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As a marketer, social media is a powerful tool and there are many options for you to try out and see what works for you. Various strategies are employed to get the most attention to your brand on social media, thereby driving sales. Social media, email, search engine optimisation (SEO), content marketing, visual content marketing and mobile marketing are all part of the game but it takes a bit of tweaking and study to find out what works and what doesn’t for your brand.

We look at some of the social media tricks and tips to optimise your brand.

1. How many channels?

Is there a number to the amount of social media channels marketers should participate on? Social media visibility is vital and participation itself is a great start. Brand awareness, lead generation, trust, credibility and sales are the expected results. It is found that people need to hear or see something regarding a brand 3-5 times to believe its authenticity. Thus, it only makes sense to place your content on multiple social networking pages that will boost your visibility and trust among followers.

Social media participation level stats

People on 3 social networks:23%
People on 4 social networks:25%
People on 5 social networks:16%
People on 6 social networks:10%
People on 11 or more social networks:3%
But figures itself can’t speak since each social media platform is different and effectiveness will vary for different brands and products.

2. Goals

An important finding is that most companies run their social media not solely or even primarily for sales but with the aim of gaining followers (20%). Follower building is being rated “very important” for business marketers. Social media’s biggest direct benefit to businesses is engagement with customers and followers in general. This is the first step and in time translates to resulting sales and a brand identity.

So the motto has to be “engage first and sell after“.

3. How many posts?

The frequency of posts can be a determinant factor in your social media presence. Posting frequently isn’t enough; it has to be relevant too. But pacing posts is a good scheme to keep your audience constantly in touch with your brand. If you look at the stats, we see that 70% of brands are posting to social networks at least once a day.

Media posts on all platforms don’t have to be unique content the same or on the same lines can work as well. A blog post, published on Facebook can be used on Instagram, Pinterest and even LinkedIn.

4. Optimisation tactics?

It’s not enough that you have good content; to get it to a larger number of people a bit of streamlining is required. These tactics help generate more chances for your posts being shared and therefore reach your optimal results in marketing. But how effective are each of them, let’s find out.

Visual content – 50%
Hashtags – 35%
Targeting audience – 33%
Call to action – 27%
Image size optimization – 23%
Videos – 20%
As it is evident, visual content, with emphasis on videos is at the top and must be the first go-to social network marketing optimisation.

5. Plan in advance?

Having a posts plan is best if you want to keep social media flowing smooth. A publishing schedule is used commonly today. A study hasn’t shown that 65% scheduling their posts at least one day prior with 41% plan almost a week in advance. A plan gives you the leeway to steer your posts in the direction of growth.

6. When to post?

This factor comes into play because your posts should reach people when they are up and on social media or else it gets lost in the many posts that appear on their feed.

There are many methods to optimise this including

Trial and error
Tools
Industry reports
Optimising your social media is important to keep your brand relevant and boost sales. Content, planning and utilisation of social media platforms is vital to keep your brand connected with the audience. At Onpageone, we help you tailor your social media just right to up your following and sales.