Social Media Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

Social media, today, has become the biggest resource of building your business’s identity, and a medium to connect with large masses of the audience.

The evolution of social media, and analysing people’s interest has a big role to play in the way you build up strategies for brand building. Because of the same reason, building a social media profile might be easy, but its success is difficult.

Anything and everything you do on your page/profile has an impact. Look at any social media platform... the much-easy user interface to build up a profile is everyone’s cup of tea. But what still remains a problem is deriving results out of it.

Now, I’m making things easier for you.

You need to derive a testing funnel organically, and then shift to promotions to scale. Digital success is not a game of speed, it is a game of experiments and data.

Simple and exact!!

The ultimate guide that will reduce your experimentation curve and stepen your result curve is in the 7-step strategy.

1. Understand the algorithm: All social media platforms have a similar, but not the same algorithm. For example, #tags in Instagram are good, but #tags on LinkedIn aren't meant for higher reach. The same way, images on instagram do better than images on facebook. Facebook's new algorithm has better reach and engagement with videos.

Here is how to research about algorithm:

Google, everyone. When you search for it, you’ll find multiple articles/news updates about social media on google.

Check the top performing profiles of your industry. To reach the top, they either would have done a lot of experiments, or hired somebody with that level of skill-set. Take the advantage of their sweat and blood that helped them reach the top few.

2. Minimize promotions, highlight yourself: The biggest mistake is here, you start from promotions and paid advertisement. And this is what you’re doing wrong. Your agency would have advised you the same.

Ponder over a minute…

Had promotions given you results, do you think users would have been there on social media? Nobody wants to be sold on every alternate post. The first objective of any social media is to share content that people like, so that they come over and over again, and that cannot be done through promotions.

So try organic first. By this, I don’t mean that promotions won’t give you results, but surely it’ll tell you what works and what doesn’t.

3. The first target is to get a target audience, not more followers: 95% of you make this mistake. You either get your family members to follow up, or get fake followers to increase the total numbers. And then, what happens.

You have the list of suggestions of all the people who are not the right target. Initial steps contribute a lot to your future success. The initial followers, post, ideas are what will give you the right result.

Go right, not fast — is the mantra.

4. Research on #tags: Pretty much, #tags are a way to boost up your reach in almost all the platforms depending on the algorithm. Research on #tags, see the top players in your industry, use keywords and see most searched words and phrases in your industry.

And then do experiments with them. Try to unlock the key to your success. The game is right there.

5. Content is the key: Right content will sell and be observed no matter what. So your focus should be to deliver what is most beneficial and right for your audience. Don’t try to just say about yourself, tell them what they need to know, and help them with the right interest.

6. Be open to adapt to new features, quickly: Whenever a new feature pops up, the ultimate aim of the platform is to promote it and make it a success. Take the first user advantage and adapt quickly, so that you get on the move and are able to speed up your process.

When instagram reels came in, those who started early got huge benefits.

7. Distribute the best content in paid advertising: If you get to the stage where you hit something right with your content, do not hesitate to promote it.

Spend some money, and I’m sure you’ll get the ROI of it.

Here is one last recommendation: Everything needs nurturing and time. If you want to build your online rapport, give your time to it or maybe, hire the right person/agency who can help you with results in case you don't have that expertise. Because no matter how easy it looks, it is sure not going to work if you are not skilled in it.

So, the next time when you think about social media as a platform, ponder over everything.