Social media marketing is quickly establishing itself as one of the most effective ways to reach a large audience, develop great content, and connect with one’s customers.
Those who successfully use it will often find their businesses’ thriving due to the reach and spread of the viral content they’ve been curating on their page. Those who cannot keep up with the competition in social media space will, unfortunately, will be lost amongst the sea of other small businesses striving to get their name out there.
In order to really understand the social media landscape, and put yourself above the competition, it’s important to look at social media as a tool. In particular, social media is a piece of technology. In order to best optimize it, you need to build a tech-savvy strategy. Here are a few ways that you can utilize the latest technology to grow your social media plan and increase your reach and brand awareness.
Create Engagement with Digital Visuals
No social media strategy is complete without engaging content that draws in your audience. While all things–from advertisements to well-written copy–play a vital role in developing content, on media platforms, nothing catches a users’ eye more than visuals.
Use banner templates to create stunning digital posts and ads. No need to be an advanced designer, simply open up in Illustrator, edit some texts and upload to your Social Media account.
One way to do this is by developing video content. With YouTube influencers becoming the hottest trend for gaining fame and popularity, social media marketers should also be hopping on this bandwagon. Create awesome, engaging videos, and your audience will want to follow for more. Videos are a proven strategy and allow you to not only promote your product, but also create a great, relevant brand image for yourself.
Utilize Schedules and Auto-Posting
When working on a social media strategy, chances are there are also other areas of your business that you need to focus on. As great as it would be to have all the time you need to manage your marketing efforts, small business management is incredibly involved. However, you also want to avoid putting social media on the backburner. Time management is the key to success, so why not find the best tools to help you efficiently create a content calendar for your social strategy.
In order to give yourself more time to focus on your business–while still providing your media channels with the support and care they need–consider utilizing a digital calendar:
- Start by picking a day of the week to set aside an hour or two of your time towards writing out and creating your designs and copy.
- Once you’ve finished, upload these to your social media pages and save them as a draft.
- Finally, set notifications for the day of the week you want to post the content on an app like Google Calendar.
If you have a bit of extra money and want an even more hands-off approach, you can also invest in an auto-posting software. Platforms like DLVRIT allow you to schedule posts throughout the week–and then post them automatically for you. This can be great for those who often find themselves too busy to post. You can also have the software automatically post at the time of day with the most post engagement.
Strategize Ad Spending with Budgeting Tools
One of the best ways to broaden your audience on social media is through targeted advertising. Platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook all provide ways to advertise your product, and for the most part, they’re relatively inexpensive and easy to manage.
However, without the knowledge of how to effectively utilize them, marketers often find themselves overspending, without getting the return that they’re looking for. In order to avoid this pitfall, look into using an online calculator to determine what your ROI has been on past social media advertisements. You can then use this to determine how much to spend on future ads.
Once you’ve determined a proper budget of how much you want to spend on your social media advertisements, start allocating a small percentage of your funds into a separate savings account. One of the best options for small business owners is a digital bank account with no-fees, because you can easily connect it to any advertisements you’re looking to auto-renew. This will also inevitably save you money in the long run.
Stay Secure with a VPN
With an effective social media strategy, you will soon see your followers, and conversions, growing quickly. However, with popularity comes an unfortunate risk to your privacy and security. The internet is full of bots and hackers looking to steal information for personal and monetary gain. In order to stay secure, and protect your business and social accounts, consider looking into a VPN
A VPN (Virtual Private Network), is a type of security system for your devices, that allows you to use the internet by connecting to another network. Since you will be using a separate network for your internet, your data is going to be protected.
They are especially useful when using less than trustworthy Wi-Fi hotspots, such as your local coffee shop, which are more susceptible to hacking. They can also be utilized to gain access to region-restricted websites, allowing you to see what your competition is doing in other countries.
Improve Posting Time with Speed Boosting Hardware
No one likes to deal with slow internet, especially when you’re managing a business. Sitting around and waiting for a post to go live can be a waste of precious time that could be used elsewhere. If you’re dealing with this issue, it may be time to invest in hardware that will improve your internet speed.
One great option is fiber-optic networks. This type of internet connection uses fiber optic cables to connect your computer to the internet, which can often be faster than other traditional methods of connecting to the internet. While this is still only available for certain locations, it’s becoming far more common in recent years. Talk to your internet service provider and see if this is a service that is available to you and within your budget.
Slow internet might also be due to a broken, or old router. Consider running diagnostic tests to see if your router is still viable for use or if it has a glitch that can be remedied to boost your internet speed. Investments in computer hardware may be a bit more expensive, but the boost in internet speed can help you connect with your audience faster, making the investment well worth it.
Finally, in order to make the most out of your visual content strategy, consider utilizing a service like Vexels. They provide great engaging digital designs, royalty-free graphics, and other digital art, which can help take your social media game to the next level. Many of the graphics allow for customization, so you can optimize the content for your audience in any way you see fit.
Social media marketing can be overwhelming, but success in this field can bring the greatest reward as well. Especially for those running small businesses with a smaller advertising budget. By utilizing technology to your advantage, you can craft a great strategy that will draw users to your product and craft an interesting and engaging brand image and story.
