One of the most difficult aspects of managing the social media campaign for your company is the creation of fresh social media marketing ideas. Your audience looks to your brand to provide fresh content on a regular basis, but after a while, it can become very difficult to come up with new tactics to improve your social reach. The strategies and techniques available to you are almost as varied and diverse as the individual people you are advertising to.
When getting started with marking on different social media sites, it is important to understand all the fine nuances of marketing to make your social media marketing and advertising campaigns a success.
The Power of Social Media Marketing for Business
The power of social media marketing for business is undeniable. With billions of active users on various social platforms, social media has become a game-changer in the world of marketing.
Social media marketing offers businesses the opportunity to reach a diverse target audience, build brand awareness, and engage with their customers in real-time.
Through targeted social media advertising, valuable data insights, and engaging content, social media allows businesses to connect with their audience on a more personal level. This fosters customer loyalty and drives meaningful results for businesses.
Whether it’s a small startup business or a large enterprise, leveraging a data-driven social media marketing strategy can significantly enhance a brand’s online presence and help the business stay competitive in the digital age.
Social Media Marketing Ideas for Business Growth
First, we’ll start with the basics. Here are a few of the best social media marketing ideas for business or sales growth.
First Steps in Social Media Marketing Strategy
If you have attended any social media marketing courses, you know the first steps in your social media marketing plan are crucial for setting the foundation of a successful marketing campaign.
First, businesses need to define their business goals and objectives for using social media, whether it’s to increase brand awareness, drive more website traffic, generate leads, or boost sales.
Next, identifying the target audience and conducting thorough research into their preferences and behaviors is essential to curate content that resonates with them. Once the goals and target audience are clear, businesses should then choose the most relevant social media platforms for their audience, as different platforms cater to different demographics and content formats.
While Google Business isn’t the largest social media platform out there, at Digital Logic, we believe that Google Business profiles do provide the most value in conjunction with professional SEO services and professional social media marketing services.
Setting up optimized and visually appealing social media profiles with consistent branding and relevant content further enhances the brand’s credibility.
Finally, creating a content marketing strategy that aligns with the brand’s goals, engages the target audience, and incorporates SEO best practices is vital to launch a compelling and effective social media marketing campaign.
Fill out Social Media Profile Completely
Let’s start at the beginning. Take the obvious first step and fill out every section of your social media profiles. Whether you’re amping up your Twitter account, creating a Facebook business account, or trying to boost engagement with YouTube videos, you need to ensure that your business information is entered correctly across all social media platforms.
Ensuring that the information on each social media network is correct and up to date helps search engines, like Google, know that your business is legit.
This is something our social media marketing professionals recommend before creating content for your social media page.
Learn more about: advertise access Facebook.
Before You Fill Your Content Calendar, Capatilize on Twitter Users
Although most marketing operations use Twitter as a promotional tool for online marketing programs, only a few understand the importance of harnessing the power of Twitter to comment on topics before taking the time to produce more in-depth content.
Twitter can be used to test how effective a topic is likely to be and gauge interest in various subject areas. You can use Twitter Analytics to track the performance of your tweets and determine your engagement rate. This free experiment can give you the information needed to determine whether you should pursue a topic or drop it, and it is one of the lesser-known social media campaign ideas.
Engaging Social Media Content Ideas: How to Provide Quality Content for your Target Market on Social Channels
Engaging social media content ideas are truly the lifeblood of a successful digital marketing and social media marketing strategy. To provide quality content for your target market on social platforms, it’s essential to understand your audience’s preferences and interests.
Improve Social Media Calendar Using Visuals
Improving your social media calendar using visuals is a game-changing strategy. It elevates the impact of your content and engage your audience more effectively.
Visual content has a remarkable ability to convey messages both quickly and emotionally. This makes it a powerful tool for storytelling and brand communication. Additionally, if you post regularly, visual content can help break up text-heavy social media posts. This makes them more digestible and appealing to your audience.
Integrating visuals into your social media content calendar not only enhances the aesthetic appeal of your content but also makes for more engaging posts.
