You’re likely used to hearing that social media marketing is one of the best ways to promote your brand quickly and cost-effectively.
And why wouldn’t you be? Today, over 77% of marketers use at least one social media platform to promote their business.
However, only 48% are seeing a solid return on investment. So, the majority see potential in social media marketing, but many are not seeing results.
So what’s the magic formula?
While everyone’s talking about how great social media marketing can be, far fewer resources exist to help you figure out exactly how to maximize your efforts.
We’ve rounded up 10 actionable steps you can take right now to boost your social media marketing’s ROI.
1. Make sharing third party content a key part of your strategy
One mistake many small business owners make is that they focus exclusively on self-promotion.
The key part of the term “social media” is the word “social." It might seem counterintuitive, but focusing on immediate conversions and sales will NOT get you a great ROI on social media.
Followers will quickly get bored and turned off by a self-centered newsfeed. The first step to keeping them engaged is to be sociable.
That means sharing other people’s content in addition to your own.
One general guideline followed by many social media marketing experts is the 80/20 rule. Share 20% of your own promotional content and 80% of third-party content that interests your target audience.
Not only will content curation help you build a loyal network of followers, but it will also help you connect with leaders in your industry. You never know, they might even return the favor and re-share something of yours, or at least mention you in a response.
Pro tip: make sure you always tag/mention the author of the article and any businesses mentioned in the content you share. This encourages them to join the conversation.
2. Use a social media scheduling tool
Scheduling your content allows you to do two very important things:
- Organise your content in advance, instead of posting last minute.
- Reach your target audience at optimal times.
With so much content out there, social media feeds move ridiculously fast. You want to make sure your social media posts are only going out when your target demographic is most likely to be active.
When scheduling content, the trick is to work in batches. Write a whole week’s worth of posts and then “set it and forget it” using a social media scheduler like Hootsuiteor Buffer.
These tools not only post to your social media accounts for you, they will also tell you the optimal times to publish your content, give you in-depth analytics, and a host of other nifty tools such as a content calendar.
Are you an agency owner who doesn't have time to schedule weeks’ worth of content in advance? MixBloomsources, writes and schedules your social media content for you! Learn more about our white label social media service, just for agencies.
Related: How to Organize Your Social Media Calendar
3. Boost your content with social media ads
Is a post doing really well? Maybe you’ve got a really important article you’d like thousands of people to see? Consider boosting your content with social media ads.
Facebook, Twitter/X, and Instagram make it really easy to get your content at the top of people’s news feed with just a few dollars.
The great thing about social media advertising is that it helps you target very specific audiences and demographics.
Before you set up your social media campaign, make sure you think carefully about who it is you want to see your content. The more specific you can be, the easier you make it for the social platforms to place your content correctly.
An even cooler Facebook ads feature is that it lets you retarget audiences that have already shown interest.Once you’ve generated traffic from your boosted content, a great extra step is to retarget that traffic with a special offer. A little promotional feature will help convert that new traffic into loyal repeat customers.
Related: How to Boost Social Media Conversion Rates: A Guide for Agency Owners
4. Use video content to get more engagement
Video content is extremely popular on social media right now.
According to an article in Forbes, video posts are generating three times more monthly visitors to a website than text-only posts.
Video content doesn’t have to be super technical and costly to produce. For example, you can record an interview or a “behind-the-scenes” using your phone. The most important thing is that the content is highly relevant and interesting to your audience.
If this wasn’t enough, Facebook now makes it easier than ever to add video content with Facebook Live and Instagram Stories.
Whether you use a platform’s live video options or pre-record a 30-second clip, consider including a special promotional offer with a strong call to action at the end of the video to increase your traffic even more.
Related: The Best 6 Social Video Maker Tools
5. Use branded links for third party content
People may be really interested in the content you share, but if you send all traffic to third parties, how do you benefit?
Well, there’s ways.
A number of tools have come up recently allowing you to add your own brand in an overlay over third party content you’ve shared.
