15 Social Media Marketing Techniques for 2024

Did you know that the number of social media users worldwide is close to 3.2 billion, up 13% year-on-year? Yes, this is the statistics about the popularity of the social media world as per the Global Digital Report. These numbers signify the continuous vast impact of social media on both businesses and consumer benefits. In simple words, your target audience might exist in the social media world. Scroll down and learn about the effective growth hacking and social media marketing techniques to engage with your audience fruitfully.

Let’s get it straight. We eat, sleep and get up with social media activities. In the last decade, social media has become an indispensable part of our personal as well as professional lives. And, it would be an understatement to say, that, ‘social media have impacted businesses as well’. In the current digital world, social media, as a separate marketing channel, are a significant part of the marketing strategy for any business organization. Having said that, businesses must think beyond the sales pitch and use the social media channel to constantly engage, retain and create a loyal customer base. If you are a beginner in social media marketing, and want to gain expertise, check out our digital marketing certifications from top universities. 

There are multiple social media channels used by businesses such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Now marketers are ought to look at social media channels as end-to-end consumer reach solution, rather than a regular content publishing medium. Offering a stiff competition to the traditional marketing techniques, social media channels and the respective metrics are perpetually aiding the marketers to comprehend the audience preferences and purchasing behavior in the real-time scenario.

You might think that you know social media channels completely, as you have been using the same for personal purposes for quite a long time. The truth is, what works for a personal account, would not be applicable and effective for a business purpose. To successfully exploit the social media channels and create effective engagements and certainly augment the return on investments, businesses need to develop and deploy a well-thought social media strategy. If you want to unleash and leverage the true potential of social media marketing, we are here to share the best and competent techniques, hacks and tips for effective and optimum use of the medium for the business purpose.

#1 Video is Paramount & Everything

In the last few years, marketers have realized that video marketing works very well, it is less competitive and cost-effective. It is important for businesses to have structured video contents. Businesses ought to know the recipe for viral video production and marketing for their specific domain, to maintain high engagement and interaction. The attention span of the average social media user is steadily declining, which puts the marketers in a fix to create content that will capture even the most passive users. All this would certainly drive better and long-lasting leads and conversions for the business.

#2 Use a Television Style of Content Structure

If you are thinking about the video content strategy, consider using TV-like shows on social media channels such as Facebook or Instagram. This type of television-style of content structuring and marketing will help the business to target a wider audience based on specific interests. In 2019, content is the king and context of the content is also the king of the business. A larger penetration to the skin of the audience is always beneficial for the business to understand the changing thought and consumption patterns of the customers. Many companies have started adopting this technique of creating Television type video series, and it works perfectly well. It keeps the user connected with the Brand/Channel and has a great recall value.

#3 Bookmarks in Twitter

Yes! Finally, Twitter has added the ‘save’ feature with bookmarks. This will help not to waste time, scrolling the thousands of ‘liked’ tweets to find the one you are searching for. One can bookmark a tweet by simply clicking the ‘share’ icon on the bottom right of a tweet and click ‘add a tweet to bookmarks’ and the tweet will be added to the bookmarks. The bookmarks option in the profile settings helps the user to quickly see the bookmarked tweets and helps the user, utilize the time spent on the channel efficiently.

#4 Engaging and Compelling Conversations

Just like how your time is important, so is the time of the audience. So, it is important to have an engaging and compelling conversation through thought-provoking, interesting and creative questions. Not too big, nor too small. Design posts and tweets with a persuasive text and an eye-catching image to get the best reach and productive engagement with your audience. There is engaging conversation on Video Platforms, viewers and business owners are keen to see the user comments on these platforms, reply them and analyze the potential of the product or service offered.

#5 Creating Collaborative Stories

Facebook allows the user to post content that appears for 24 hours and is applicable for groups and events as well. Users can post stories that are visible only to the groups and specific event pages. Moderated by the admins, these stories could have specific and private hashtags, ensure content is appropriate and on-brand. Collaborative stories are an excellent and fun-filled new way to engage with the audience by creating excitement and offering incentives. User-generated content from the participants can help build a sense of community and brand advocacy and give you more information on your most engaged customers.

#6 Meaningful Messaging

More than promotional content, it is important for marketers to share and spread meaningful messages to their loyal audience as opposed to unending spam and irrelevant information. Today, businesses have a greater responsibility of effectively crafting and sharing personalized and valuable messages to their audience to expand the reach of the product or service. No more superficial messages or zero value-add content shall have an impact on the consumers. Modern consumers want organizations to respect their time and add eloquent value to it.