Use Social Media Polling and Trends to Learn About Your Target Audience
Polling is a quick way to engage your audience and learn how to best target it. Polls are easy to create on Facebook or Twitter and can pull in responses in a matter of minutes. Learning the preferences of your followers is a great tool for analyzing the effectiveness of your approach and can provide you with information on adjusting your strategies to improve your online presence.
For more creative social media marketing ideas that will allow you to increase exposure, take a look at trending topics. Media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook make it simple to see trending topics by providing a list on the sidebar.
Switch Up Your Social Media Posts to Encourage Engagement
Using the same copy for all your networks will lead to stagnation and low interest in social media followers.
Your followers may be unique to each platform. Using different copies on each network will go a long way toward keeping your audience engaged.
Utilize Behind the Scenes and How-to Videos to Increase Brand Awareness
Allowing your customers or followers to take a peek behind the curtain of production helps them bond with your brand. Sneak peeks show your audience that behind the company name, there is a group of people who work hard to provide quality services and products.
Using video is a great way to show your followers your step-by-step processes. Tutorials are eye-catching and attractive forms of connecting to your followers across media platforms.
How-to videos are also extremely shareable and will give you the opportunity to get your content in front of a fresh audience.
Engage Social Media Audience Members With Emojis
Using emojis in your posts is a good way to help engage your audience and get them to participate. The use of emojis in tweets can increase engagement by about 25 percent.
Using them on Facebook posts can increase engagement by 57 percent. Be sure that you understand the appropriate use of the emojis at your disposal. Relevancy and immediacy are key to success in this area. Don’t be afraid to get creative!
Share User-Generated Content and Video Testimonials
Taking advantage of user-generated content is an excellent way to offer a new perspective on your brand while building stronger relationships with your customers. Consumers tend to trust content from the average person more than they trust content from the brands trying to sell them products. User-generated content is an excellent way to grow your customer base by showing your followers that you are not the only one who thinks your company is awesome.
There is no better advocate for your brand than your loyal and satisfied customers. Video testimonials are one of the best ways to show potential customers how others have found success using your products or services.
Caption Contests and Fill-in-the-Blanks
Caption contests and fill-in-the-blanks are valuable components of a robust social media marketing strategy.
What exactly are caption contests and fill-in-the-blank social media ideas? These interactive and fun social media marketing engagement tactics invite followers to participate creatively with your brand.
Caption contests prompt followers to come up with clever captions for a provided image. On the other hand, fill-in-the-blanks posts provide an incomplete sentence or phrase, and then, invitie followers to complete it with their own responses on a social or professional network.
Use Chatbots to Ensure Potential and Current Customers are Happy
In Facebook’s F8 2018 keynote, it was revealed that over 8 million messages have been exchanged between Facebook users and businesses that are using Facebook messenger chatbot since its inception, but less than 1% of companies on Facebook are actually using the technology.
Creating Facebook chatbots can be a bit difficult, but there are tools like MobileMonkey to help get you started.
Social Media Marketing Tips: Trending Social Media Challenges and Hashtags
When it comes to social media marketing, staying on top of trending social media challenges and hashtags can really help your business.
Participating in viral challenges that align with your brand’s image can skyrocket your visibility and engagement, reaching a wider audience beyond your follower base. These challenges often encourage user-generated content. This allows your business to showcase authentic interactions with your brand and foster a sense of community among your followers.
Create Branded Hashtags on Social Media
When Instagram first came out, you were unable to connect to other accounts within the platform. Now, you can link accounts and hashtags to your bio. These hashtags can be branded specifically to your company or to promotions such as a contest. Followers will then be easily directed to your account.
Participate in Viral Social Media Challenges and Social Media Trends to Drive Traffic
Participating in viral social media challenges and keeping up with popular social media trends can be a powerful social media marketing strategy to drive traffic and boost engagement for your brand.
Viral challenges often capture the attention of millions of users. This can present a unique opportunity for your business to join the conversation and showcase its creativity and personality.
Throwback Thursday
Throwback Thursday is a fun tradition that takes place every Thursday on media platforms. Postings that contain this hashtag include memories and images from the past. This can be a fun and engaging way for brands to connect with their users by sharing some of their own past and how they came into existence.
