5 Social-Media Tips to Enhance Your Marketing Struggling to make your digital strategy work? Try these tactics.
By John Rampton Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Could your marketing campaign use a little flair in social media marketing?
If so, here are five helpful tips to enhance your marketing via social media:
Related: 11 Unusual Social Media Tips to Drive Branding, Clicks and Conversions
1. Share at the best times.
There may not an exact best time to post, but data analytics firm SumAll found the optimum times to post on various platforms as follows: 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. EST for Google +, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. for Twitter, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. for Facebook, 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. for Tumblr, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. for Instagram, and 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. for Pinterest.
I've personally found that women tend to be online late on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. I typically wait until around 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. to post. When I'm working with an ecommerce site, the best time for me to post is Thursday night. My previous company Organize could sell almost three times the amount of products online on Thursday night as compared with any other night of the week.
Related: Don't Just Have Social-Media Conversations, Design Them
Related: Tweet Naked (Book)
2. Grow your email list.
Yes, email is still popular. In 2012, 91 percent of consumers reported checked their email everyday, according to a survey by Exact Target, now part of Salesforce. Furthermore, it found that email is the preferred channel for customers.
What does this have to do with social media?
Since email can be a major asset in a marketing campaign, try to gain more email subscribers. Provide a sign-up form on your website or on Facebook through one of many apps, offer incentives for customers to join an email subscription list or run a contest.
Related: A Guide to Perfect Social Media Posts (Infographic)
3. Conduct A/B tests.
How can a company owner learn if a social-media campaign is reaching the intended audience or figure out which components customers liked? Run a simple A/B test, also known as split testing.
GetResponse can help a business test what works when contacting customers through email. Optimizely can aid a company with A/B testing of its website-landing pages and other pages.
Related: Gain Long-Term Social Followers With These 5 Tips
4. Send the right message to the right platform.
Every social media platform serves a different purpose and draws a distinctive audience. Understanding this can make your marketing efforts go more smoothly. For example, you wouldn't want to promote a law firm on Instagram or Pinterest.
Evan LePage, a writer for HootSuite, explains that Twitter users enjoy an image that has been attached, Facebook users like pictures and can't stand asking for likes and Google+ followers are passionate brand advocates.
Test each platform to see how your audience responds. I've found that women tend to be on Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook, and men turn to Twitter and Google+ more. Here is additional data from Alex Hillsberg on how men and women use social media.
Related: 5 Social Media Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
5. Don't just rely on organic strategies.
In a perfect world, organic search-engine optimatization efforts would be enough for all your marketing needs. And best of all, it's free. But the world isn't perfect. Sometimes you have to pay for a spike in traffic.
A pay-per-click strategy is a great way to get immediate results. Use Google Adwords to advertise near specific searches of keywords and you'll only pay if someone clicks on your ad.
And all the major social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, offer opportunities to purchase ads. Advertising is available on YouTube and Reddit. Consult Larry Kim's guide on this topic.
When you pay for placements, you expand your outreach outside of your current community of contacts in a rapid and effective way. While organic strategies are great, it doesn't hurt to shell out money for ad placements on social media networks.
Do you have tips to share? Leave them in the comments below.
Related: A Guide to Perfect Social Media Posts (Infographic)
