How To Keep Your Social Media Marketing Program Going Once You’re Past The Setup Phase

In our previous article on social media marketing, we talked about the best ways to get a program started. If you haven’t had a chance, go take a look so you can take the very first steps that will help your program run smoothly.

Here are some more social media marketing tips that will help your advertising program thrive.

1) Use Automation

I love using automation for marketing. Scheduling out your social media posts means you can focus on posting when it works for you or your staff while keeping a consistent program going.

Services like Buffer allow you to specify a particular time for content to go live, and that’s outstanding for ensuring that your content shows up on a steady, reliable schedule.

You can also use more comprehensive software like Sprout Social to help manage your communities, get alerted when you need to make a response to something, and otherwise make your campaign as successful as it can possibly be.

Some automation services can be a little pricey, while others are completely free. Look around and see what works best for you and your program. Facebook allows you to schedule out your posts within the platform, so give that a try first and then consider a tool that allows you to schedule to multiple sites from one platform.

2) Make an Editorial Calendar

This one is super important. Plan out anywhere from six months to a year of social content – things always work better when you have a plan and a strategy.

You don’t have to write down the specific details of blog posts you aren’t going to write for half a year, but you should think about the themes and things you want to promote. For example, are there any seasonal aspects of your business, or relevant events on the horizon?

Remember to alternate between evergreen content with more time-sensitive material. You want your content to be fresh and helpful but it is fine to re-use evergreen content as long as it is not too frequent.

3) Ads

Once your social media program is properly defined and running, it’s time to consider running digital ads.

Promoted posts on popular platforms like Google search, Facebook, and LinkedIn can help you expand your reach without costing too much.

As a good rule of thumb, you’ll want to promote the content that drives people to your website – popularity is nice, but that’s only a secondary concern.

Social media networks tend to have extensive references to help you make the most of your dollars – for example, Facebook has a beginner’s guide for advertising, introducing everything from the various ad formats to design tips and how to stay within their policies.

4) Use Analytics

As the last of our tips here – but really, this is just true in general – use analytics to monitor your programs.  Knowing what’s working and what isn’t is part of optimizing your content to maximize conversions.

Each social media platform tends to have its own analytics suite, and they’re all a bit different in what they tell you. Take the time to look familiarize yourself with the analytics and use the information. Find out what is working for you, what is driving traffic, what took a dive!

Many automation sites also include analytics tools. These can be very helpful because you can compare your activity and results month-to-month, year-to-year, etc. Take advantage of all of these tools!

Google Analytics is also very important. This will give you an overarching picture of your website performance, as well as where your traffic is coming from. Take the time to learn and use Google Analytics so that your time spent on social media is worthwhile.

A Successful Ongoing Strategy

These four social media marketing tips are the core of a successful ongoing strategy. Automation makes it easy to get things done, an editorial calendar means you always know what to do next, ads help to improve your visibility, and analytics helps you refine the rest.

As long as you’re doing these four things, you should be able to run a successful program that brings in customers and adds to your bottom line.

Thanks for stopping by,

Laura

Breezy Hill Marketing is a full service marketing and web design company located in Richmond, VT. We work closely with our clients to create tailored social media marketing programs that attract their target audience and convert visitors into customers.