Social media has slowly taken over our world and how companies are driving their marketing strategies. If your brand is new to social media, or if you are looking to grow your customer base and sales, it can be done easier than you think. You just have to know where to start.

Address Your Biggest Challenge and Set a Goal to Accomplish It

When it comes to social media and your goals, they need to be realistic. You need to know accomplishing a goal will not happen overnight. For example, gaining a million followers in a month is not an attainable goal. Choosing goals that are specific can give your brand the best result.

• Increase Brand Awareness by thinking outside of the box. Everything your brand posts shouldn’t be promotional. Give your page personality and build a relationship with your followers.

• Drive sales in a different way. Social media marketing today is all about targeting using keywords, but that can be time-consuming and frustrating. Keep it traditional and use pictures to show off your products. Let customers know about promotions and sales.

• Have a positive ROI with an interactive set of followers. The money you put into your social media marketing should be paying off. By creating a loyal fanbase, through positive interaction, you can get them to interact on your page and generate user-generated content.

Do Some Research

Take a look at your competitor's social media pages. Is there something positive they are doing that you aren’t? If you are having trouble generating engagement, you may be targeting the wrong audience. With the growth of social media platforms today, there are plenty of resources to research your audience. Easily find social media demographics of each year just by looking through your search engine. For 2018, it has been found that Facebook and Youtube are the best platforms for advertisements since their users are higher-earning. Whereas a majority of Instagram users are under 30, so eye-catching posts with personality will have a better success rate. Besides the social media channels, you should be researching your customer demographics. Using a social media dashboard, you are able to see who is following you and how they are interacting on your page. This can give you insight on how to target your audience better.

Invest In The Right Data

When it comes to platforms like Instagram and Facebook, likes, comments and shares are great, but they will not always lead to an engaged following. Your social media strategy needs to be data-driven. You want a long lasting relationship with your followers, and you can get there if you watch out for the right metrics.

• Reach tells you the number of unique users who saw your post. You don’t want to spend time and money creating an ad that never gets seen.

• Clicks relate to how a user interacts on your posts. Do they click on your logo to learn more, or are they scrolling right past? Tracking clicks can tell you what peaks your follower's interests.

• Engagement shows you who interacted and was it a good ratio to your reach. You can have a large reach which is great, that means people are looking at your content. The question is, did what they read peak their interest enough to look into your company and learn more?

Social media marketing is the perfect blend of data-driven strategy and creativity. You want to post content that stands out and is different than your competitors. With the right strategy, you can achieve your brand’s goals, and get a great ROI. For all of your social media needs look to Red Shark Digital.