The Dos and Don’ts on Becoming an Efficient Marketer

Marketing is a different animal than it was in the old days. Brands have ditched postcard mailings and highway billboards in favor of content marketing, social media marketing, and all things digital. Blog content creation is a big priority for marketers, as is social media. This is good since more than 70% of internet users over the age of 18 use Facebook, Instagram has over 500 million monthly active users, and Twitter is the place to go if you want to market internationally. The platform has four times the users than the US. We’re not even going to pretend that this article covers all marketing strategies. The first “do” on the list is this is: you have to be a social media marketer. So, how do you become an effective social media marketer?

Make Your Content Unique And Creative

Simply sharing your latest blog post via social media is not enough. In fact, on Facebook, it could be the kiss of death. Posts with links do not have as much likelihood of appearing in your follower’s news feeds as pure text or pure image posts. Since the majority of humans are visually-oriented, the pure image posts perform better on social media. That doesn’t mean you can’t include text within the image, nor does it mean you can’t write compelling copy above the post before you share it. But those link posts; they don’t always make it through. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post them, but your social content needs to be a mix of educational posts, promotional posts, and purely social posts.

Not only does your content need to be interesting, it needs to be relevant. How do you make sure it’s both? One sure-fire way is to create posts based on events and trends and make sure you post about holidays. There is nothing wrong with appealing to a social user’s sensibilities and emotions. After all, social media is a SOCIAL thing, and people want to be surprised and delighted. One great way to post contextual and relevant visual content is to use PromoRepublic. It has a fully stacked social calendar, and you can pick posts based on your industry. It’s a great tool that lets you publish great content with just a few clicks.

Understand Your Audience

Whether you’re writing blog posts, creating social posts, or creating ads, you have to understand your audience. That means understanding certain key demographics through analytics tools and the close attention you pay to your post engagement. Facebook Insights can give you rich, actionable data without the need to hire an outside analyst to tell you about your existing audience. Facebook Ads Manager can help you target your IDEAL demographic which is important since not every single person who likes your Facebook page is necessarily your ideal customer. Twitter Ads isn’t as robust as Facebook Ads, but you can still target your audience based on gender, keywords, interests, geography, and more. Identifying your audience is the first step to understanding them. Once you’ve identified them, dig deep to find out what pages they like, who they follow, and what sorts of posts they engage with. It takes time, but there’s really no substitute for deep market research.

Other Dos

• Include a variety of content: blogging (especially on diverse topics), infographics, animation, etc. This includes diversity that translates to more readers.
• Make the content sharing process as simple as possible.
• Make certain that your posts are high quality with no blunders, no irrelevant content.
• ENGAGE with your fans and followers.

Don’t Overdo It

Make sure you aren’t posting too often on your social accounts. Generally, 5-7 tweets per day, 2-3 Instagram posts, and 2-3 Facebook posts is plenty if not a little excessive. Your audience research should tell you when your fans and followers are online the most, so schedule your posts for those times. Don’t post the same thing on Facebook at the exact moment you post it on Twitter or Instagram. If people think you’re posting the same thing on all your social platforms, they may only follow one, or they may unfollow you completely. Also, don’t annoy your fans and followers by liking every single one of their posts, retweeting every tweet or “hearting” every IG post. Be moderate and don’t be creepy.

Don’t Neglect Your Profiles

There is a lot of truth to the expression “out of sight, out of mind.” If you stop posting regularly, people will forget about you. And, if you just set-it-and-forget-it, you’re wasting a great opportunity to engage with your social audience. That, no doubt, is the activity that most often leads to conversion. Network just like you do in real life and build relationships.

Other Don’ts

• Don’t plagiarize and directly copy other content. You invalidate yourself completely when you do this.
• Don’t compromise quality for quantity. The bulkier the content doesn’t necessarily mean more the audience.
• Don’t shove a well-known story down the throats of your readers. When you notice a story has been covered a thousand times already, why do you need it?

Being a successful social media marketer means being a successful marketer. Don’t believe us? Check out the businesses and brands on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and tell us that social media isn’t the most effective way to market.