How to Boost Your Social Media Marketing Content for 2020

Created March 25th, 2020

Social media has changed the landscape of digital marketing in recent years. It has revolutionized the way businesses promote and grow their brands, products and services and even in the aspect of customer engagement.

As more and more entrepreneurs took notice of how social media is slowly changing the marketing scene, social media has seen an influx of brands wanting to be heard and seen on these platforms. Because of this, competition has become stiff and gets harder and harder to make your voice be heard if what you will just do merely post and do nothing.
Despite this scenario, social media has still proven to be the most powerful tool to build your brand as what these numbers show:

• There are about 3.5 billion social media users worldwide, about 45% of the world’s population.
• 54% of people using social media, use it to search for products
• The average spend time of each person on social networks and messaging is 2 hours and 22 minutes
• 71% of consumers said that would likely recommend a product if they had a good and positive social media experience with a brand
• Half of Generation Z’s percentage (50%) and 45% of Millennials view social media as the most relevant advertising channel
• The most popular social media platform remains to be Facebook

Source: Smart Insights

So, if you want to take advantage of the potential reach and growth social media has to offer, here are some of the ways to boost your social media marketing content this year.

Personalized experience

One of the trends of consumers these days is to bank on personalization. Personalized marketing is a strategy where you collect and process information from your audiences’ interest, demographics, and behaviors so you can create a more relevant content that provides more value to your target audience.

As the internet continues to evolve, dubious acts have also increased. This made people more careful about sharing their personal information online. However, people have also been gracious to give out details if they see value in it.

Focusing on personalized experiences for your audience can help boost your content as it creates brand awareness. Your target audience can develop a connection with you and your brand. They feel recognized, heard and cared for by a brand who serve them with a personalized message. As they develop trust and loyalty to you, they will eventually start to follow you, share your post and recommend you to their family and friends.

Listen to your audience. Pay attention and respond to their comments and queries. Find and respond also to untagged mentions. As more people get to know your brands, your opportunity to generate more leads and conversions also increases.

Build community through groups

Social media has been a public avenue for decades but one of the latest trends occurring in social media has given way to one thing that seems impossible in “public” channels – becoming private.

This trend was also coupled with the shift in consumers’ behaviors as they want more authentic and meaningful connections. If you just plan on leveraging your brand in social media just through promotion, you will surely fall behind.

Building a community and creating a genuine connection with your audience will be one of the trends that will surely boost your social media content. This will encourage consumers to start engaging with you and create a two-way communication. This trend will also help you increase traffic to your website as you promote your brand in a non-salesy way.

An effective way of doing this is by creating a group on Facebook. Your little community in a Facebook Group will unite your potential clients, existing customers and your fanbase or followers. This gives you the ability to have your relationship with your audience thrive.

Work on the behind the scenes

The paradigm shift in consumer behavior towards social media has given way to new strategies in promoting your brand. As more and more audiences look for authenticity, they get more curious as well to get to know the face behind each brand.

Aside from occasionally posting on your platform, images from your company and colleagues, social media channels have added features that will allow you to let your audience have a sneak peek on what is going on behind your brand.

Doing the live video features offer significant value to your platform as it enables you to connect your target audience directly and allows you to respond to their queries in real-time. This strategy lets you become more relatable to your consumers as they can see the real person behind the brand.

With the live feature, you can do more to promote your brand. You can cover a real-life event, launch a product, create a tutorial for your brand, or just present a social media tag with your employees.

Behind-the-scenes photos are just once an example of a well-received image for your audience. There are many top-performing images for social media including user-generated content, images with product tags, and moving images.

Run a social media contest

It can only be just a simple giveaway from your brand, a simple coupon or a massive full-blown campaign, running a contest on social media is an effective way to promote your brand.

In running your contest, choose the best social media platform that will work for you and where it will be easier for you to accept entries. It can be more than one channel as long as you can manage it well. Promote heavily on your target audience and make it exciting. Make sure that your contest rules are clear and can be easily understood.

There are a lot of reasons why this tactic has been very effective to boost your social media content. You can grow your following by incorporating in your rules that they have to follow you, like your page or share your content to be able to join the contest. In this way, your brand grows also its awareness. As people begin talking about you and your contest start to make a buzz, you start also to reach an entirely new audience and therefore boost your online presence as it starts an engagement with your followers.

Another way to get the most out of your social media contest is to ask request participants is to sign up and provide their names and email address. Just make sure to state it clearly in your mechanics that they are signing up for an email list.

Work with influencers

Influencer marketing has been around the corner for quite some time already but it is still an essential part this 2020 for any social media marketing strategy. However, there had been some notable changes as brands started to deviate from the biggest names to a much more small groups called micro or nano influencers. Though their followings are small and comprised only of about 1000 – 10,000 in numbers, they are perceived to be more genuine and more trustworthy.

As the trends in social media tend to gear towards personalization, working with this type of influencers make it easier to tap your target audience. They tend to share a deeper and stronger relationship with their followers that they definitely share with your brand.

Aside from the wider engagement, these micro and nano influencers can offer, working with is much more budget-friendly than those with the bigger followings.

When searching for the right influencers, remember to use an engagement rate checker on Instagram to ensure that your marketing efforts will pay off. Partner with genuine influencers with minimum or zero fake followers for the best results. ” To be added after the sentence “Aside from the wider engagement, these micro and nano influencers can offer, working with is much more budget-friendly than those with the bigger followings.

Keep an eye on new platforms

There are always new trends in social media marketing and there are also new platforms that pop up every now and then. While some may only last a few years or even months, some have proven to be “the next big thing” and provided a new opportunity to reach an audience.

One of the newcomers that have already started making a name is TikTok. Not relatively new as it was initially launched in September 2016 in China as Douyin, TikTok has become a worldwide hit in the year 2018 and continues until this time.

Many marketers are still having doubts on this app however as it has become global, it would be worth trying as part of your approach to boost your social media content. TikTok has been the number 1 downloaded app on the App Store and has downloaded around 1.5 billion times both in the App Store and Google Play. If this does not convince you yet, some of the biggest names in different industries can already be found in TikTok like Washington Post, Chipotle, Teen Vogue, NFL, Calvin Klein, Fenty Beauty, and Sephora.

Start shoppable posts

As 58% of people using social media rely on this platform for product searches, a  shoppable post reaches people who are ready to make a purchase.

Instagram and Facebook provided this avenue where you can offer seamless shopping to your audience. When they search for your product, they do not need to jump to different sites to make the purchase.

This feature also allows you to gather further insight into the reception of your audience in your product. You can check for click-through rates as customers click your shoppable post and make a purchase. You can also check for your posts effectivity and which of them are efficient in attracting customers.

Final Thoughts

Social media content marketing has been shaping the world of online advertising for a long time now. As a new era started, competition has become strong and the need to have strategies to rise amid among the competitors is a must.

It is important for you to know the latest trends as the audience of today crave for more than just mere promotion of a product but the whole experience as a customer. Learn to be customer–centered rather than a brand conscious company.
Do not be afraid of something new , always learn to adapt to change and be flexible enough to tweak your strategy accordingly.

AUTHOR’S BIO

JOHN OCAMPOS

John Ocampos is an Opera Singer by profession and a member of the Philippine Tenors. Ever since Digital Marketing has always been his forte. He is the Founder of SEO-Guru and the Managing Director of Tech Hacker. John is also the Strategic SEO and Influencer Marketing Manager of Softvire Australia – the leading software eCommerce company in Australia and Softvire New Zealand.