One of the best ways to reach potential clients is to go where they spend much of their time: social media. The difficult thing about social media marketing is that best practices are always changing as platforms gain or lose popularity, new features become available, and users simply change how they use social media. You need to constantly adapt your strategy to ensure it remains relevant. In 2023, there are a few things you need to know about social media marketing.
The Different Types of Social Media Marketing
The possibilities for using social media marketing for your business are almost endless. They range from promotional tactics to sell your products to more subtle uses for improving brand awareness, appealing to prospects, and maintaining a relationship with current customers. However, all the tactics you can use on social media fall under three main categories.
1. Organic Posts
You’re free to post as often as you like on social media platforms. This is your organic content. Users find these posts if they’re already familiar with your brand, they’re searching for a topic you’ve created content about, or someone they know interacts with your post. To see results from organic posts, you need to invest in creating high-quality content and pay attention to analytics to keep improving your strategy moving forward.
2. Ads
To expand your reach, it helps to use some paid ads in your social media strategy. These will appear as sponsored content in the feeds of the users you target. You can target based on demographics, behaviors, or interests. Almost any social media post has the potential to be an ad, but posts with a clear call-to-action are particularly ideal. These could invite users to make a purchase, join a webinar, or view a longer piece of content that will nurture the prospect through your sales funnel.
3. Influencer Marketing
The last way to use social media is with influencer marketing. This involves working with a content creator who has a large following to make other people interested in your brand. This can be a great way to quickly grow your audience on a particular platform.
How to Use Influencer Marketing
Choosing the right influencer and employing a strategy that works for you can be challenging. To make sure the investment pays off, there are a few things you need to do:
- Give the influencer plenty of freedom — Influencer marketing is no place for micromanagement. It will be obvious to the influencer’s audience if you’ve provided strict directions of what you want the influencer to do, which will ruin authenticity.
- Know what you want from the collaboration — When you reach out, be upfront about why you want to work with the influencer. Talk about your brand, explain why you feel like the influencer is the right fit, and perhaps mention a particular post or campaign the influencer made in the past that you liked.
- Cross-post content — Take full advantage of any content the influencer creates for you by sharing it on other social media platforms. Make it clear that you intend to do this in your contract with the influencer.
- Use the same influencer for multiple campaigns — You may feel that you have the best chance of success if you create a number of campaigns and ask a different influencer to work with you for each. In fact, your branding will come across as more genuine if you keep the same influencer and build a relationship over time.
Choosing the Best Social Channels for Different Niches
You may see better results on some social media platforms than on others. Since it’s too difficult to manage numerous accounts, you need to figure out which platforms are likely to be best for your niche before you implement a social media strategy.
Consider What the Platform Is For
Some platforms may be unsuitable for your niche due to what they are for. If you want to establish your business as a source of expert information, for example, LinkedIn is ideal but Snapchat would be unsuitable. Similarly, Twitter is perfect for posting about trending topics, whereas Instagram is better for evergreen content.
Look for Your Audience
Beyond researching which social media platforms your customers use, find out where they go for information about your niche. For instance, your customers may have profiles on Facebook but look for videos related to your niche on TikTok. In this case, developing a presence on TikTok would be more beneficial than being active on Facebook.
Find Out Where Your Competitors Are
Another way to figure out which platforms are best for your niche is to look at where your competitors are. Check what they are doing to gain inspiration for your own social media strategy.
An Example: The Best Real Estate Social Media Profiles
To explore how different social media platforms can be suitable for a particular niche, let’s take real estate as an example. The following are some great real estate social media profiles.
Hasan Juma
To become active on TikTok, look to Hasan Juma for inspiration. The Vancouver realtor shares statistics about the market in the form of short videos. He is able to show off his personality while delivering facts, which is helpful for branding purposes. In addition, he explains how buyers and sellers should act to see the best possible results. This keeps his current followers engaged and helps him attract new clients.
West Haven Group
An example of how to use Facebook to your advantage comes from West Haven Group. Something that stands out is the consistent branding across different posts. The company also makes effective video walkthroughs of properties. This adds context, allowing buyers to take a virtual tour before they pay the property a visit in person. Plus, sellers prefer to list with agents who use videos because they know this makes listings more appealing. As a result, the Facebook page attracts clients who are both buyers and sellers.
Rick & Kirsten Powell
Instagram is a great choice for real estate because the niche lends itself to a visual medium. However, as associate brokers Rick & Kirsten Powell show, you’re not limited to photos of properties. Many of their posts on Instagram are quick facts about the real estate market, aimed at providing advice to buyers, sellers, and investors. All the posts are aesthetically pleasing and eye-catching.
It may be difficult to recreate something similar with your own brand if you lack social media experience. A virtual assistant for real estate professionals can manage not just your social media strategy but all the other aspects of your business you lack the time to handle yourself, such as lead screening, CRM management, data reconciliation, and scheduling.
What Are the Fastest Growing Social Media Platforms?
For your long-term strategy, it’s worthwhile considering which social media platforms are gaining traction. In 2023, the fastest growing platforms in terms of U.S. consumer usage are:
- BeReal — Although only 3% of adults in the U.S. use BeReal, this is a growth of 313% between 2022 and 2023. The platform is particularly popular with Gen Zers. The concept is simple: users are prompted at random times of the day to take a photo of themselves. They must take this photo wherever they are and upload it without filters. Brands that want to use the platform need to be creative, but it could be useful for those who want to emphasize their authenticity.
- Twitch — Another platform with only a small audience (9% of U.S. adults), Twitch is nonetheless gaining traction, seeing 29% growth in the past year. Any businesses that want to stream long live videos can take advantage of this platform.
- LinkedIn — With 20% year-over-year growth, LinkedIn is becoming a necessity for professionals, recruiters, and B2B companies.
