6 Social Media Marketing Tips from a Social Media Manager

From creating relatable or value-driven social media content to mastering ad campaigns that work best for your audience, here are 6 social media marketing tips that could help your brand gain traction:

1. Create an effective content marketing plan

You can’t build a house without the foundation, consider the same mindset when it comes to your content marketing plan. While there are many ways to attract attention on social media, you want to make sure that you’re gaining attention from the right audience, for the right reasons, at a consistent pace.

To be able to make content work, you need an effective content marketing plan. A content marketing plan needs to involve a few key elements:

• • Know your audience–It’s important to establish what kind of audience you want to attract, at the same time analyze your data and identify the audience you are currently Knowing who your audience is, and understanding the wants, needs, and aspirations of the people that are interested in your product or service is a great compass to know what kind of content you can and should create. It will also help you set the tone of how you want to converse with your audience. Remember, these are the people you want to engage with.
  • Figure out the best social media platform for your brand–Knowing who your audience is also helps you best figure out which social media platforms would be best for your brand. Take for instance if you’re targeting employed individuals who are in the late 20s to late 30s, you could consider LinkedIn as your best bet. Whereas if your brand is geared towards GenZ, TikTok will most likely be in your radar. While there’s no harm in creating social media pages on platforms that are free and popular, pinpointing which specific platforms to prioritize could work in your favor.
  • Identify the best posting times–Once you know who you’re talking to and where best to talk to them, figure out when it’s best to reach out to them. As social media is constantly being bombarded with content left and right, your content could easily drown. Make use of your analytics and data, and identify when your set of audience is most active online. This will help your content when it comes to visibility, and can help you when it comes to engagement.
  • Create a social media content plan–After establishing the who, where, and when, you need to work on the what. Specifically, what to post. This is where a social media content plan comes in. A social media content plan is a calendar of social posts that you can create to map out what you are posting–and promoting–for the next month or for the next few weeks. When you create a social media content plan, it’s important to reference previous social content calendars you’ve also created, and analyze what content works best for your audience. Sprout shares that doing a social media content audit will also help you distinguish content that you think will perform well, and actual top-performing content.That way, each time you create a new social media content calendar, your content is not only consistent, but also effective as it is backed by data. It will also help to figure out holidays or important events for the month so your social content will seem timely and relevant.

2. Optimize your brand’s hashtags and keywords

Keyword and hashtag optimization is another great practice to add to your social media planning. These elements can help bring more visibility, and make it easier for potential audiences to find your content.

Using the right keywords is key to bringing your social media content to the forefront. LinkedIn suggests that tools like Google Keyword Planner is a great means to find out what keywords are popular. It’s important however to note, that while there are trending or popular keywords, that you should be incorporating keywords that are relevant to your post. Adding keywords to your social media captions would make it more natural and seamless.

While keywords are a great way to attract audiences, hashtags shouldn’t be discounted either.  Not only do they categorize your content to direct you to the right audience, hashtags are a great way to make your content more discoverable. Hashtags are also another way to help create threads, especially if you have a specific hashtag for a marketing campaign or product you want to promote.

In addition to boosting your social media performance, optimizing keywords and hashtags can also have a positive impact on your website’s SEO. Search engines take into account the presence of relevant keywords and hashtags across your online content, including social media, when determining the search ranking of your website. Therefore, a strategic approach to keywords and hashtags on social media can contribute to improved search engine visibility and ultimately drive more organic traffic to your website.

It is important to keep in mind though that bombarding your social posts with hashtags can do more harm than good. You do not want to appear like you’re spamming, but rather adding key and relevant hashtags.

3. Stay informed about algorithm updates

There are multiple reasons why your social media content could gain impressive engagement or could completely flop. Even with a strong social media content plan, it’s important to understand that AI-driven algorithms can dictate how a piece of content could be received by the general public.

Rockcontent defines an AI-driven algorithm as “an extended subset of machine learning that tells the computer how to learn to operate on its own.” When it comes to internet and social media, AI-driven algorithm studies the data it receives from user-activity and creates personalized recommendations of content depending on a user’s interests or even search history. So although you have X number of followers, that doesn’t mean they will all receive your posts the same way, at the same time, if at all. Each of their timelines and search results will vary depending on their interests, and what the AI-driven algorithm predicts they would prefer.

While it can be tricky to navigate AI-driven algorithms as it is ultimately a self-learning machine, there are AI marketing tools that can help you produce AI-driven content, that could potentially help you feed more content to your audience effectively.

4. Use social media tools to your advantage

Running multiple social media platforms can be taxing, and counter productive. Luckily, there are a plethora of social media tools that can help. That way you can spend more time strategizing and creating your social media content plan, and less time actually doing the heavy lifting.

