Fact: social media is here to stay.

In 2020 alone, nearly half of the world was on social media.

As technology becomes more accessible, analysts expect user growth to continue to grow. By 2025, we can expect nearly 4.41 billion users worldwide.

For business owners that means two things:

You better be on social media.
You need to have a gameplan.

Whether you’re just getting your feet wet or have been around the block a time or two, we’ve got your back with tips to set your gameplan in motion.

12 Social Media Marketing Strategy Tips

Here are 12 surefire tips to help elevate your social media marketing strategy and grow your business:

Map out your strategy
Don’t stretch yourself too thin
Get yourself branded
Use a content calendar/scheduler
Master all options
Arm yourself with the right tools
Dig the hashtags
Build your tribe
Keep tabs on your analytics
Take inspiration
Avoid shortcuts
Follow a social media guru

1. Map out your strategy

Plan-strategy-man-with-binoculars-yelllow-background.jpg

Why you are on social media? What are your goals? How do you plan to achieve them?

These are the questions you should be asking yourself before developing your strategy.

As you work through the process, think about factors such as content type, post frequency, and post timing, amongst others.

Pro Tip: Before creating any post ask yourself, “How is this helping my brand and is this in line with my strategy?”

2. Don’t stretch yourself too thin

Don’t let social media overwhelm you.

One mistake we often see is the decision to sign up to every possible social platform.

People crave authenticity.

Being a mile wide and an inch deep is not in your favor.

Instead, skill up on select platforms. You will quickly learn how to engage with customers in a variety of ways helping to build highly trusting relationships.

Pro Tip: Select 2-3 platforms.

Which ones you might ask?

The answer to this question lies in your brand strategy work, which helps set the foundation for all of your marketing efforts.

For good measure, here are some great social media demographics you can use to inform your strategy.

3. Get yourself branded

Branding is all about humanizing your business and showcasing its personality to your customers.

You need your social media presence to speak one uniform language (voice and visual) so that your customers can see your activity and connect with your brand no matter the content.

This is where you open your brand style guide for details.

Pro Tip: Have a variety of plug-and-play social templates that only require copy changes. You can utilize these for any kind of announcement and pepper them throughout your feed to stay on brand.

4. Use a content calendar/scheduler

All too often we hear stories of businesses burning out after a month or two of posting.

From creating engaging content to coming up with captions and hashtags to simply finding the time to post, social media can quickly become a black-hole like time suck you choose to write off.

Don’t.

Real organic social followings take time - save yourself with a content calendar.

At NiceDay, we sit down at the end of each month to plan out our content for the entire month ahead.

Pro Tip: Tools such as Planoly (we use this), Hootsuite or Tailwind are great solutions for your social planning.

Whether you’re at a party, fast asleep, or busy with some yoga poses, these tools will auto-publish all of your posts for the weeks and months ahead.

5. Master all options

User preference for engaging with content is constantly evolving and so are the social platforms.

From posts to reels, stories, guides, groups, live and more, the social media giants have created a variety of ways for their users to create and share content.

What you need to know is that each method of engagement serves a different audience and purpose.

For instance, Instagram posts are meant to be thoughtful visual extensions of your brand that will always be accessible.

Stories, meanwhile, are short-lived and should be much more organic and natural often offering a “look under the hood” of what really goes on.

6. Arm yourself with the right tools

Who is Inspector Gadget without his high-tech gadgets?

Just like he uses tools to be more efficient, so should you.

Here are just a few of our favorite tools:

Canva: Canva helps you create social media graphics. With Canva, designing is as simple as drag and drop. Do we need to say more?

Inshot App: With this app, you don’t need to be a professional to edit your videos.
Hashtag Stack: Hashtags get you noticed. But which ones to use? Hashtag Stack helps you with that.
Bitly: With Bitly, you can shorten your URLs. Those long URLs add noise to your captions. Cut them out and look beautiful.
Linktree: This tool helps you consolidate your links into one. Instead of having your website, social accounts, and others listed individually, use this to put all those and more into one link.

7. Dig The Hashtags

Whether it's Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter, hashtags are a big deal.

In fact, they quite literally help your get discovered.

Users can search for keywords (or hashtags) which you can associate with your posts. Make sure to include them on every possible method of interaction.

Wondering what types of hashtags you should be using?

Here are 7 key hashtag categories you should consider, along with examples:

Industry Hashtags: What products/ services are your customers buying from you? #creativemarketing #marketing
Niche Hashtags: Dig deeper into your services. #brandstrategy #branding #design
Community Hashtags: Your industry ‘hangs out’ on certain hashtags. #entrepeneurs #brandmanagers
Location Hashtags: Get discovered in your area with location hashtags. #charlottemarketing
Theme Hashtags: What’s the theme of your post? Are you talking about a personal story or a testimonial? #customerfeedback
Branded Hashtags: Even if you’re a small business, it’s a good idea to create your branded hashtag – something your customers or collaborators can use to create hype around your business. #NiceDay
Special Day Hashtags: Every day is reason for celebration. A quick Google search will turn up countless ‘day of’ listings you can utilize. #hugafriendday

8. Build your tribe

Don’t go into hiding once you’ve created and scheduled your posts.

One reason we recommend you plan out your content for the month in advance is to concentrate on the most important part: Getting social on social media.

Talk to your audience.

Reply to their comments.

Get into discussions.

Reshare their content.

Humanize your brand on social media and build real and organic connections.

9. Keep tabs on your analytics

Posting on social media without keeping track of analytics is like walking a tightrope blindfolded without a balance bar.

Don’t let your time or advertising spend fall short even if the content did.

By analyzing the performance of the post with engagement and reach metrics, you can quickly learn what your audience liked and disliked, allowing you to create more of what worked and less of what didn’t.

10. Take inspiration

Follow your competition and other industry leaders. They are great sources of inspiration.

Make certain not to copy their works.

Stand out from your competition by coming up with something even more powerful.

11. Avoid shortcuts

Have you been approached by bogus profiles offering 1k followers for $100?

However tempting it might seem, those followers are bots, not real customers with intent to buy.

The social media giants often extend punishments for taking these shortcuts ranging from a simple drop in reach and followers to more serious actions such as pausing or shutting down accounts.

Pro Tip: Stay true to who you are and practice patience. Good things will follow.

12. Follow a social media guru

Facebook, Instagram, and other channels are constantly changing their algorithms.

Most social media gurus keep track of the changes and post about them on their own accounts along with other tips and tricks.

Some social media gurus we are stalking on social media:

Jay Baer
Kim Garst
Larry Kim
Gary Vaynerchuk

Let’s Get Social

We hope these tips make your social media marketing efforts that much more effective.

Got a tip to share? Post it below!

Need help with your social media marketing strategy? Drop us a note.

Elevate Your Social Media Marketing Strategy With These 12 Tips