social-marketing-strategies

5 Best Social Media Marketing strategies to attract customers’ attention.

Treat each social media marketing platform with a different approach

Your presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Tumblr grows on the back of three things: content people actually want to read, quality customer service, and visuals that make someone stop scrolling. Get those right and the rest tends to follow. You start catching leads, more visitors sign up, and some of them turn into loyal brand promoters who do your marketing for you.

Below are five strategies that can turn your social channels from background noise into something that genuinely moves the needle for your business.

1. Start with a game plan you’ll actually follow

Thinking and execution of a fixed game plan

Posting without a plan is how good content ends up wasted. How often you post, and what you actually say each time, shapes how people respond to you. So both deserve thought.

Post too much and people start treating you like spam, unfollow, or block you outright. Post too little and they forget you exist. There’s a window in between, and the way to find it is to watch what your competitors are doing, how often they show up and how strong their posts are, then plan around that. Make sure your own posts are worth looking at: useful, easy to act on, and with a bit of emotion behind them.

Build an editorial calendar that’s simple enough that you’ll keep using it. Plan ahead, then adjust as things change. Pull in your content team and even a few customers for ideas while you’re at it. A Google Sheet is fine to start, and tools like social media management tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer handle the scheduling once you outgrow the spreadsheet.

2. Treat each platform differently

Social media platforms

Every channel rewards a different kind of content, so copy-pasting the same post everywhere rarely lands. Say you’ve shipped an updated version of a product and the reviews are great. That’s worth announcing everywhere, sure, but not in identical words. Your YouTube and Instagram followers want a sharp visual showing off the new features. LinkedIn wants the educational angle. Same news, different packaging.

3. Customer service comes first: reply and engage

Customer service is the most important: respond and interact

Whatever your customers send your way, tweets, comments, emails, is the clearest read you’ll get on what they think of your product. You can put that feedback to work, too. An Instagram Wall on a screen in your store or on your site shows off curated customer posts, and a social media wall pulls together posts from several platforms at once, which tends to draw more people in and gets word of mouth going.

A thoughtful, polite reply makes a customer feel good. A slow reply, or none at all, does the opposite, and they’ll go looking for answers from your competitors instead. Don’t delete the negative comments either. Reply to them with the same care you’d give a compliment.

When someone flags a bug, thank them and fix it quickly. Keep an eye on the feedback other companies are getting and jump in on the questions they’ve left unanswered. That’s a lead who’ll remember your service and tell their friends about you. Just stay true to your brand voice when you write back, since that consistency is part of what people trust. And if you’re studying competitors for Instagram ideas, an Instagram video downloader lets you save the videos that are working so you can learn from them and sharpen your own short-form content.

4. Advertise smarter

Advertise better

Social networks are also about ads and leads. If your product is meant for a specific group, by job title, age, gender or location, then your ads should reach only that group. As Dave Kerpen, founder and CEO of Likeable Media, put it: “What’s cooler than reaching a billion people on Facebook? Reaching the right 1,000, the right 100, the right 10, or the right one.”

So aim narrow. Use every bit of targeting the platform gives you and send your ad to the people most likely to respond. There’s a bonus baked into social ads, too: word of mouth. Anyone who likes or comments on your post quietly spreads it, because their friends see that activity in their own feeds. And handing out genuinely useful free stuff, like tools that help you make AI videos, is a reliable way to earn customers who stick around.

5. Own your mistakes

Embrace mishaps

Resharing your blogs and posts now and then is a fair way to catch eyes you missed the first time. But when something goes wrong, own it and apologize. Get ahead of it: post from your own accounts explaining what happened and how you’re fixing it, so customers aren’t left guessing. Showing that human, fallible side actually makes people like you more.

Bigger blunders call for a bigger response. The classic example is the HubSpot staffer who accidentally posted a personal photo to the company’s Twitter account. Rather than spiral into embarrassment, she turned it into a funny, self-aware blog post, and it earned a wave of goodwill instead of a pile-on. A misstep handled with honesty and humor can end up doing more for you than a flawless feed ever would.

Frequently asked questions

Question Answer
How often should I post on social media? There’s no single magic number. Post often enough that people remember you, but not so often that you read as spam and get unfollowed. Watch how frequently your competitors post, test a schedule, and adjust based on how your audience responds.
Should I post the exact same content on every platform? No. Each channel rewards a different format. Share the same news everywhere, but repackage it, for example a strong visual for Instagram and YouTube, and a more educational version for LinkedIn.
How should I handle negative comments or reviews? Don’t delete them. Reply with the same courtesy you’d give a compliment, thank the person for flagging the issue, and fix it quickly. A well-handled complaint can turn a critic into a promoter.
How do I reach the right audience with social ads? Aim narrow instead of wide. Use the platform’s targeting, by job title, age, gender and location, to put your ad in front of the people most likely to respond, rather than spending budget on everyone.
What should I do when my brand makes a public mistake online? Own it fast. Post an honest explanation of what happened and how you’re fixing it. Showing the human side usually earns more goodwill than pretending it never happened.
Which tools help with planning a content calendar? A simple Google Sheet works to start. As you scale, scheduling tools like Hootsuite and Buffer help you plan, queue and manage posts across multiple channels in one place.

Sara Williams

Sara is a Content Writer at InviteReferrals. She is not only a creative writer but also paints a beautiful canvas. She makes sure that you are left with no doubt on keeping up with marketing and sales.

4 comments

  • Social media help best to know what your customer thinks and especially t keep an eye on what feedback your competitors are receiving. Great points discussed.

  • Hmmm I really impress of your social media activities to grebe customer attentions. I want to also share one of my best strategies which I mostly use to my all clients brand pages and that is called Content Strategy.
    My personally suggested to everyone what in today’s world content marketing is one of the best key to success any business so if we also include content strategy in our social media marketing activities then we will definitely increase our 10x sales and leads. If you like my point then you can also include this in your existing blog post. If anyone looking for a content strategy then they must read Content Majestic Blog posts.