Your social media pages can be very rewarding, driving traffic and conversions to your website. However, it's also very challenging to stand out when you're competing against other businesses and individuals for attention. You need to make sure that your content and marketing strategies are up to date and effective.
Having a strong presence on social media affects traffic, conversions and brand awareness. It's also an important place where customers communicate with you. Making the best use of your social media platforms benefits you and your audience.
Here are the seven ways your brand can stand out on social media.
1. Use a content calendar to plan and schedule content
Many businesses still treat their social media content as an afterthought. Irregular posts, quickly typed in content or just shares from other pages is very low-effort, and it shows. People will not pay attention to pages and profiles that don't offer original and eye-catching content. You're not making the best of social media pages if you're only occasionally posting something because you're waiting for inspiration.
You need to be proactive about your social media content by creating a content calendar. A content calendar is where you clearly map out for your social media for each day and even multiple times a day.
You can use a spreadsheet or work with paid content calendar tools online. All you need to do is have a clear idea of what you're posting and when.
This gives you a clear idea of whether you're posting a variety of formats, such as videos, images and articles. It also ensures that you're prepared for major holidays. You never leave your audience hanging when you have a content calendar. It also lets you see the big picture and if you're on track with your social media goals.
2. Use interactive content
Content is at the core of a business's online success. However, it's harder than ever for good content to stand out. Users are more likely to pay attention to content when it creates interactivity.
Interactive content gets input from your audience. Users aren't passively consuming content. They become part of creating it. You've already seen interactive content like polls, quizzes, contests and tests.
Adding interactive content as part of your social media content strategy is a powerful way to get more engagement. It creates personalized content for users, and tells you more about user behavior and preferences.
You can use online tools to create interactive content. Interactive content includes interactive infographics, maps, graphs and charts, and educational video content. Interactive content is a growing trend in content marketing. Some 93% of marketers find interactive content effective; however, 88% of marketers do not make any of their content interactive. Incorporating it into your marketing strategy will create more engagements for your business.
3. Create consistent aesthetics for your visual media
You can make your brand more recognizable and appealing by using a consistent theme across all your visual posts. Today, merely grabbing an image that suits your content and posting it will not have a strong effect. Using poor quality images can harm your brand.
You not only need to use good quality images, but you also need to make it consistent in aesthetics. You are more likely to be rewarded with followers and engagement by creating a brand aesthetic.
You can do this by making all your posts, especially images, conform to a common theme and style. This is quite crucial if your main social media platform is image-based, like Instagram. You can set a color palette for all your images. Make sure that you use the same filter or a common theme across all of them.
This doesn't just make your social media pages look good. It has a powerful impact on branding. It makes your brand more memorable and can even be a way for people to identify you with just an image.
4. Leverage user-generated content
People trust user-generated content because it's created by their own peers. There's an enormous amount of user-generated content that you can use for free on social media. They are also a very effective way to get more engagement.
User-generated content gets more attention because the people making it are not backed by a business. They have nothing to gain from creating content and are simply sharing their experiences. It is very likely that there is a lot of user-generated content online related to your business and product.
User-generated content can be
- Reviews and ratings
- Emails from customers
- Photos of customers using your product
- Posts about your product made by your customers
You can feature your customer's content on your social media pages. Using them in ads is very effective as well. You will increase engagement and get subscribers on your website and social media by leveraging user-generated content.
The other advantage of using user-generated content is that it creates social proof and shows people that you're listening.
5. Cross channel marketing
Your audience is most likely spread out on different social media platforms. While you don’t need to be on every single social media platform out there, it’s good to have a presence on the most relevant ones.
Without posting content and marketing on other channels you're going to lose potential visitors and engagements. You need to have a presence on multiple channels to make money online.
By having profiles and posting content on diverse and multiple platforms you're reaching more people. Cross-channel marketing on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other places will create a huge reach.
You will very likely find it difficult to post content to different platforms. But there are social media management tools like Hootsuite to help you out. Hootsuite and other platforms have free versions that do a great job, and you can always upgrade for more features.
6. Create contests and giveaways
Another way to stand out is to have giveaway contests for your audience. Contests create excitement and anticipation. Users get the chance to win something by participating and risk nothing.
Promoting a giveaway contest on social media is very powerful. This is because you benefit from the viral nature of the platform. When users engage with your contest posts their friends and acquaintances get notified as well.
This leads to more shares, more follows and more brand awareness. When you create an online contest you're getting more attention, and your brand becomes memorable. You'll also drive traffic to your membership site and other platforms to get conversions.
7. Consider chatbot marketing
With impressive developments in artificial intelligence, the use of chatbots is becoming more commonplace on social media. For businesses looking for alternatives to outsourcing customer service, chatbots are effective tools. They help users communicate instantly with businesses. This leads to faster and more convenient problem resolution.
Facebook's Messenger service for businesses is a good example of the use of chatbots on social media. Twitter also allows businesses to send automated messages to users with chatbots.
You can train chatbots to answer your customer’s most common questions and even use them to schedule appointments.
This helps your business save on resources. Not to mention your audience will get a response instantly. With chatbots on your social media platforms, you’ll never miss a customer’s message and you’ll be able to help them right away.
This creates an instant line of communication between your customers and business, making them feel like you're listening. Staying ahead by using chatbots while it's still growing is a certain way to stand out on social media.
Build an audience by standing out on social media
Social media platforms are used by billions of people every day. It has the potential to help your business grow if leveraged properly.
Content will always play a key role in social media success. However, it’s necessary to leverage it by making it interactive and aesthetically pleasing.
With consistent effort and communication, your social media pages will add to your business's success. By using the seven strategies mentioned above, you can drive conversions and traffic on social media and your website.