Digital Digizen

Tokyo-based freelance writer

Social Media Marketing Tips for Beginners | 8 Simple Strategies to Gain More Authority

Are you using social media to attract customers to your business?

I see you sheepishly nodding probably because you created accounts a while ago and there haven’t been much going on, but you still keep accounts anyway.

I am with you. I was there.

Social media is a noisy place and sometimes it feels like there are people talking everywhere on your right and left, up and down, non-stop.

But when you don’t have many followers, it feels like you are just outside looking in with not much to show for it.

You are not there just to see celebrity gaffes, cat or dog photos. You are using social media to make a positive impact on your business.

But the thing is, how exactly do you do that and why should you be on social media?

Why Should You Be on Social Media?

Well, it’s simply because people love being there.

 

social media popularity around the world
Source: Statista

 

Obviously, most businesses’ goals are driving sales, and it starts from efforts to let people know what you do.

So, you should be where they are.

But like I already said, social media is a busy place. It can overwhelm you and you can easily get sidetracked looking at others sending out all kinds of messages out there.

Businesses have goals, but human nature is you want them so quickly.

But achieving big things take time. So, you really need to break it down to smaller tasks and just focus on getting small things done on a daily basis.

If you do this regularly, more people will start to take a notice of you.

Social Media Marketing Tips for Beginners

Overwhelmed and don’t know where to start? These are the things you should try to focus on.

1. Be Consistent

Being consistent is the first prerequisite if you want to see any results out of social media marketing. Just like in real life, the more people you meet, the more opportunities you are giving yourself to succeed.

That means posting on platforms, engaging with your followers and connecting with more competitors and fans on a daily basis.

Having a hard time choosing which social network to focus on? Then this blog post, Choosing social media marketing platform, will help you understand how each platform works. Read this post and now you can pick a few sites that fit your business goals.

2. Know Your Target Audience

Having followers irrelevant to your business doesn’t help at all unless simply having a large number of followers is what you are after. So, be clear about who your target audience is and create content according to your target audience.

You should also keep in mind what time of day your audience is likely on the platforms you are sharing your posts on.

Does your business target local or global audience? That dictates what time you are going to be sharing your posts. Share your content when they are around.

Another major factor that has been gaining importance in recent years is increasing mobile usage. If you haven’t yet optimized your website for mobile audiences, you should learn how to write for mobile users.

3. Share Useful Content

Not everyone is serious on social media. That’s for sure.

As you can tell from the study by Global Web Index, lot of people are just hanging out on social media because their friends are on there or just want to see entertaining content to fill up spare time.

Only 29% of people go to social medias to buy something.

reasons people use social media

But that’s not to say there aren’t people who are there to find products or services they are interested.

According to Disruptive Advertising, 86% of women will look at social media before deciding to make a purchase.

So, providing useful content can certainly help nudge them into buying later on. They may not buy immediately, but if they find your content interesting, they are more likely to come back to your site again and chances of them buying later on are much higher.

What Influences People to Buy?

Offering promotion seems obvious, but providing educational content and visuals are some of the top factors that can influence people to buy.

brands on social media
Source: Sprout Social

That’s what content marketing is all about.

Content marketing is a style of marketing where you try to educate or entertain visitors with content related to your products and services rather than simply throwing ads in front of people in an intrusive way hoping they will buy.

In traditional advertising such as billboards, TV commercial, newspaper or magazine ads, publishers would put out the ads that are simply meant to sell something.

With content marketing, you try to educate viewers about issues and topics that you know they are interested in, and the selling part becomes secondary.

tv commercial

With TV commercials, it’s totally different. Most of the time you are not interested in products you see in TV commercials. Brands just want you to see commercials even if you are not interested, which is quite intrusive.

In content marketing, blog and video are popular types of content. If you run a yoga studio or sell yoga wear, for example, you could write blog posts about a variety of yoga techniques or physical and mental health related issues.

You might be selling your products in your article by placing links to the product page, but that is not the main focus. You are educating readers first. That’s why this works very well.

Content marketing is more user-centric than conventional advertising whose focus is more about brand themselves and profit.

 

4. Align Your Social Media Presence with Web Content

Social media posts are usually short, so it’s important that you get your point across succinctly and urge them to take a certain action

It’s time to flex your copywriting muscle and write a convincing call to action whether a newsletter subscription, sales page or inviting readers to a landing page.

Or perhaps you simply want people to read your blog post. Whatever it is, keep it short and sweet yet convincing so that visitors will immediately know what they should do next.

And more importantly, make sure that the content on your website grabs their attention and it makes them want to stick around.

5. Use Automation Tool and Curate Content

Are you worried because you don’t have much content on your website?

No need to worry if that’s the case. You could still curate articles by other people you love to read.

This is a legitimate way to share content and you can still build relationships with others on social media. Creating content is hard work, and while you are working hard creating one of your own, you can keep the line moving.

As far as automation tools, there are so many of them out there, but ones I am talking about here are content curation tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, Post Planner and many others.

Using these tools, you can choose your preferred time slot and post content.

