Valuable ways of making social media marketing work for your business

1. 8 Ways to Make Social Media Work for Your Business
The first step towards successfully venturing into social media
marketing, is accepting the fact that results don’t come in instantly.
Using social media as a successful promotional platform, is a gradual
process that needs time to develop. In fact, social media marketing is
not just about generating leads from the very next minute, it goes much
deeper than that.
Since social media audience has zero tolerance for self-centered
marketers looking for free publicity, overtly promoting a brand can
completely ruin the entire process. Hence, an effective strategy has to
be implemented, in striking a right balance between customer
engagement and promotion.

2. The most crucial part, about social media marketing, is intelligently
formulating the right strategy that works best for the target audience.
What needs to be realized, is that social media is not a platform to
directly promote products and ideas. It has to be comprehended that
social media promotion is a more comprehensive approach, which
includes engaging the right audience with informative and valuable
content.
A lot depends on analysing and choosing the best social media channel
that perfectly fits the business and its target audience. For example, a
newly launched mobile app will invariably attract relevant attention on
platforms like Twitter, rather than sites like Pinterest, which caters
mainly to audience with artistic inclination. Knowing the target
audience and mapping the best compatible platform that suits them, is
an effective strategy that minimizes time involvement and maximizes
returns.
Having said so, listed below are eight best practices that will help
entrepreneurs successfully utilize social media, as an effective tool for
promotion and customer engagement.

3. 1. Following the One-in-Seven Rule
Considered as the thumb rule of social media marketing, this rule
emphasizes on subtle promotion, where only one out of seven posts is
randomly used to directly promote a particular brand or service. The
remaining six posts, are strategically placed to engage and entice
customers with unique experiences, through relevant information and
valuable content.
2. Artful Misdirection
We have all noticed how TV commercials use this powerful tool to
engage with customers. Here questions and contests, with no direct
relevance to promotion, are tossed in with a bonus attached to it. For
instance, a car manufacturer announcing a lucky draw for participants,
on a twitter poll asking to vote for social reforms related to child
labour. This strategy works like magic, because it engages the customer
without a hint of overt promotion.
3. Creating Channels for Customer Satisfaction
In recent times, all large companies use separate social media accounts,
as a part of their customer service matrix. The unique account is used
to address customer queries, concerns, and to monitor community
response. Instead of using social media as a one dimensional platform
to market and promote, mostly all established business entities, use it
as a tool to deepen customer engagement by solving issues that trigger
customer satisfaction.

4. 4. Unleashing the SEO Beast
This is where Google+ comes into play. Most of us aren’t aware that
Google+, with its causal association with higher Google rankings, can
prove to be an incredible asset as far as social media marketing is
concerned. By tactfully inputting quality content, Google’s search
engine can be optimized and strengthened to a great extent, because
Google’s search crawlers use Google+ as a primary source of
information for fresh and unique contents.
5. Integrating Campaign Hashtags
Integrating hashtag campaigns as a social media marketing strategy, is a
policy that is being adopted at large by professional media managers.
Instead of dumping everything under a same label, media managers are
creating unique hashtags for every single event, update or
announcements. This filtered mechanism, keep things simple and
clutter free, enabling customers identify and engage with a particular
event of interest and share their views and experiences related to it.
6. Mixing Up Tradition and Social Media Marketing
A considerable success can be achieved in social media marketing, by
using the promoted posts of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, to reach a
larger audience with traditional marketing strategies like contests,
discounts and promo offers. Creating a Facebook Page app or a
LinkedIn Showcase Page, to publish offers and discounts, is also an
excellent idea as well. Individual and unique hashtags, to feature

5. contests and its winners, can be created for enhanced customer
engagement and increased traffic flow.
7. Expanding Existing Content to Social Networks
Placing already existing website contents on social media platforms,
power drive the accessibility and visibility of contents, to a different
dimension altogether. Startups and small enterprises should adopt this
strategy to reap success on social media, by posting existing videos on
YouTube, photos on Flickr, PowerPoint presentations on Slideshare,
documents on Scribd, and blog posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+.
The magnified accessibility, engages more audience, without putting in
much effort.
8. Posting on Pinterest
It is a well-known fact that Interesting visuals always play a vital role, in
creating incredible experiences. That is why, to push social media
promotions to the next level, it is hugely beneficial to start a Pinterest
board with snazzy eye-catching visuals. The Pinterest board can also be
used for running contests and rewarding participants for taking part in
it. Inspiring participants to re-pin and create their own boards that
mirror the original contest, can serve as an outstanding opportunity to
heighten social media presence and promotion.
Last, But Not the Least: Follow-Up and Measure Your Campaign’s
Performance

6. Facebook Brand Pages and Twitter offer excellent analytics about
performance and customer engagement. The analytics provide
fascinating insight about how a content is performing. Scrutinising
details like what did well, what didn’t, and what can be done, are key
aspects that amplify success to a great degree. Setting up a monthly
tracker system for the evolving analytics, can prove to be highly
rewarding, in successfully managing social media promotions.
With these 8 tips up your sleeve, you can turn your social media efforts
from fail to fab. For more tips and strategies to win the social media
marketing game, connect with us!
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