11 Tactics Your Social Media Strategy Needs For Faster Growth

27 Jun 11 Tactics Your Social Media Strategy Needs For Faster Growth

In order to get return on your social media activities you need to build a strong social media strategy first. In this post I’ll go over some key tactics you should include within your strategy to give it legs and help you beat the social media algorithms.

1. Optimize Your Profiles

Here’s a simple tactic you can start working on right now. Sprucing up and optimizing your profiles can help bring you more reach. When people land on your profile they’ll most likely check out your info to see what you’re about – this is your chance to make a great first impression. Make it a habit to look back on your profile periodically and switch things up a bit. Keep your profile image high quality and your header images as well. You can have fun with header images and videos and use them to promote your latest product or service or simply to show personality. Use your info sections to show who you are and what your audience can expect from you. Don’t forget to update those links as well.

2. Survey Your Audience

Knowing your audience is key to creating a social media strategy that converts and builds an engaged follower base. The best way to figure out what kind of content to create and integrate into your strategy is to ask your audience. Survey them in social media posts, newsletters or emails to see what their pain points are, what kind of content they like to consume, what they’ve appreciated from you in the past and what they’d like to see going froward.

Surveys are also a great way to get to know your target audience more. You can ask them about their lifestyle, what publications they read, and what they do for fun so you have clearer buyer personas to help you create content, offers and products they’ll be into. Pro tip: put a budget behind your survey and target who you’re looking for.

3. Create A Social Media Calendar

I cannot stress enough how important it is to create a social media calendar and posting schedule for your social media strategy. A pre-determined schedule will help you keep that big picture in mind, see where there may be gaps in content, and it will free up so much time! With this new free time you can get to one of the most important elements of your social media strategy which is… (go on to the next point)

4. Engage With Your Audience and Potential Audience

Engaging is the name of the game in 2018 if you want to get the most of your social media marketing. I love Gary V’s $1.80 Instagram Strategy. He urges us to take time to pick the top 10 hashtags for our target audience and interact with the top 9 posts within each hashtag (essentially leaving your .02 cents of thoughts on each). Will this take some time? yes. But is it worth it? ABSOLUTELY. As social media networks become more saturated and algorithms take over engagement becomes more and more essential to not only gaining visibility but building relationships with our current audiences.

5. Cross Post Content On Each Social Media Network

Here’s a tactic that will save you a little more time when it comes to the actual implementation of your strategy and content creation, which is to cross post your content on different social media platforms. For us short on time, you can schedule your posts on each channel individually (key word is individually – since each social media platform has it’s own set of “rules”). But ideally you’d take one piece of content and present it a little differently depending on which social media platform your posting to.

Read up on some cross posting best practices here: Best Practices For Cross Posting On Social Media Correctly

One more suggestion I’ll sneak in here is to cross promote your social media networks from one to another (Ex: Ask your Twitter followers to Like your Facebook Page).

6. Re-Share Evergreen Content

Okay one more time saving tactic you should integrate into your social media strategy is to re-share your evergreen content. There are so many ways to repurpose older content! Pull quotes from articles and turn them into image tiles with Canva, Tweet the top tips as a list and ask people to head to the link to read the rest, you can even use older photos as background on your Instagram Stories tiles or create flyers out them.

7. Use Videos, Live Videos and Hop Into IGTV

Live Videos are becoming a must have within your social media strategy. Live Videos get a ton of reach, and add a spontaneous element to your social media posts. People don’t always want to see perfection, and on top of all this Live Videos allow for real time interaction with your audience. One more benefit to creating live videos on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, is that you can repurpose your live videos for later use on a blog post, your other social media channels, landing pages or even courses.

My extra tip here is to explore using and posting to IGTV. It’s Instagram’s longer video format option and the first to take on vertical video. This breaks the barrier to entry on longer form videos and can be a great added value option for your Instagram account and your followers. Learn more about Instagram’s New IGTV Feature and How To Use It For Your Brand Or Business.

8. Express Your Brand Voice And Personality

In order to cut through the noise and reach your ideal audience, you’re going to have to show a little personality. This is why it’s very important to really hone in on your brand voice and personality. The way you communicate will attract those in your targets. To take this a step further, getting clear on branding and how you want to come across to followers and potential followers visually is very important as well. You want to make sure your brand experience is being carried over from your location (if you have one) to your website to your social media channels – making for a seamless experience. As an example I’ve taken a step to theme my Instagram account to create a cohesive theme.

9. Offer Specials And Contests To Social Media Followers

Creating social media only promotions are a great tactic to add to your social media strategy in order to gain new followers and reward your followers as well. Check the guidelines on each social media network to determine what you can or cannot ask followers to do in order to participate in your sweepstakes or contest. You can also consider offering social media only discounts and offers. Think about how you can use your in offline traffic and convert it to social media traffic.

10. Use Hashtags 

This is a classic and simple tactic but integrate hashtags into your strategy every where possible. Hashtags are searchable, which can bring so much visibility to your accounts. Just remember to only use relevant and specific hashtags along with your content.

11. Influencer Marketing

If you are looking to quickly increase your targeted audience, influencer marketing is the answer. Integrating influencer marketing into your social strategy can be a quick win when it comes to gaining targeted fans and expanding reach. You don’t need to work with huge influencers to see results either! There are so many great micro influencers you can work with that the possibilities are almost endless.

Putting together a strong social media strategy will take time. Don’t feel the pressure to add all the activities mentioned above all at once! Remember that the main factors in a successful strategy is to engage with your community, give value and show up consistently. Which one of the tactics above can you see yourself adding to your social media strategy? Let me know in a comment!

<3 DhariLo