The Ask Me Anything Series
The Ask Me Anything! Series, or AMA series, is a popular program on Reddit that offers businesses a unique chance to let their followers learn more about their brand and services. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are also great places to host your AMA series.
An AMA series gives you the opportunity to establish yourself as a leader in the industry while providing valuable information to potential customers.
Improve Social Media Marketing Strategy By Partnering With Social Media Industry Leaders and Brand Ambassadors
Improving your social media marketing strategy can be achieved by forming partnerships with social media leaders and brand ambassadors. Collaborating with social media influencers who have a strong following within your niche allows you to tap into their established audience and gain credibility and trust.
These strategic partnerships can help your brand reach a broader demographic and increase your brand’s awareness.
Identifying Relevant Influencers
Identifying relevant influencers is a critical aspect of successful social media marketing ideas. The right social media influencers can serve as powerful brand advocates. This helps you reach a wider audience and gain credibility within your niche without having to amp up your own posting frequency.
To find the most suitable influencers, start by conducting research and identifying those who align with your brand’s values, industry, and audience. Look for social influencers whose content resonates with your own message and has high engagement rates.
By carefully selecting relevant influencers, your social media marketing ideas can tap into their influence and leverage their reach to achieve a greater impact on your target audience.
Sponsored Content and Reviews
Sponsored content and reviews are powerful social media marketing ideas that can significantly boost brand visibility and credibility.
Sponsored reviews offer valuable insights and feedback for new ideas from social media influencers or loyal customers who have experienced your offerings firsthand. Positive reviews can instill confidence in prospective customers, while constructive feedback can help you improve your products or services.
By leveraging sponsored content and reviews, your social media strategy can benefit from authentic endorsements and influential recommendations, making them a compelling and effective tool for driving engagement and increasing conversions.
Social Media Brand Partners and Social Media Takeover
If you have the chance to hook up with another brand with a similar target audience, you can increase your exposure exponentially. Choose a company whose audience may be able to benefit from your product or services. Don’t choose a direct competitor. This could send your brand down the tubes.
You can also consider an account takeover. Allowing another person to take over your account for a short period of time allows your brand to obtain a fresh perspective while receiving exposure to a new audience. This option is a creative solution for industry experts to work together to grow their businesses.
Here is an example. A baker (Steve) may take over Cake Decorator’s Instagram page for a day to share favorite tips, tricks, and secrets. Steve can identify with the cake company’s audience, while Steve’s audience is drawn to check out Cake Decorator’s website.
Invest in Loyalty and Ambassador Programs for Social Media Users
The ambassador program is based on brand awareness and takes advantage of customers who have used your products and want to share information about your products with their friends and families. An ambassador program takes a certain amount of time and patients to create and support. If you are low on resources for some social media marketing ideas, consider a loyalty or referral program. Offer your loyal customers referral codes and reward them with discounts when their referrals make a purchase.
You can also use your employees as advocates for your brands. A loyal staff is invaluable and can promote your brand with tailored messages on their media channels to reach a wider range of potential customers. Employee advocate toots such as Bambu are great ways to give your brand exposure to new audiences by connecting your organization to your employees’ media networks.
Grow Your Social Accounts Using Giveaways and Contents
Everyone loves free stuff! Contests can be an excellent way to engage your followers while growing your audience and increasing your exposure. In fact, Instagram accounts that run contests regularly grow about 70 percent faster than accounts that don’t. Make sure that the rules are plain and simple.
The best contests/giveaways are those in which the fans are required to do minimal work to enter and resulting in high engagement. If you are just starting out with contests, this is a good first choice. The added benefit of having contests is the natural collection of user-generated content for your webpage.
Harness the Power of Social Reactions During Your Social Media Contest
Facebook’s most entertaining feature is the “reaction button.” With this button, users can respond using one of five different emoji responses. Instead of “liking” a post, users can now “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,” and “angry” a post.
Brands can use these responses to gauge interest and determine the level of passion that their followers have for a certain topic. “Like,” “love,” and “wow” reactions let you know that the viewer found the content useful, educational, inspiring, or creative. If you find yourself getting a lot of “angry” reactions, you might need to revise your strategy.