Automation Tools at DIfferent price options
Many of these tools let you try out for free, but with paid plans you will get features that help you find interesting content that is already out there. You don’t have to bounce around all the different sites to dig up interesting content.

Whether free or paid plans, you should use one of these automation tools to keep your feeds busy. Otherwise, your will give an impression that you are not active and really not into it.

With these convenient tools available, you can’t make any more excuse you don’t have time to post your content.

6. Connect with Peers and Influencers

It’s human nature to want to try out a restaurant with a long queue than ones that look always empty.

Social media is no different. The more like-minded people you are connected with, the more people will feel curious and want to join.

While some influencers have built up celebrity-like status and it will be hard to build a personal relationship, some people are approachable. So, always be on the lookout for opportunities to connect with influencers and people who have the same interest as you do.

7. Recommend and Teach People How to Use Tools, Gadgets, etc.

When you want to buy a smartphone, tablet or computer, I am sure you will go online and try to find reviews and compare it to other ones that interest you.

For bloggers and online business owners, online marketing tools and social media automation tools provide valuable metrics, but some of the paid plans can get quite pricey.

In fact, 81% of shoppers conduct online research before making big purchases according to HubSpot.

Obviously, most people want to know what they are getting before paying the full price and see if it’s really worth.

What’s great about creating product reviews is that visitors who visit these pages are likely at a stage where they are ready to buy the product you are talking about.

So, your review could have a big impact on potential buyers’ decisions.

8. Use Appropriate Hashtags

Originally used in Twitter, hashtags have become prominent on almost all social media platforms. Using popular hashtags can increase your reach and you should definitely use hashtags if you want your posts to have maximum exposure.

Different Types of Hashtags

There are different types of hashtags and you can use them according to the type of content you are sharing.

Trending hashtag If your topic matter has something to do with breaking news people are talking about, seasonal events, popular events or celebrity news, trending hashtags can get a lot of attention quickly, but you shouldn’t use it just to get attention.

For example, when Apple announces iPhone related news, it always becomes big news and naturally you see hashtags related to iPhone go viral.

Content Hashtags It might be a very general broad topic, but we all need it to categorize topics.

For example, you might use #smartphone, #gadget if you are talking about smartphones.

Brand-specific hashtags If you want to coin your own phrase, you can create your own.

Just like Coca Cola does it here.

If you want to research which hashtags are popular, these sites will help you pick ones.

BrandMentions
RiteTag

Discovering Hashtags for Content Promotion with Hashtagify — Tutorial Tuesday

 

Which Hashtags to Use?

Now you know what types of hashtags are out there, but which hashtag you use will have a lot of impact on your post’s reach. So, you want to use relevant, popular hashtags, but using ones too popular, it will be buried under thousands of generic hashtags. Try to be too niche and you will reach no one. So, it’s a fine balance.

This is exactly like choosing a keyword for your blog post. If it’s too broad, it will be hard to get noticed. Pick a long-tail keyword and you will more likely have someone who is really interested in the topic. So, being more specific helps than being general.

 

How Many Hashtags to Use in Each Platform?

I think now you have a good idea of which hashtags you need to use, but here is where a lot of people do it wrong.

There is common sense on each platform as to how many hashtags you should use.

“The more you throw them out there, the more they stick” type of mentality doesn’t work with hashtags.

Sometimes you see tweets with no description and nothing but hashtags, but they are doing themselves disservice because using too many hashtags will lower the reach. There is even a research that proves it.

So, these are the ideal numbers of hashtags to be used in each platform.

how many hashtags to use
Source: CoSchedule

Seeing nothing but hashtags can make yourself look spammy and greedy, do be careful!

 

Conclusion

Marketing on social media can move the needle on your marketing efforts if you do it strategically.

As online content continues to increase, you cannot simply rely on organic traffic. There is no doubt organic traffic offers higher quality traffic, but in this day and age social media marketing is one of the marketing channels you must have in your arsenal.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. bhawna Kaushik says

    Hey TAKA San,

    Really amazing article. I found your site through Moss’s blog.

    Keeping it consistent and relevant is the key to achieve success in online market.
    Looking forward read more meaningful and amazing content from you.

    Keep up the good work 🙂

    Reply

    • Taka says

      Hi bhawna,

      Great to have you here! Yeah, being consistent and talking to the right audience is the key. Thank you for stopping by.

      Reply

  3. Chris jones says

    I think this is one of the most significant information for me. And i’m glad reading your article. Thank for sharing!

    Very useful and creative
    Search Best Institute
    in this information
    Thank you.

    Reply

  4. Inksplore says

    Hey Taka,

    I must admit the tips you have provided are not limited to only beginners, I am sure even pro bloggers will admit that these tips are just quite fundamental in order to improve one marketing reach. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply

  5. Moss Clement says

    Hi Taka,

    Social media has become the go-to for every marketer, both digital marketers and offline store operators, everyone uses these marketing channels to find prospects and grow their business.
    The tips you have here are good to get anyone going forward. Unlike that you added the use of hashtags, as hashtags will help your target market to find and engage with your content.

    Thanks for sharing!

