidelines on what type of content you want the customers to create. But, also make sure the users get content that’s true, accurate, and trustworthy.
5. Focus on Influencer Marketing
If influencer marketing is not part of your social media strategy in 2020, it’s time to leverage its potential now. It’s one of the most popular social media marketing techniques and also a multi-billion industry.
Involving social media celebrities in brand promotions gets you much-needed attention.
Millions of articles and billions of hours of videos are uploaded every day on social media platforms. In this over-crowded space, brands are finding it difficult to attract consumers.
Influencer marketing will help brands cut through the noise and reach out to their target audience. In marketing, the term ‘influencer’ means someone who is trusted by and/or has a large following among your target audience.
The influencer could be a celebrity in your niche, an expert in your field with many published content, a business leader, or brand advocates with a considerable following.
Why use influencer marketing in 2021?
Every dollar invested in influencer marketing yields a return of $6.50 (Tomoson).
71% of influencers feel the audience engage with them because of the honest and authentic nature of the content.
About 4 out of 10 online buyers reported they made up their mind after seeing an influencer use the product on social media.
6. Use Live Video to Increase Social Media Visibility
Now that video content has established itself as the firm favorites with the users, it’s time to take the engagement to the next level.
Live video is fast gaining popularity. There are strong reasons to believe it’ll be a game-changer in social media marketing. Some businesses are already using live streaming to connect and strengthen their bond with the customers.
Live streaming videos work because they help businesses connect with their target audience at a more personal level. The audience isn’t just a spectator anymore. Live videos enhance the customer experience by allowing them to become active participants in brand storytelling.
Any business can use live streaming to deliver its message innovatively.
Reasons to use Live streaming in social media marketing
80% of people prefer to watch live videos from brands than reading blog posts.
Live videos rank higher in social media searches (In 2016, Facebook updated its search algorithm to rank live videos higher in search results).
In 2021, the live streaming industry will grow into a $30 billion market.
7. Improve Your Social Media Calls to Action
You have created killer content and picked a perfect date and time to post the content; all that’s left to do is prompt the audience to take an action.
Most times the social media users might not take any action because they don’t know what to do. You need to be clear about what you want the audience to do. Adding a killer CTA (Call-to-Action) can lead to better engagement and increase the overall conversion rate.
According to AdRoll, adding a CTA to the Facebook page increases the click-through rate by 285%.
Tips to create killer CTAs for social media marketing
Create a great hook by telling the viewers what they want to know and revealing how they’ll benefit.
Use first-person phrasing. This tactic helped ContentVerve increase click-through rate by 90%.
Open Mile increased conversions by 232% by reducing clutter around the call to action.
Create a sense of urgency. Marketing Experiments found that the audience response improved with this tactic.
Create different CTAs for different social media platforms.
Final Thoughts
Results gained from implementing these tips will be noticeable and their success hard to ignore.
Putting these points into action can be daunting, but the results which are better customer engagement and higher conversions are well worth the effort.
Plus, these tips will give you a clear edge over your competition.
References:
https://understandingecommerce.com/10-social-media-marketing-tips-for-2021/
https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/social-media-trends-2021/
https://www.bbntimes.com/companies/5-killer-social-media-marketing-tips-to-keep-in-mind-for-2021
https://boosted.lightricks.com/21-ideas-to-revamp-your-social-media-for-2021/
https://www.socialpilot.co/blog/using-a-social-media-content-calendar
https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-use-multiple-content-formats-to-diversify-your-traffic/
https://instapage.com/blog/what-is-user-generated-content
https://grin.co/blog/why-influencer-marketing/
https://www.unboxsocial.com/blog/social-media-marketing/
https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/influencer-marketing/#what-is-influencer-marketing
https://www.relevance.com/is-live-streaming-the-future-of-social-media/
https://www.protocol80.com/blog/2019-cta-statistics
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-improve-your-social-media-calls-to-action/
