Social media is a powerful marketing force in today’s world. With over 70% of the entire U.S. population using at least one platform, it’s a great way to promote your products and services to a wide variety of potential customers.
Of course, every other business is doing the exact same thing. If you want to attract new customers, you’ll have to come up with a way to stand out among the millions of other posts uploaded daily. Here are five social media strategies to add to your marketing plan to help your business stand out online.
Use templates for exciting social media graphics
Almost every social media post comes with some sort of graphic. It’s the most prominent thing your followers will see when you make a post. Because there are so many professional content creators on the internet, there’s a lot of competition. If you want your posts to make an impact, they need to be well made and eye-catching for your followers.
Most business owners don’t have time to design exciting graphics from scratch. One of the best ways to create professional-level content without needing professional graphic design skills is by using templates.
There are thousands of templates for social media graphics available for free online. Simply browse through the options, choose one that best fits your brand, customize the information, and you’re ready to post to your various social media channels.
You can find templates for just about any social media platform to simplify content creation. With unique and well-made graphics, you’ll be able to build your following and promote your business online like never before.
Host a contest or giveaway
One of the most frustrating parts of social media for marketers is the fact that only your followers see your posts. If someone doesn’t follow you on social media, your business might as well not exist to them! So, what’s a creative way to reach new users? Host a contest or giveaway.
Social media contests and giveaways are a great way to encourage engagement and grow your following online. All it takes is a desirable prize and some entertaining rules for entry.
For example, imagine your business selling boating supplies. You could host a contest asking your followers to post a funny picture of their first day on the water to celebrate the beginning of boating season. The best picture and caption as decided by you or your team will win a set of water skis.
Tell contestants they must share the original contest post, tag your company in their post, and use a unique hashtag (platform-depending) like #letsstartboating.
This contest will do several things to promote your business on social media. First, when your followers share the contest post per the entry rules, all their followers will also see the contest, hopefully encouraging them to enter, too. Second, all those tags back to your company page will increase engagement and help the social media algorithms boost your content to more pages. Third, it’ll give you an entire library of fun images you can use in later campaigns as user-generated content. And finally, it’ll give your followers something fun to do and help them better engage with your brand.
Promote user-generated content
Which do you find the most authentic: promotional content created by a brand or a post about a product posted by the user? If you’re like 60% of consumers, you likely said that promotional content posted by the user is more authentic. And it makes sense!
Of course the brand would want to promote its own products. They wouldn’t say anything bad about them because they want to sell more. A user, on the other hand, has no monetary incentive to promote a product. They just think it’s great and want to share it with their online friends.
Knowing that posts by users look more authentic to potential customers, start sharing user-generated content (UGC) as a social media marketing strategy.
Whenever someone tags your brand in a post, share it to your page! Not only do you get the authenticity benefits of UGC, but it’s also great content that you don’t have to think about or create. That’s a win, win in any marketer’s book!
Allow a social media takeover
Over time, your social media presence might start to feel stale. If you post similar content in your same brand voice all the time, your followers might start to get bored or ignore your content. A great way to refresh your feed is to allow a social media takeover.
With a takeover, find another social media user with interests related to your brand and let them run your social media channel for a while. These users can be one of your followers, a professional content creator, another brand or vendor, or even one of your employees. Just make sure they have a good personality and understand the ins and outs of the channel they’re taking over.
Before handing over the reins, make sure you set plenty of ground rules. After all, social media can be as harmful to your brand as it is helpful. Be sure to create a detailed plan with whomever is taking over your account beforehand. Specifically explain what they can and cannot do and try to align the takeover content with your existing marketing strategies.
With a little infusion of someone else’s personality, you can refresh your social media presence, gain new followers, and promote your brand to a whole new audience on social media.
Go behind the scenes
Businesses are impersonal, and it’s not always easy for customers to engage with a brand. To humanize your brand, add some behind-the-scenes content to your social media marketing strategy.
By posting photos and videos of your employees and processes in action, you can add more personality to your brand and help your followers engage. Plus, it’s always fun to see how things work, and your followers might genuinely be interested in the content.
Stories on Facebook and Instagram are a great place to post short behind-the-scenes content. Your followers can easily find the videos and images, and everything disappears after 24-hours so it doesn’t impact your regular marketing content.
Build your brand with creative social media marketing strategies
Social media is a powerful marketing force in 2023. But with so much content uploaded daily, it’s not always easy to stand out from the masses. If you’re looking for some creative and effective ways to promote your brand on social media, think about using exciting social media graphics templates, host contests and giveaways, promote UGC, allow a social media takeover, and post plenty of behind-the-scenes content.
With all this unique content on your various social media platforms, you’ll have more followers than you know what to do with, making future online promotions much more effective.