How To Be A Productive Social Media Marketer
Social media is a power to reckon with in this digital day and age. People worldwide spent a lot of time scrolling through their feeds — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok. In fact, the average time spent on social media is 144 minutes!
On top of it, the pandemic has given people a reason to be on social media all the time. Do you know social media consumption has increased by 73% ever since the world went into lockdown?
But perhaps the biggest advantage of social media is that it enables businesses like yours to build a community with their target audience, and drive sales. You get a chance to establish your authority in the market and develop a long-lasting relationship with your customers.
In times when we are physically isolated from each other, building an emotional connection with people is of paramount importance — even for businesses. Social media helps do that.
Creating a buzz on social media
For starters, brands these days are driving more goodwill and purpose-driven social media campaigns. This enables others to flourish in turbulent times and be deeply attuned to their brand ethos. Check out what American Express did during Christmas.
Besides, there is a surge in the consumption of short video content due to COVID-19 due to TikTok, where users spend an average of 41 minutes daily. On the plus side, 93% of marketers agree to land customers thanks to posting videos on social media.
Similarly, live streams have spiked by 50% during the lockdown on Facebook. An Instagram report found that 60% of their users discover new products on the platform. This has caused more businesses to sell on Instagram.
The world may have come to a standstill due to the pandemic. However, this has not given social media marketers a breather. With so many things happening, businesses are under pressure to deliver more, and for that, they need the marketers’ support.
Top 9 Tips to be a productive social media marketer?
If you are currently struggling with your brand’s social media but want to make the most of your time, follow these nine tips to be productive and result-oriented:
1. Set well-defined and realistic goals
In social media, setting a goal is winning half the battle. Anyone can post a string of images on social media and use hashtags. But without proper social media marketing strategies, their efforts would not make a mark. Therefore, set specific and time-bound goals.
That could be for boosting brand awareness, driving more website sales, or generating leads. You must have clarity on what activities you will undertake to achieve the goal. Research shows you are 40% more likely to achieve them if you write them down. Do it!
2. Aim for platforms that give a good ROI
With all the social media channels at your disposal, how do you know which one is the best for your business? For instance, if you cater to a B2B audience, LinkedIn is perfect for you as all businesses are active.
However, Facebook will give you better ROI if you want to publish content related to lifestyle, entertainment, or any B2C sector. But, if your business produces majorly visual content, for instance, Canva, choose Instagram.
If you want to be a productive social media marketer, you cannot afford to spend time on those channels that would not fetch your business any results!
3. Create a full-fledged social media content calendar
This is the most basic thing any marketer can do to work in an organized fashion. Your social media calendar should be ready before you start posting anything.
Planning will help you decide what message you want to share with your audience and the kind of content you want to post.
Make sure you include a balanced mix of images, website links, blog posts, videos, polls, and live streams in your monthly calendar — depending on your niche. Use tools such as Evernote and Trello to create your calendar. Even a simple Excel sheet will suffice.
4. Leverage social media automation tools
The tools you use will affect the success of your overall social media marketing plan. For starters, implement a simple social media management software to schedule and publish your content. You can use Hootsuite, AgoraPulse, or Buffer to do this.
Another great tool you can use to keep all your important messages from multiple profiles and networks in one place is Sprout Social, Zoho Social, Keyhole. TweetDeck also does the same job pretty well — but only for Twitter.
Then there are tools such as Sendible that are a complete package. They are suitable for scheduling, monitoring, and reporting on post-performance. Some of them also allow you to build a buyer persona, generate leads, and create email lists right on the tool itself!
5. Stay up-to-date with industry news
Considered as one of the most common social media marketing tips, marketers often forget to read up, learn and implement new tactics in their website or mobile app marketing strategy. However, if you want your efforts to fetch results with minimum effort, you have to stay one step ahead of everyone in the industry.
The algorithms and consumer behaviours are forever changing on social media platforms. For instance, the use of Instagram stories for businesses and micro-influencers for boosting feed engagement is the new norm. You must always know what is trending or not.
Related Blog: Ultimate guide on adopting agile marketing methodology
6. Repurpose existing content
Content repurposing is the process of re-using previously-published content on some other platform in a different format. This not only saves your time but also ensures a consistent social media posting schedule.
For instance, if you have a blog that performed well, there are chances it will also perform well on social media. Break it down into chunks and create a slideshow or GIF that can be uploaded on social media.
Repurposing content fetches you more reach, helps you connect with new audiences, and improves your SEO.
7. Improve reach by commenting on others’ posts
Leaving comments on the posts of other profiles increases the chances of them reciprocating the same and even following you on the social media channel.
This activity is also likely to get you noticed by their followers and get some of them onto your social account, thus increasing your reach. Copy matters but try using emojis and GIFs to make your comments more appealing.
Other methods include engaging in Facebook groups with a similar target audience, retweeting posts on Twitter, interacting on Twitter chats, and replying to direct messages on preferred social media platforms.
8. Outsource menial social media tasks
As a social media marketer, you cannot do everything! Tasks such as content research, data collection, graphic design, customer service, scheduling, and report generation are essential and time-consuming.
One of the significant social media marketing productivity hacks is delegation. Suppose you outsource these basic social media tasks to someone else. In that case, you will have time freed up to focus on high-end jobs like social media calendar creation, community building, and campaign execution.
9. Organize your work efficiently
With various automation tools and schedulers available for use, it is easy to plan and assign dedicated tasks to the team. For instance, if you are working on a campaign, prepare a detailed to-do list including activities you have to finish on specific dates.
Once you have your list in place, schedule meetings with all your team members such as graphic designer, research analyst, and copywriter to debrief them and assign them their responsibilities.
Doing this will help you streamline the entire campaign and minimize the chance of missing something important. Social media marketing includes a plethora of tasks. So being organized is necessary for you.
Wrapping it up
Today, 90% of brands use social media to build brand awareness, and 73% of people make purchases because of it. That is why building relationships with customers on social media is the key to business success.
Therefore, the impact of using social media marketing services for your business is undeniable. However, if you are not productive and waste time on futile activities, you will miss out on all growth opportunities. Therefore, follow the above-mentioned tips and level up your social media game today!
