Social media has become an essential component in most business online strategies. However, many business owners are still coming to terms with this new marketing environment. Many business owners don’t know which way to turn, who to trust or where they should be spending most of their time, effort and money. As social media becomes a more popular form of advertising, businesses have to adapt so that they’re not left behind by their competition. These are some tips you should seriously consider implementing in your business in the next twelve months.

Understand Your Audience

Social media is all about building positive relationships with other people online. Many business owners and marketers don’t treat their audience members like real people. This can have serious consequences for you, your business and its reputation.

Social media users have needs, concerns and feelings. This means you have to have a full understanding of these factors so that you can provide the content they require and offer the products and services they need. Effective ways to find out this information is to carry out surveys, casually ask questions and look for opinions from your followers and friends on your social media pages.

Engage with Your Audience and Provide Value

Once you have completed this groundwork, you have to build on it. Keep in contact with your audience. You can achieve this in the following ways:

• Publish valuable, useful content on a regular basis.
• Answer peoples queries and concerns.
• Ask your audience genuine questions.
• Recommend other products, services and content that may help your audience members.

These are simple actions most business owners and employees of a business would do in the offline world, so you should try to replicate this online through your social media accounts. Content marketing monetization specialists like John Lemp have realized the importance of doing this and built successful businesses around these principles.

Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin

When it comes to social media marketing, many business owners try to become a ‘Jack of all trades’ but eventually become a master of none. They try to market on a wide range of social media platforms at the same time. This is almost impossible to do effectively unless you have a huge marketing team or spend a long time learning how each platform works.

To address this issue, focus on one social media platform first. You may need to get advice from a marketing expert or ask an owner of a similar business what works for them. In many situations, you won’t really know what is the best social media option for your business until you start engaging with your audience and test different strategies. Once you have mastered marketing on one social media platform, you may not need to use others. If you do decide to use other methods, you can transfer many of the skills and experiences learned to the next social media platform you decide to use.

Embrace Mobile Technology

The mobile technology industry will continue to evolve and grow in the next twelve months. Every business should be aware of this. Many businesses are developing apps that can be integrated with their social media marketing efforts. These apps may be suitable for your business and your social media audience. Find out if similar businesses are using mobile technology in this way. You can do this by asking other business owners, visiting their websites or searching for industry specific apps in the search engines or app stores.

Learn More About Paid Advertising

The thought of having to pay for likes, clicks and other actions on social media websites is unthinkable for many business owners and online product and service providers. However, paid advertising can be the most targeted type of advertising of them all.

This type of social media marketing lets you advertise to specific groups of people who are more likely to be interested in what you and your business have to offer. For example, on Facebook you can display ads to specific individuals based on their location, gender, interests and much more. This is a much more powerful approach than less targeted advertising. However, before using paid ads, make sure you have a realistic budget you can afford, that will produce a positive return on your investment.

Social media will continue to evolve and develop in the next year. This means businesses have to adapt to this new way of reaching customers. Taking the points above into account will help improve your social media marketing efforts in the next twelve months.

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