    Reply

  8. Praveen Verma says

    Hi
    Taka,
    Glad to read this post. Social media is one of the best places to promote content. Yes, it is very necessary to know your target audience and their needs and then create content accordingly. Here, you have provided some great social media marketing tips for beginners and that’s great.

    Here, I Like the tip about use of appropriate hashtags. By using hashtag in a right way we can increase our content’s reach and maximum exposure. Thanks for the link that you have dropped in the tip #1.

    Thanks for sharing this post with us.

    Best wishes,
    Praveen Verma

    Reply

    • Taka says

      Hi Praveen,

      Great to have you here! Hashtags can really increase your reach. Most platforms don’t allow you to use that many, but you can use up to 30 on Instagram, so why not get your money’s worth, right? Of course, they have to be relevant. For that, Hashtagify can help you, but I think looking at other people’s posts to see what hashtags they are using is also a good way to find good hashtags. Thanks for the comment.

      Reply

  9. Sophie Thomas says

    Hello Taka,

    It’s a superb guide for the beginner and for the small startup as well. As you know how crucial social media marketing is and how can it give huge result and benefits to your business.
    I’m also a beginner and going to start my own blog., This is what i have to focus on, So, I think this blog post definitely helps, Thanks for sharing.

    Regards
    Sophie.

    Reply

    • Taka says

      Hi Sophie,

      Congratulations on getting your blog up! It’s really exciting. I’m looking forward to seeing your post. If you need any help, let me know and also connect with me on social media. Thanks for stopping by.

      Reply

  10. henry smith says

    Informative and very helpful article about social media marketing for every beginners like me . Great tips,definitely going to implement these tips. I have bookmarked it for future references. Thanks for sharing this article.

    Reply

  12. Saad says

    I believe that targeting the appropriate audience with useful content along with hashtags are the most important and obvious ways to generate quality leads. Your marketing tips are indeed very useful for beginners. 🙂

    Reply

  15. Ridley Fitzgerald says

    You’ve got some interesting tips for social media marketing. I like how you said that you want to share useful content. Communicating useful ideas, tips, or whatever would definitely make me, as a customer, more prone to read your stuff.

    Reply

  16. Bob says

    I like how you talked about paying attention to what time the users get on certain platforms. That way you can plan out your posting times according to high usage trends. Thank you so much for the helpful social media trends.

    Reply

  17. alexander2296 says

    Great informative social media marketing tips for beginners like me. I will definitely implement these tips. I have bookmarked this article for future references. Thanks for sharing such a valuable article.

    Reply

  18. Xavier Jinan says

    Great content, i must say, i adored the way you wrote it. I would say, i read about this topic on Branex blog and you and those guys did an amazing job in writing as it is indeed helping me in my own shoe business. Thanks!

    Reply

  20. seo services Auckland says

    For beginners it is necessary to target their audience from where it is getting more and more views and customers by this way they can boost their sales more and more and also they can grab traffic to their websites and rank to top position on major search engines.

    Reply

  21. Erfan says

    Hello,
    This is a timely article for me. For the last 8 years, I have worked in technology & I have a well-rounded and in-depth skill set. Recently I left that industry and moved into the editing. About four months into that, however, I ended up in a situation where I am creating websites for a group that is involved in marketing for indie authors which is my target market for editing.
    I am working on four websites in fact and they fall within the scope of what you talked about in your experience above. I have always been the type of person you described, and could not be any other way, I would get too bored with life. I could not imagine being the type of person that became content in mediocrity.
    Thanks

    Reply

  22. Penelope Smith says

    I liked your suggestion about using good hashtags. That does seem like it would help your ad get in front of more people. Also, it seems like you would want to make a memorable one.

    Reply

  23. Quventix Solutions says

    Thanks for this wonderful information.
    As we all know social media marketing is really important to increase the range of your business. You have to make strong social media strategy to run your business in an effective way.

    Reply

  24. Paul says

    Great work Taka. Social media marketing is very hard to do socially if a beginner don’t know how to begin with it. I am very glad that I come to your blog post!

    Very informative!

    Reply

  25. Johnny McCarron says

    Wow, I had no idea that 86% of women will look at social media before deciding to make a purchase. My brother-in-law owns a business and is trying to gain some traction on the internet. He’s thinking about hiring a digital media marketing agency to help him out.

    Reply

  26. Andrew Johnston says

    For beginners I would like to advice to post consistently content as everyone like to follow who posts on regular basis as no one like to follow an inactive account moreover you should also know your targeted audience from where you have gain Instagram followers as it can be track easily by applying your account to analytics which helps in monitoring account.

    Reply

  27. Jessica Jones says

    Social media even helps us to turn out our spare time to value. It keeps us motivated to better analyze and understand the market standard and the audience. It makes less sense ignoring social media marketing but wants to lead a successful online business. Thanks for presenting it, Taka.

    Reply

  28. Sophie Thomas says

    Hey Taka,
    Such a great article.
    Social Media is very crucial for every business whether it’s B2B or B2C. If you succeeded to find the right business-focused social media platform, then you can reach the wide audience who might be interested in your business. The paid campaigns of social media give you the prominent opportunity to reach people at the right place and time. So, everyone should take advantage of it.

    Thank you for sharing this.

    Reply

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