If you’re using social media for marketing, there’s a good chance that you’re not seeing as much ROI as you would like.
In an ideal world, your posts would be seen by thousands of people who are ready to buy today. And everything you post would get tons of likes and shares. But the reality is that this doesn’t happen often enough because it all comes down to how well you use social media.
Here are five underutilized strategies that will help increase engagement on your social media accounts so more people see your posts and click through to your site:
- 1) Post during peak hours If everyone else in your market is posting at 8 am, but traffic is highest between 10 am-2 pm, then aim to post around those hours. Test your posting times and see which results in the highest traffic, then stick with those times as you continue your social media marketing efforts.
- 2) Use hashtags Everyone knows that hashtags help increase the visibility of a post, but very few people take advantage of this strategy until they’ve seen it fail spectacularly. Don’t use hashtags like #socialmedia or #marketing – be specific and use only one relevant hashtag per post (maybe two if you’re already established on that platform and can get away with it.
- 3) Ask for shares What would you do if I told you there was a way to double your reach? Most marketers either ignore this strategy completely or forget to utilize it at all once they have a few hundred followers. Reach doesn’t increase because your posts suddenly got better – it increases because more people are seeing your posts because other people are sharing them with their audiences.
- 4) Use images that stand out You would think this goes without saying, but no – all images don’t need to be square and landscape photos just to fill the space. Mix things up by using screenshots from videos or quotes from blog posts. Also try short video clips (15-30 secs) on Vine, Instagram stories, Snapchat, etc., which can provide quick snippets of information about what you’re promoting
- 5) Promote quality content at scale If you want your social media marketing strategy to pay off in the long term, then stop publishing content for pennies. Instead, look at paid promotion for your best-performing content. A boost in the right spot will quickly skyrocket views and drive traffic to your website.
You can also look at sponsored content opportunities (i.e., you get paid by brands to create high-quality content for their social media accounts). Unfortunately, most small businesses don’t do this because they either don’t have the budget or the time. But when you consider that a few hundred dollars and one day of effort could lead to thousands in sales (and lifetime customers), it’s well worth it.