• • Scheduling–When it comes to scheduling and posting, there are numerous social media tools that you can take into consideration. Hubspot is a great marketing tool. What’s beneficial when it comes to Hubspot is it’s an all-around marketing software. Aside from simply posting on social media, Hubspot also has features that can help your email marketing campaigns, and tracking links that can provide you with micro-reports on how certain CTAs are performing.Hootsuite is another popular social media scheduling tool that marketers use. It creates dashboards for your different social media platforms, so you can simultaneously keep track of what’s going on. It also allows you to post across multiple channels.

    Another social media tool that is rising in popularity would be Aside from the standard scheduling tool, what’s nice about Later is that it also has an available app. Which makes scheduling content on-the-go much more convenient. It’s also one of the most user-friendly social media scheduling and tracking tools in the market, which makes it a great option for beginner social media marketers.

  • Copywriting–Not every company is open to the idea of AI-generated content, but as AI grows in popularity, it’s not a far cry that it eventually becomes a norm. AI chatbots like ChatGPT are growing in demand and usage when it comes to producing social copies for social media content. ChatGPT not only provides social copies and hashtags while targeting important keywords, it also provides different options, tones, and formalities when it comes to social copies.It’s a good option to keep in mind, especially if you’re working on bulk social media content. Be wary of the tonality and wordings AI chatbots like these use, as it can sometimes come off as artificial or unnatural. At the end of the day, it’s best to use tools like this as a base and not solely depend on it for your content.
  • Social media content design–These days, social media marketers wear numerous hats. Especially social media marketers that are working in startups or small businesses. This can involve not only social media planning and copywriting, but basic design too.While Adobe’s design suite is quite popular, especially among large corporate brands, these tools are usually used by design experts or experienced designers and multimedia artists and can cost a lot.

    A great alternative would be Canva has improved in bounds and leaps the past few years. It’s a user-friendly graphic-design tool that can allow even beginner designers to create quality content. Not only does it provide useful templates, but it also makes duplicating and tweaking social content and design easy. Canva has also expanded its capabilities beyond static design, and allows users to create basic video content too.

It’s important to be able to analyze which social media tools work best for you and your brand. Each tool has its own unique functions, benefits, and disadvantages. Running a full-blown social media campaign and strategy is like opening a computer with a hundred tabs open, it’s next to impossible to keep track and produce every single one manually, especially if your following, and your brand grows exponentially. Considering tools like these not only make it easier, but could help you produce quality content, while keeping track of your content’s performance.

5. Go with what’s trendy for engagement

It’s easy to get so fixated on creating an effective social media content plan, that we forget the social aspect to it. While it’s important to be strategic, we need to remember that all these strategies are performed on social platforms.

Meaning we converse, exchange thoughts, ideas, or even memes with real people online. So it’s important to be involved, create a community, and hear what they say.

Which is why keeping up to date with what’s trending is so important. Trends can come and go in a snap, and sometimes going viral by hopping on a trend, can create long-term benefits for a brand. When you get the content and timing right, one viral post can get your brand or website on the social media map.

So make sure to keep up with what’s buzzing, and analyze if any of these trends could help you produce content that fits your brand. With social media trends, it’s important to act fast, and produce content while it’s fresh.

However, do keep in mind that while trends are one of the fastest ways to get engagement, it’s not always a long-term solution to gaining an audience. You should still treat trends as magnetic content, these are what will help you attract an audience, not always what will help you keep an engaged following.

6. Prepare for the evolving landscape–predictions and trends for the next year

When it comes to social media marketing, it’s important to think of the past, present and future. Past referring to your historical data, knowing the history of your audience, what content they resonate with, what appeals to them. Present means being in tune with what’s going on in the social media sphere—what’s trending, what’s being talked about, and even new social media platform features you need to be aware of. Equally as important though is the future. This means thinking ahead.

If there’s anything constant in the social media landscape, it is change. So, how does a social media marketer study predictions and trends for the coming year?

Many digital marketers and household digital marketing and marketing technology brands are always eager to share their knowledge and insights when it comes to social media trends and predictions. Make sure to read up on these news pieces.

Hubspot does a thorough yearly recap and report on user trends, they give great insights on which platforms and devices users spend most time on, behavioral patterns when it comes to ads, and content that peaked for the year, just to name a few.

Hootsuite is also a great resource when it comes to identifying and understanding digital marketing trends the past year—from social media, to eCommerce, and customer service.

It’s also important to keep an eye out for any news or announcement social media giants like Meta, LinkedIn, Google or TikTok make. As they are typically where brands are most present on social media, taking into consideration any app features, platform changes, or even predictions when it comes to ads and campaigns, is highly valuable.

In summary

The social media marketing landscape is a vast playing field. While there are definitely the basics to learn when creating effective social media strategic plans, it’s important to understand that there are different facets and variables in carrying out a successful social media strategy.

As the social media marketing sphere continues to evolve, it’s important to consistently take the time to learn and understand the behaviors, patterns, and trends of not just your audience, but also factors such as algorithms, and social media platform changes.

When it comes to social media marketing, it’s not just about working hard, ultimately it’s about working smart.