Top 12 Social Media Tips for Marketing Experts

Keep up with all the Latest Trends

• Follow and interact with social media influencers in your industry.

• Use tools (such as Google Alerts) to monitor engagement and trends.

• Stay up-to-date on new features and tools from social networks.

• Read as many industry blogs to stay on top of the latest marketing techniques, (e.g., Moz Top 10).

• Understand the latest updates from each social network’s API blog, which will help you know what’s coming next (e.g., Instagram API, Facebook API).

• Keep up with the latest tools and trends by reading Mashable, Business Insider, Social Media Examiner, TechCrunch, and any other sites that provide useful insights for marketers (including our blog!).

Use Lists and RSS Feeds to Track Your Competitors and Clients and to Find Influencers in Your Space

• Learn how to set up lists and RSS feeds. If you are not familiar with these tools, take a few minutes to watch this video.

• Using lists and RSS feeds is an essential way to monitor your competitors’ social media marketing efforts, track your clients, and engage influencers in your space.

• Use lists and RSS feeds to find influencers in your space. The easiest way is to find people who have many followers but are also active participants in their community. Look at their tweets or posts on Facebook or LinkedIn, as well as the comments they receive from others – if people seem actively engaged with them, these users may be great targets for outreach efforts.

• Use lists and RSS feeds to track competitors’ social media marketing efforts – create a list of each of your competitors’ Twitter handles or Facebook pages and use it daily to check what they are doing online that you can learn from or improve upon. You can also use an individual competitor’s social profile pages (Facebook shows the Tweets shared by their employees) to look for more niche-relevant Twitter handles that you can add to your list.

Join Relevant Conversations

• Join relevant conversations. As an industry expert, you have a wealth of knowledge to share with the world. To maximize your exposure, look for groups or forums where people are discussing your topic, and join in. By doing this regularly, you’ll not only be able to help others who are learning about whatever it is you do best—but you’ll also be able to build up your reputation as a thought leader in your field.

• Be careful not to spam people. While getting your name out there is important, don’t just promote yourself and your ideas. When joining conversations on social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter, engage with others by asking questions and sharing knowledge—not just self-promoting posts from your blog. If all you’re doing is plugging yourself into online communities without bothering to interact with other members, people will start ignoring the content you post (or worse yet, block you).

Engage in Influencer Marketing

You should engage in influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing is the practice of hiring someone with a large social media following who can influence their audience and promote your brand.

Influencer marketing is an effective way to:

• boost brand awareness.

• increase sales, and generate more traffic to your website.

In choosing the right influencer for your brand, make sure that the target audience he or she reaches matches your target market, as well as knowing that his or her style of content matches what you’re looking for.

Use Linkedin to Identify Potential Customers and Connect with Industry Experts

LinkedIn is absolutely essential to any professional or aspiring marketer. The time spent on this site can be hugely beneficial to your career, and it’s easy to see why. LinkedIn users are connected with companies, influencers, and individuals in their industry—making it a great place to network both offline and online. Whether you’re just starting your career or looking for a new job opportunity, LinkedIn can be the perfect tool for you to use for finding interviews and even getting hired by a company.

But what about finding people who work at these companies? I bet you’ve been wondering how you can find the contact information of someone who works at a potential employer. It’s good to start with the most obvious way: by inputting their name into the search bar. However, there are some special features of this site that will help you search more efficiently through all of its users’ profiles:

• use Boolean operators to narrow down results (AND OR NOT).

• use advanced search filters (monthly view/top views).

Repurpose Content

The following examples demonstrate how you can use a single blog post to create multiple pieces of content.

• Blog posts are often written in an informative style, but the information within them can be placed into other formats that appeal to different types of readers. If your audience is more visual, try turning a blog post into an infographic or video. If they prefer audio, you could turn it into a podcast or webinar. And if they’re more interested in learning through reading, consider turning it into an ebook.

• When creating content for social media specifically, don’t forget that one piece of high-quality content is more valuable than many flimsy ones. Instead of just posting what’s popular on social media (think: memes and Buzzfeed quizzes), focus on creating engaging and educational content that will drive your users to take action (like making a purchase).

Use Hashtags, But Only if They’re Relevant to Your Topic

While using hashtags on social media is a great way to join existing conversations and attract new followers, it’s important to use them correctly. Using too many hashtags or irrelevant ones will make your content look spammy.

Hashtags allow marketers to jump into already-existing conversations relevant to their niche, and they make it much easier for followers who may be interested in the topic at hand to find your content. For example, perhaps you are a marketer in the field of interior design and you want other interior designers or people looking for help with their home’s decor to find some of your recent work. If you include the hashtag #interiordesign on your content, anyone searching that hashtag will be more likely to find your post than if you had not included it at all.

Focus on Quality Over Quantity

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to produce a large quantity of low-quality content. It’s important to focus on quality to establish your reputation as an expert in your field. Make every piece of the content count. Quality over quantity is especially important for social media posts, which get lost quickly in the flood of new content that is posted every day on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Social media users are more likely to share high-quality, useful, and timely content with their friends and followers than low-quality or irrelevant posts that don’t interest them. As a general rule, spend more time on fewer pieces of content—don’t post something just for the sake of posting it if it doesn’t meet a certain standard!

Develop an Employee Advocacy Program

You might have an employee advocacy program already, but if not, you should start one immediately. In case you’re wondering what an employee advocacy program is, it’s when employees of a company share branded content on their own social media channels.

Employee advocacy drives traffic to your company’s website and brings in new leads. Employee advocacy also improves brand awareness, increases the reach and engagement you get on your online content, builds credibility for your brand, and boosts the SEO of your website.

Here are some words of advice for developing an employee advocacy program:

• Offer training that helps employees understand how to use social media effectively. Then provide them with branded social media content to share regularly so they don’t have to waste time creating their posts from scratch every day. You can even offer employees rewards for sharing specific pieces of content or hitting particular metrics like most shares or clicks per month. These incentives will help drive participation in the program.

• Use a tool like Google Analytics to track how much traffic comes from any given post contributed by an employee advocate (you can do this by tagging each piece of social media content with UTM parameters). This data can help you determine better how well your program is performing and which types of content get the best results overall from employee advocates (text-based posts? Images? Videos?). This information can be very helpful in fine-tuning what you do going forward with this tactic.

Choose the Right Social Platforms for Your Business Don’t Just Focus on Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram

Social media has become a staple in every marketer’s toolkit. However, the most popular social platforms may not always be the best for your business goals.

You need to stay up-to-date with what is happening in the social media world, so you can choose the right channels for your target audience. After all, businesses can’t be everywhere — you need to focus on what works best for you and your community.

• Be Transparent about both Successes and Challenges.

These Tips Will Help You Refine Your Social Media Skills

To keep up with the ever-changing world of social media and remain relevant to your customers and prospects, you need to be a dynamic marketer. Here are 12 tips, both general and specific, that will help you refine your social media skills.

• Keep a finger on the pulse of social media: Staying abreast of the latest developments in social will allow you to take advantage of new tools, strategies, and opportunities as they arise.

• Learn what others in your industry are doing on social: Observe how others in your field have used new tools or strategies to their advantage; this is often where you’ll find some great ideas for improving your brand presence.

• Keep an eye on trends outside your industry: Get inspired by social trends from other industries or even outside business altogether; staying socially savvy can open up creative opportunities for reaching audiences – and with them comes growth.