Photo or Video Contest Entries for Social Media Growth
Photo or video contest entries are a dynamic approach to fostering both social media growth and engagement.
Encouraging followers to participate by submitting their own short-form video content can generate a wave of enthusiasm and creativity around your brand. Photo contests allow users to showcase their unique perspectives, while video contests offer an opportunity for storytelling and creativity.
Improve Your Social Media Marketing Plan With Live Streaming Events
Live video is probably the most compelling form of content you will ever use and is one of the best creative social media campaign ideas.
In fact, people have been proven to spend up to three times longer watching live videos on Facebook (Facebook Live) rather than pre-recorded versions.
Use this knowledge to your advantage by going live. You can do a live product demonstration, discuss some of the inner workings of your business, answer questions, or even vlog! A real-time experience is more deeply imprinted on the minds of your followers and can help you build a more personal connection as you respond to comments and questions through live video.
Live Q&A Sessions With Experts on Social Media Channels
The ability to capture your audience in real time is one of the best free social media tools available.
Live Q&A sessions with experts on social channels offer a dynamic and engaging way to connect with your audience and establish your brand as a thought leader within your industry. By inviting credible experts to participate, you can provide valuable insights and address your followers’ questions in real time.
Create Content Using Product Launches and Demonstrations
Creating social media content using product launches and demonstrations is a powerful social media marketing strategy to generate excitement, build anticipation, and showcase the value of your business’s offerings.
Prior to a launch, teasing your audience with sneak peeks, behind-the-scenes footage, and countdowns can pique their curiosity and create a buzz around your upcoming release.
Additionally, encouraging user-generated content, such as unboxing videos and first impressions, can amplify the reach of your launch and create a sense of authenticity. By leveraging product launches and demonstrations as content opportunities, your social media marketing efforts can drive conversions, enhance brand credibility, and foster long-term customer loyalty.
Showcase Company Culture Using Virtual Behind-the-Scenes Tours
Showcasing company culture using virtual behind-the-scenes tours is a compelling social media marketing strategy. It allows businesses to connect with their audience on a more personal and authentic level via Facebook post (or social media post, in general).
A Social Media Strategy for Older Businesses: Nostalgia and Throwback Social Media Campaigns
A social media strategy for older businesses can be revitalized with nostalgia and throwback social media posts.
By sharing vintage photos, old advertisements, and memories from the past, older businesses can evoke positive emotions and build a stronger emotional connection with their long-time customers.
Nostalgia has a unique ability to resonate with both older and younger audiences, as it taps into shared cultural experiences and brings a sense of familiarity.
Add Milestones and Business Anniversaries to Your Social Media Content Calendar
Embracing the power of nostalgia, these social campaigns take audiences on a sentimental journey, reminiscing about the brand’s history, milestones, and iconic moments.
Throwback campaigns can highlight how the brand has evolved over the years, showcasing its longevity, consistency, and adaptability.
This approach not only celebrates your brand’s legacy but it also demonstrates its relevance in the modern market. By infusing social media marketing with nostalgia and throwback campaigns, older businesses can breathe new life into their digital presence, attract new customers while cherishing existing ones, and drive meaningful engagement and brand loyalty.
Collaborative Social Media Campaigns and Cross-Promotions
Collaborative social media campaigns and cross-promotions present a winning formula for businesses looking to expand their reach and tap into new audiences. By partnering with complementary brands or influencers, businesses can create a mutually beneficial alliance that allows them to leverage each other’s strengths and assets.
Take Advantage of Repurposed and Third-Party Content on Social Media Platforms
There are ways you can repurpose your social media content to get the most value and save time. Reposting previous content is one way to repurpose something that may be a little stale. You can also transform your content by changing it into a different format to engage a different audience.
While you don’t want to share content from your direct competitors, there is no rule against sharing content from other sources, especially when it comes to video content. Appropriate and timely articles and content from other sources allow you to provide more value to your followers while demonstrating your credibility and your knowledge of the latest news and trends.
Excellent content does not only promote your products, brands, or services. It should also provide genuine tips and guidance to consumers to help them understand and overcome their challenges. Sharing tips and advice is an excellent method of demonstrating your knowledge and building relationships with your customers.
