6 Tips to Boost Your Social Media Marketing Game in 2021
There’s no denying that social media came into our lives and completely took over. For both personal and business use, 7 in 10 Americans are on some form of social media platform.
Businesses are turning to social media as their main source of traffic with most solely focusing their marketing efforts on platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. But can you blame them? Just take a look at the numbers:
Facebook has 2.8 billion active users every month.
416 million people are using Pinterest each month.
1 billion people are active on Instagram every month.
That’s a LOT of people and a huge pond to swim in that will only continue to grow, but that just means nailing down your social media marketing game is as important as ever. We know how scary that sounds, which is why we want to give you our top 6 tips to boost your social media marketing game for 2021!
Create Goals and Objectives
We preach a lot here at Boss Project about creating goals, so this should be no surprise. If you don’t lay out what you wish to achieve, how are you going to know where to start? We tried a new method for planning in 2020 that allowed us to figure out which of our products would get the most attention based on the percentage of revenue it was predicted to bring in. We implemented that strategy in our social media plan as well and focused the most on only talking about the products that brought in the most income. You can learn more about that strategy here.
Aside from the fact that this will help you develop a solid plan, keeping track of your goals and objectives will allow you to measure your progress and evolve your strategies over time. You’ll be able to more easily identify what seems to be working on social and what isn’t so that you can keep tweaking until you have a solid strategy.
Be sure to keep them realistic and attainable. If your business is brand new to social media, it might not be such a good idea to have a goal of 10,000 followers by the end of the month. Try 1,000 or 500, whatever seems doable to you. Always set a deadline to those numbers, and add actionable steps to help you reach them. If you want to reach 500 followers in 30 days, what steps will you need to take to get there? Want more help with defining smart goals? Be sure to check out this post.
Get Familiar With and Understand Your Audience
This is super super important, of course. Who are you expecting to keep the lights on in your business? Your audience, A.K.A. your potential customers or clients. You should be able to answer these questions:
What are their pain points?
What are their needs and desires?
What will they benefit from your product or service?
What is their ideal age, gender, employment status, etc?
Maybe your product or service will help a busy stay-at-home mom between the ages of 25-30 who’s longing to help her partner with finances but isn’t able to get a corporate job, or maybe it will help an undergraduate college student who’s working a part-time job for pennies and is looking for a way to make a few extra dollars on the side will finishing his/her education. See how specific that is? That’s how specific you need to be, too.
Pay attention to the analytics tools on your social media platforms. Most will have that information available and tell you exactly what age, gender, location, and what times they’re most active. This is all imperative information, especially when you get ready to run ads.
THEN, ENGAGE WITH THEM
Find online forums or Facebook groups where your target audience is hanging out, and start networking. Join the conversation on other Instagram accounts that have a similar target audience as you. Encourage your followers to DM you or spark up a conversation, and be sure to reply to every one of your comments. You want to be showing up for your audience.
Another way to engage with your audience is by creating a Facebook group of your own. This works in a similar way to an email list. Your readers subscribed because they want to hear and learn more from you. By creating a Facebook group, those who join obviously want to keep hearing from you, as well! These are the people who are most likely to purchase something from you. They’re your own personal following to nurture and, ultimately, sell to.
Create Captivating Copy for Your Content
Whew, talk about a tongue-twister! For every single piece of content that you post on social media, your copy should be well thought-out. Never post something just to post it. You should spend the time to sit down and really think about what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it.
It all starts with the hook. This is the make it or break it line at the very beginning that can either entice someone to keep reading or not. Make it snappy, witty, bold, or intriguing. It also helps to address your audience specifically in your copy. They should feel like you’re speaking directly to them. The goal is to get them to think, “Wow, are they in my brain right now?”
Add a call-to-action to every post. Try varying your CTA as a question, link, command, etc. to encourage them to engage with you in some way. Questions are the most popular and the easiest as it takes almost no time to just leave a quick comment.
DON’T JUST SELL, SELL, SELL
While we’re on the topic of copy, we need to take this time to remind you not to sell in every single one of your posts. It’s gross and feels inauthentic. Over half of social media users just find it outright annoying, and it’s the quickest way to see your follower count drop. Focus on establishing real connections, relationships, and trust between you and your audience, and you’ll see the results you’re hoping for. Don’t read this as “don’t sell” - that’s not what we’re saying. But DO focus on how to add value and be a human that also has an offer.
Batch Your Content
Batching is hands-down one of the main things that helped us keep our business streamlined. Doing so will allow you to plan, write, and schedule all of your content for however far in advance you wish (most commonly one month), so you don’t have to post on a whim anymore.
To batch successfully, you should first plan your content. What are you going to talk about for the month? If there are any important dates for the month, like a new launch, you’ll be able to plan out that content and the content around it. You don’t have to write out all of your captions at this step yet unless you want to, but you should at least have a rough idea of what each post is going to be about.
OK, now you can write them all out! Remember the tips we gave above about writing copy, and you’ll be good to go. If this is a lengthy caption, don’t forget to format it to be more readable– break up lines, add some emojis in there, whatever you can do to make it easier to read.
Next, it’s time to gather your photos and create your graphics for each post. We’ve made creating graphics super easy with our Square + Story Social Templates in The Creative Template Shop! All you have to do is one-click add them to your Canva account, customize colors, text, and photos to match your branding, and you’re good to go! It should take you no longer than 15-30 minutes to have all of your graphics created with these templates.
You can purchase these templates one-off, or you can download these templates plus all other templates in The Shop when you become a member for just $47 per month! Once you have your images ready, now all you have to do is put them together and schedule them to publish! We personally prefer Later for our business. We’re able to schedule posts to Instagram and Facebook, save groups of hashtags to insert, check analytics, and more. Tailwind is another one of our favorites that lets you schedule posts for Instagram and Pinterest.
Try Running a Giveaway
Giveaways can give a huge boost to your social media accounts, especially if the prize is of great value. Once you establish what you’re going to give away, you need to identify the goal you’re hoping to achieve. Do you want more followers or likes? Do you want more traffic to your product or website?
You also need to decide which channel you’re going to host your giveaway on, and then a deadline for when it will end. Then, create the giveaway, promote the heck out of it, and let it work its magic! For a more detailed breakdown of giveaways, check out this blog post.
Create Reels
Reels are the new hot thing on Instagram right now as they race to catch up with TikTok. Because they’re so new, Instagram is boosting the heck out of them to get more of its users creating them. The organic reach you can receive from Reels is mind-blowing! Small accounts with only hundreds of followers have been able to reach thousands of people with their reels.
For accounts that have focused primarily on posting images in the past, you’re opening up the chance to get in front of a new audience that loves video. All they have to do is watch for 15 seconds, digest it quickly, and then they can either like, share, or follow before scrolling on to the next video. You’re able to share much more than you could with an image and a caption, and even though you’re able to post video on Stories, Reels don’t disappear after 24 hours, and people don’t have to go search your Story highlights for them afterwards.
We talked more in depth about Reels in this post.
Social media can feel like this huge dragon you need to slay in order to be successful. We understand how overwhelming it can be, but focus on making just one or two of these adjustments at a time. Trying to implement all six at once will just leave you burnt out, plus you won’t be able to easily identify what is working or needs to be tweaked a bit. Before you know it, you’ll be seeing major growth on social for 2021!