- TikTok — Despite the controversy, TikTok continues to gain users. As well as seeing 16% year-over-year growth, it is now reaching a wider range of age groups, which is making it more useful to brands that want to use video in their social media marketing.
- Snapchat — With 8% year-over-year growth, Snapchat could be an important place for businesses. It continues to attract mostly young users, who frequently use the platform to show off their purchases.
- Twitter — It’s difficult to know if Twitter (currently rebranding to X) will continue to thrive. Nonetheless, it has grown its user base by 7% over the past year. The constant changes happening on the platform mean it is necessary to stay on top of trends if you want to use Twitter in your marketing strategy.
- Instagram — Although Instagram is losing some of its Millennial users, it is gaining Boomers and Gen Zers, which led it to grow 6% over the past year. It’s important to bear in mind who is currently active on the platform when deciding on a strategy.
- Facebook — Although it only saw a 1% increase in users, this means 69% of U.S. adults now use Facebook, which is more than any other platform.
You should also be aware of which platforms are losing users. This list includes Reddit (11% decrease), Pinterest (9% decrease), and even YouTube (4% decrease). However, it’s important to put these numbers into context. For instance, 57% of U.S. adults still use YouTube, meaning it could be a useful channel for your social media strategy, despite the slight decline.
Rising Social Media Marketing Trends
Which platforms are growing (and declining) is just one trend in social media you need to pay attention to — trends in social media marketing may also influence your strategy. The following are some of the top ones to watch in 2023.
Short-Form Video Still Reigns
Many brands will have noticed that their best-performing content is short videos. Users are seeking out content that entertains or informs them in just a few minutes — or even seconds. Some major benefits of short-form video is that users tend to watch at least 40%, the average watch time for a third of short videos is 81%, and the click-through rate for half of all videos is between 5 and 8%.
Users Want to Belong to Communities
The way people are using social media is evolving. There is now a greater emphasis on communities, including branded communities. The majority of organizations with branded communities say the tactic has impacted customer retention, improved SEO, led to more website traffic, generated leads, and increased sales. To build active communities, businesses need to respond to users who leave comments, give feedback, and start new discussions.
Ads Are Becoming More Targeted
Users only pay attention to the ads they feel are relevant to them. When an ad is relevant, there’s a good chance a user will make a purchase — 80% of users say they have made at least one purchase based on an online or social media ad. To put their ads in front of users who are likely to respond, businesses are being more selective with who they target. Social media analytics are key for figuring out the demographics, behaviors, and interests of potential customers.
Content Creators Are Working with AI
With AI, content creators can produce posts for social media much more quickly. Tools can generate copy, images, and even video. However, there are risks to using AI, including inaccuracies, low quality, bias, and ethical concerns. Businesses see the best results when they don’t fully rely on AI but use it as a starting point and still involve humans in the creation process.
How to Manage Content Creation for Social Media Channels
Creating high-quality content is key for any social media strategy. You need to structure your approach to ensure you produce content that will lead to results.
Set Goals for Your Social Media Strategy
Before you create any content, you need to be clear about why you’re using social media. You should have a distinct goal that your posts will help you achieve. This could be related to improving brand awareness, driving more traffic to your website, generating leads, or directly increasing sales.
Create an Editorial Calendar
To ensure you post on a regular schedule and publish a variety of content — in terms of both the type of content and the specific buyer personas you are targeting — you’ll need to make an editorial calendar. Make a note of when and where you’ll publish the content and how you’ll create it. Depending on the skills of your team, you may be able to produce some content in house, but it may be necessary to outsource other pieces. You can also save on resources by asking your followers to create content you can reuse. Incentivize them through contests and discounts.
On some social media platforms, you can schedule content in advance. This is useful for saving time and ensuring you never forget to post.
Find Content You Can Repurpose
There’s a good chance you already have several pieces of content you can repurpose for social media, such as links to blog posts, snippets of podcasts, and infographics you also included in longer pieces of content. Remember to add these pieces to your content calendar. Much of the time, though, you’ll want to create images, videos, and short pieces of text just for social media.
Monitor Engagement
Check which posts are leading to the most engagement from your audience by monitoring analytics. Use whatever metrics matter most to you — this will depend on the goal of your social media strategy. Use the insights to create similar content in the future.
Top Social Media Marketing Companies
It may be hard to find the time for social media marketing when you’re already running a business — especially if you need to learn about new trends, features, and platforms. For many business owners, a better solution than trying to manage social media marketing themselves is to outsource the task to a professional. One option is to use a social media marketing company. Some of the top agencies include the following.
Vireo Video
To take your YouTube marketing to the next level, consider Vireo Video. The company will create a strategy for you, optimize your content for search, create ads, and manage your influencer campaigns. Businesses that have worked with the agency have seen huge increases in views and conversions.
Viral Nation
For influencer marketing, a great choice is Viral Nation. All the services the company provides are proven to lead to a good return on investment. Plus, clients can see the analytics for their campaigns to understand how they’re working.
Abacus
Whereas many companies focus on data science to determine where to target their ads, Abacus cares about creativity in social media. By making sure content is engaging, the agency is able to ensure brands have a successful social media marketing strategy for months to come. The agency helps businesses create a long-term strategy, which includes producing content like 3D animations, live-action video, and photos.Small businesses may not have the budget to work with top social media companies. In fact, you may only need to dedicate a few hours a week to social media to see the results you want. However, if you are a busy entrepreneur, you may not even have a few hours spare in your schedule. The solution is to outsource to a virtual assistant. At myVA360, we have specialist social media management virtual assistants on our team. We’ll match you with someone who understands your niche and can provide you with whatever social media tasks you need. Request your free trial to experience working with a VA for yourself.