Social Media Cross Promotion Techniques: Promoting Through Email Signatures and Newsletters
Cross-promotion takes advantage of having multiple media accounts. By reminding your followers that you have other accounts, you can create a call-to-action asking people to follow you. If you want a more subtle approach, mention that you are on other networks in your bio. For Snapchat users, a profile photo change to your Snapcode is a good idea.
For another subtle reminder to recipients who receive your newsletters, consider adding your media icons at the bottom of the page. A more direct approach involves the promotion of your accounts in your newsletter by adding a fan section where you can present a picture from your community.
Although many newsletter services permit the embedding of images, an upload with a link to the account will work just as well for the services that do not support embedding. If you often send external emails, include links in your email signature. This branding opportunity is another way to get your name out there in front of potential customers.
Generate Leads Using Social Media Advertising
Generating leads using social media advertising is a great strategy that enables businesses to connect with prospective customers and grow their customer base.
With the advanced targeting options available on social media platforms, businesses can tailor their ads to reach specific demographics, interests, behaviors, and even retarget past website visitors. This precision targeting ensures that your ads are shown to the most relevant audience, increasing the chances of attracting qualified leads.
By creating compelling and visually appealing ad content, businesses can capture the attention of users and entice them to take action, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a resource, or requesting more information.
Social media advertising also allows for real-time performance tracking, providing valuable data and insights into ad effectiveness, conversion rates, and customer behavior. Leveraging social media advertising to generate leads not only expands your customer pool but also enhances the overall effectiveness of your marketing efforts, helping you achieve your business objectives with measurable results.
Use Targeted Ads and Discounts on Social Media Platforms
Facebook is one of the best platforms for ad targeting. By setting up a Facebook pixel on your website, you can adjust the settings to automatically target those who visit your pages. The audience data collected by Facebook is a big help in determining current interests and trends.
Once your ads are set up, use a tool like Sprout Social to help you keep up with the inevitable comments and questions. The Sprout inbox allows you to monitor connections across your profiles and media accounts to ensure that you never miss a message that is relevant to your brand.
Flash deals with limited quantities on Instagram or Facebook are excellent ways to drive traffic to your site and boost sales.
Don't Lose Social Media Leads
Although the landing page has been the obsession of marketers for years, did you know that leads often fail to click through to reach the landing page at all?
Certain media advertising formats allow you to bypass the landing page entirely and provide a call to action using the “call” button for your Facebook ads. Because most Facebook users are mobile, the “call now” feature embedded in the ad eliminates the potential for lost leads caused by the extra step it takes to reach a landing page.
Invest in Remarketing and Facebook Ads
Remarketing is the process by which you follow your leads around with offers related to their search history. To remarket to your visitors, a code is inserted on the visited page.
As an example, Google Ads allows advertisers to remarket across their platforms by creating remarketing lists designed to target either all visitors to your website or those who visit a certain page or complete a certain action.
Facebook remarketing is similar in certain ways, but instead of displaying your advertisements across websites, the ads are shown on Facebook. Remarketing on Facebook is usually referred to as “Custom Audiences.”
Learn more about Digital Logic’s remarketing services.
Custom Audiences for Social Media Ads
Custom Audiences work in the same way as Google Ads: Someone interacts with your website or brand and is tagged with a code that permits you to track them. While they are looking through their Facebook feed, your ads pop up and bring your brand to mind again.
Learn how to advertise on LinkedIn.
Personalized Sponsored Facebook Messages
Facebook ads have the ability to mimic email marketing by targeting your audience members with personalized messages. You can pull a list of contacts from your customer database and upload it directly to your Facebook account. You can then target your audience with ads relevant to their position on your sales funnel.
Work With a Social Media Marketing Company
Social media marketing is an effective tool that both companies and brands or small businesses can use to increase traffic to their sites and boost sales and conversions. If you think your advertising could improve, consider implementing these 20 creative social media marketing ideas for new twists and fresh perspectives on this multi-faceted topic.
Digital Logic is a Shreveport-based company that works with local, as well as, national vendors.