#7 Content Connect to Current Events

Take advantage of the ongoing events of the global as well as local regions to boost engagement and social media marketing initiatives. For instance, when the GST was initiated and implemented, many startups, as well as established business firms, drafted and shared GST themed content to promote the product or service. Connecting the social media content to the current events is extremely powerful and has the potential to grow the business exponentially. Though this type of content has a short life span, it works exponentially well during that time.

#8 Hyper-Personalization is the Key

With more and more social media marketing channels evolving each day, it is becoming critical to differentiate your product and have a unique and attractive presentation of the brand. Hyper-personalization is where the big money on digital marketing is at. Most business organizations have started indulging in customization as a tactic to win and retain customers. More than ever now is the time, firms cannot ignore the personalization strategy. A hyper-personalized social media strategy with the help of the marketing insights and activity pattern through social media metrics dashboard is the key to the success of social media initiatives.

#9 Variety in Content

Whether it is food or clothing, we all love variety. And, this mindset of variety is applicable even for data consumption of the consumers. Today, social media is not about just sharing a random text or image and promoting the same. Marketers need to focus on the taste and preferences of the audience and design a variety of content accordingly. Text, image, video, GIFs, live chats, polls, blogs, pdf’s, personalized messages, exclusive notifications, and offers, etc. are a different variety of content which social media account managers must focus upon to cater and satisfy the curiosity of the audience. Use exclusive and niche content creation tools to offer the best in class content for audience consumption. Remember, social media is a platform to strengthen the brand voice and personality.

#10 Imitate Competitions Among Followers

Competitions are the way forward to engage and enhance the output marketing labors. An excellent way to grow the reach and followers on social media platforms. For instance, ask the followers to share their opinions about a product or service, just after its launch, through a compelling text or video message. Offer a gift or a giveaway for the best responder. Make the competition with a time limit, create urgency among the audience, concentrate on the engagement in that short frame of time, and encourage your followers to participate in the competition. You can also create a hashtag, which could trend for that specific time frame.

#11 Conducting Polls Regularly

Just like online reviews, many businesses understand and believe the power of polls and surveys. Most businesses and marketers feel that they know their audience preferences and needs very well. And, then when the product or service doesn’t do well in the market, it leads to the futility of all the efforts. Hence, it is important for businesses to continuously conduct polls on their social media channels on a regular basis.

Polls are an easy & smart method to gather engagement on the social media space and aid in understanding the changing needs and preferences of the audience. Increased and continuous engagement and social media presence would help to augment social media marketing efforts.

#12 Instagram Story Highlights

The best way to attract the audience to see the most important information first. For easy viewing, these Instagram story highlights appear right below the bios option. This feature helps the user or the brand to highlight the trending or best stories of the business and post them permanently on the profile. These can be saved, reposted and measured for the long-term performance. One can plan, organize and post story highlights as per the theme, campaign, date, event, etc.

Strategies To Drive Traffic from Instagram

#13 Branded Snapchat Lenses

Using Snapchat’s Lens Studio, every business or brand can create their own augmented reality lenses. The desktop app gives instructions for trainees to start with basic 2D animation, while more advanced creators can access the API and fashion complex lenses from scratch. Once lenses are created, the user will get a unique Snapcode, which can be used to share from anywhere, and anyone can unlock your lens. If you have an in-house creative team that can support to build and create lenses for campaigns, this is an exceptional prospect to attempt something a little different on Snapchat and engage users. A unique and creative way to build and promote a brand identity in the Snapchat platform.

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#14 Automated Promoted Tweets

Twitter’s Promote Mode allows the brands to run automated ad campaigns on Twitter for just $99 per month. Once the business accounts are enabled with the Promote Mode, Twitter will automatically amplify the brand’s tweets based on twitter algorithms. For the users, this will appear the same yet another promoted tweet. If you do not have a dedicated in-house social media team, this feature would be the best option to run the social media campaigns on twitter.

#15 Audience Insights

Think beyond posting and promoting. See what is working and what is not working. Whether it is Facebook Page or a Group, or a Twitter account, or any other social media platform, constantly watch the audience engagement. In the present scenario, most social media platforms offer consumer dashboards and enormous metrics to measure and monitor the audience at every stage of the business. Constant monitoring of the metrics and designing social media content strategies and other initiatives as per the changing views and approaches of the audience is essential to reap the maximum output from the social media platforms. This will help to focus and invest resources in the strategies that are working and discard the ideas that are futile.

Conclusion

Engagement in the social media space is elusive because, while there are many techniques, there is no one standard recipe for success. That said, while there aren’t any steadfast solutions, we can study patterns of success. What would work for one business, might not work for another? By constantly revamping and redesigning the social media strategy and experimenting with the new features and ideas of social media marketing, there is always a chance of increasing engagement and delighting the audience. These above few social media hacks and tips could help to get rid of the tech and tactic fatigue.

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