Effective social media marketing requires a strategic approach and, above all, continuous optimization. In this post, you will learn how to improve the social media performance of your marketing campaigns. We’ll show you crucial steps to take your social media presence to the next level and engage your target audience more effectively.
For which companies are Instagram, TikTok and Co. important as a marketing channel?
Contrary to common belief, an active presence on social media is not only relevant for providers with a young target group. People of all ages and income levels can be reached via social networks.
Including Facebook and Co. in the digital marketing strategy is therefore essential for companies of all sizes and in all industries. The question is not whether to use the networks, but how.
To achieve a strong social media performance in your marketing, it is crucial to choose the right platforms. Here, ONELINE, as a specialized online marketing agency, can offer you valuable support.
Make social media marketing more successful in 5 steps
Suppliers are constantly looking for ways to increase their visibility, follower count and/or interactions on social networks. When this is done as part of a carefully planned strategy, it is referred to as Social Media Optimization (SMO).
Social media strategy optimization aims to improve the performance of marketing campaigns on Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. The following five steps show how this can proceed.
1. Define goals precisely
SMO can serve different goals and thus contribute to the success of digital marketing in very different ways. The first step is to visualize the desired end state.
Possible objectives:
- more impressions
- more followers
- more interactions with the target group
- more visibility
- more leads and clicks on the website
The social media accounts should attract the attention as well as the trust of the (potential) customers and lead them to the main channel. In most cases, this is the brand’s website or online store. It is therefore possible to define a higher conversation rate or a longer dwell time on the website as the goal of the SMO strategy.
2. Analyze the actual state
For the later success analysis of the optimization measures, it is important to have a comparative value. In which networks is an account already set up? How many people follow the account? What is the relationship between the number of interactions and the number of followers? An initial inventory provides valuable insights.
3. Create posts that are relevant to the target group and interact with followers.
The heart of good SMO is planning, designing and publishing engaging posts. They should be to the point and relevant to both the target audience and the brand itself.
A good idea is to experiment with the different formats of each platform. A/B tests show which post formats and which topics generate the greatest response.
Social media offers a valuable opportunity to engage in dialogue with target customers. These interactions are critical to effective SMO because they express brand engagement and trustworthiness.
4. Choose the right time and hashtags
Marketing via Instagram, TikTok or Facebook is characterized by low wastage and a high reach. Nevertheless, it does not work completely on its own. In particular, the time of publication and the hashtags used must be taken into account. They can influence the success or failure of individual posts or entire campaigns.
For companies, two questions are important:
- When are the target customers predominantly active on the platform?
- Which hashtags do they use to find accounts with content of interest to them?
As an online marketing agency, ONELINE has access to powerful tools that can evaluate this user data. The information should be taken into account when timing the posts or creating the captions.
5. Continuously evaluate success
Social media optimization is a purely digital process, which makes it easier to monitor success. The evaluation includes the comparison of the actual value with the target value and the original baseline value. This shows the extent to which the measures are contributing to the achievement of individual goals.
In order to take temporary fluctuations into account and to obtain a meaningful result, the data should be viewed over time. In this way, optimization potentials become more apparent.
Numerous tools are available for analyzing success, some of which are specifically geared to social networks. Here, too, the input of a professional advertising agency can be helpful.
The most common mistakes in social media marketing from the perspective of an advertising agency
In practice, avoidable mistakes are often the reason for failed social media optimization, as the following list shows.
- Posting at the wrong time: If the target audience is not active at the time the posts are published, the marketing effect of the posts fizzles out.
- Using too many channels: Regular interactions with followers can hardly be guaranteed when using all available social networks.
- Frantically trying to create viral content: Users decide which posts go viral. They quickly notice if the content is not authentic.
- Doing everything on your own: Successful social media marketing requires expertise. Not every marketing department has the appropriate resources.
- Neglect the website: Social media is a magnet that directs target customers to the main channel – the website. If this does not maintain interest, even the best SMO strategy will not show success.
Keeping knowledge up-to-date at all times is essential in social media marketing. Outsourcing can be a viable option for companies that cannot do this internally. The creation, implementation and control of campaigns by an advertising agency or online marketing agency ensures the highest possible efficiency.
Effective social media marketing requires a strategic approach
Effective social media marketing requires a strategic approach. Content relevant to the target group must be presented on the right platform at the appropriate time, and this is precisely what social media optimization aims to achieve. More efficient lead generation and higher sales are just two of the positive effects that come with good social media performance. When implemented correctly, the measures increase the success of the overall digital marketing strategy.
Those who want to exploit the marketing potential of TikTok, Instagram and other platforms should seek professional support. As a modern online marketing agency, ONELINE optimizes the performance of advertising campaigns on social media for interested partners.
