7 Do's and Don'ts of Social Media Marketing in 2022

With more than 4.62 billion social media users in the world by January 2022, an overwhelming 58.4% of the total population is on social media today. That is precisely the reason why you can't ignore social media when it comes to online marketing. The growing importance of social media also calls for adequate knowledge of social media marketing.

How to Grow Your Social Media Presence?

According to the latest stats, over 9 in 10 internet users use social media. However, even then most marketers cannot tap the vast potential of social media. Unable to understand the way social media works, some businesses end up doing it the wrong way.

They get too pushy, market-y, or overly friendly and, as a result, dim their prospects significantly. To grow your social media presence and achieve your business goals, you should learn the art of engaging your audience. It would also help if you do it without annoying them or losing their attention.

This article discusses the ways you can leverage social media for your business, the right way!

1. Provide Real Value

Social media is indeed a miracle of our times. Since it's so widespread globally, it provides numerous opportunities to a marketer for promotion and targeting.

Apart from using it to educate your audience and connect with them, you can also use it for advertising, tracking trends, and monitoring social conversations.

Social media is crowded with businesses, individuals, and influencers. That's why it also comes with a host of menaces, such as fake news, bought engagement, and sponsored content.

Owing to all this noise, people often don't trust an unknown person or brand on social media and look for content sources that seem authentic. So, how can businesses win the loyalty of the masses and attract new consumers?Ā  Simple! By offering real value to them through well-researched, intelligent content, and engaging conversations.

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2. Avoid Seeming Fake and Deceptive

A popular method to gain the trust of your audience is to emphasize 'authenticity' in your social media presence. In simple words, avoid things that look fake and deceptive.

There is a visible shift towards authentic marketing these days. People prefer to buy from businesses that share their beliefs and ideologies over those that are just interested in plugging their products.

They like to interact with a person that is fun, friendly, and authentic. To succeed on social media, businesses should offer an enjoyable experience to their audience.

There's no magic pill to succeed in social media, but you can achieve your goals if you understand the way social media audiences think.

3. Bridge the Gap Between a Marketer and a Trusted Friend

No one likes to use social media to interact with businesses, so marketing is mainly considered an intrusion. Therefore, marketers are expected to befriend their audiences and post engaging and entertaining content.

However, marketers aren't really friends, so their messages can come across as formal, dry, and uninteresting. This approach obviously doesn't work and fails to attract much engagement.

Engagement begins when you start bridging the gap between a marketer and a trusted friend. Here are a few things you can try to do that:

• Be human: A business should ‘appear human’ throughout its interactions. They should reciprocate the feelings expressed by their audience, listen to them, and use humor in their conversations. But at the same time, they should also maintain their brand identity and help people resolve their issues. People love to interact with a responsible human face, even if they represent a brand. It adds credibility and gives way for improved customer experiences.
  
• Show Credibility and Avoid Vanity: Theoretically, your job is over after setting up a social media account and filling in the necessary profile info. However, to succeed on social media, you need to go beyond branding as there is no place for vanity on social media. Interact with your audience, joke with them, have conversations with them, and engage them with authentic, interesting content.

4. Leverage Influencer Marketing

People tend to trust leaders, be it in real life or social media. Who would trust a nameless and faceless social media manager's words? That's perhaps the reason why influencer marketing is so popular. Platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have numerous brands leveraging influencers to tap into newer audiences. You can easily find influencers endorsing everything from big-name brands to small-time, local brands.

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So, if you want to promote your business faster and need quick results, leverage influencer marketing. It becomes even more crucial when your brand is relatively unknown.

Here are some ways you can leverage influencer marketing for your social media campaigns:

1. Tie up with a local influencer having a good outreach to promote your products/services in a way that seems authentic to their audience.
2. Involve micro-influencers as they usually have a higher engagement rate.
3. Use their insights to broaden your marketing initiatives and make them even more effective.
4. Establish long-term relationships with these influencers and tap into their ever-expanding audience pool.

According to a 2018 Brandfog study, consumers are 93% more likely to purchase from a brand once they interact with a top-ranking official or CEO of that company on social media. So, when you post a message or video from the CEO, don't forget to share their title and credentials.

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5. Don't Push Too Hard

As in life, it's important to not push too hard on social media, lest you end up annoying and driving away your audience. Offer friendly advice, tips, and information that can add value to their lives, aside from marketing and promoting your brand.

Building a social media presence isn't easy. Most marketers try to sell too hard on social media, and soon lose their credibility as a result. Had the marketing been more natural, they wouldn't have lost their reputation. It may sound tempting to try copy-paste tactics like using too many hashtags, promoting mindlessly, or posting too frequently, but it can be a recipe for disaster. Being too sales-y, aka annoying on social media, certainly backfires.

In short, avoid shortcuts and instead think of ideas that can provide lasting value to your customers.

6. Create Quality Content & Stunning Graphics

Creating quality content has tremendous benefits; it multiplies your social media traffic manifold and generates more engagement. Great content also gets shared by users, leading to more and more people finding out about your brand!

People don't share content that doesn't excite them or add value. So, if you are seriously thinking about creating ripples on social media and going viral, work hard and employ your resources to develop and promote great content.

Similarly, stunning images and graphics can up the ante for your social media marketing. Images are the soul of social media and are perfect for grabbing attention and increasing engagement. Use high-quality images with vibrant colors and pictures instead of text to convey your message. People love to share images more than text. So, images can help you succeed on social media and achieve better results.

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7. Don't Get Distracted By Vanity Metrics

It would help if you also stayed away from vanity metrics such as likes, shares, views, etc. These metrics can be highly misleading, as you will get nowhere if there are hundreds of shares yet no conversions or sales. So, you should focus more on real-value metrics such as the number of new followers and clicks, etc. to measure the success of your social media campaigns.

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You can also get a bit creative and coordinate an offline adventure or experience for your campaign. Surprise your fans with custom-made images, gifts, and rewards. You should also use some popular niche-based social platforms apart from mainstream ones such as Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Conclusion

To sum up, social media has fantastic potential for marketing and promotion. But that can only come true if marketers understand their audiences and focus on engagement and adding value.

Effective use of social media can create tons of opportunities for your business. However, it requires thought and planning. If you do it right, you can achieve outstanding results. Since around two-thirds of the human population is there, you can't take their attention for granted. So what are you waiting for? Get creative and think outside the box today to stay ahead of the pack and shine bright in the constellation of social media!