You do that by using one of these tools as a URL shortener and showing your brand in a small overlay on screen once the user clicks the link.
While there might be different opinions on how fair that is for the original content owners, one might argue if you’ve taken the effort to share someone else’s content, you might also get something for yourself in the process – you know, a win-win situation.
After all, the original content owner gets more links from you and traffic, you just get a little bit extra visibility by showing your brand with their content (you’re not taking over their site branding, just adding a tiny mention of yourself and a CTA button in an overlay at the bottom of the screen).
To mention a few, we have Snipe.ly, Replug, Back.ly, Rite.ly, Sharey. They’re all quite similar, all worth a look.
The latest addition to the bunch above, is a tool like PixelME which takes a different approach: once you share a link using their shortener you can track anyone who clicks on your links – whether your own content or third-party links or not – and retarget them with tailored ads across social media.
You can run retargeting ads on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google to anyone who clicks on one of your links. Powerful! (Fair? that’s another discussion)
6. Learn from the experts and influencers in your industry
When in doubt, turn to the experts.
A great way to get ahead in social media marketing is by combining the expertise and experience of industry leaders, while adding your own brand voice.
Make sure you’re following the best brands in your industry and taking note of their social media marketing strategies. A few key things to look out for:
- How they engage their followers
- Which of their posts see the best results
- What kind of tone they use
- How often they post
An even easier way to monitor experts and competitors is to set up a list on Twitter. This allows you to curate your own mini-feed that only shows you content from your chosen accounts.
7. Participate in Twitter/X Spaces
Twitter/X Spaces are a great way to introduce yourself and your business to potential new customers.
If your accounts are relatively new, it’s best to start by taking part in Spaces opened up by brands relevant to your business.
Once you’ve established a following, and you feel confident leading the conversation, why not start your own?
Engaging with your audience is an essential part of a successful social media marketing strategy. If you’re unsure about how to get the conversation started with your followers, Spaces are a great place to start.
Related: How to Increase Your Social Media Engagement Rate
8. Build an email course, to get leads
A method with a great ROI track record, building an email course should definitely make it to your social media marketing strategy.
Giving something of value away for free is a great way to capture valuable leads for future sales and promotion.
Create an email course and install a signup widget on your website using tools like Drip or ConvertKit.
You can then use social media to promote your email course and start converting those followers into leads by adding them to your email list.
Related: Our Guide to Email Marketing Automation Services
9. Create a Messenger bot to drive conversions
Chat bots are a very time-effective way to keep in touch with your leads on social media and on your website.
These bots can be customized to send automated messages to your followers for anything to do with marketing, sales, or customer support.
Creating a basic bot is quick and easy thanks to tools like ManyChat and Chatfuel.
Once you’ve built your bot, set up a drip sequence and share it to your followers automatically. Then, include a special offer for them to buy your product or sign up for your services.
10. Reshare and recycle
With social media moving at such a fast pace, chances are not every one of your posts gets seen by every single follower.
If you have a social media post that does particularly well, don’t let it disappear into cyberspace. Keep re-sharing and cross-promoting your best content to keep it at the top of people’s newsfeeds.
Start by writing 10-15 social posts for every blog you publish and spread them out across your scheduler.
BufferandEdgar are great tools that can help (but if you're an agency owner, here at Mixbloom we’ll do it all for you).
To avoid overwhelming your followers, re-share your most popular posts at different times. This way you’ll also increase the chances of your content being seen by customers in different time zones.
Key takeaway – what you can do today
Getting more ROI from your social media marketing requires a little investment in the curating, scheduling, and promotion of your content.
However, this doesn’t mean you have to devote a ton of time to overhauling your social media marketing strategy.
To get started right now, sign up for a social media scheduling service likeHootsuiteorBuffer. Then you can begin to curate the right mix of content and reach your audience at optimal times.
As a second step, find one Twitter Space in your niche to participate in within the next month and add it to your calendar.
Finally, look at your budget and set aside a fixed sum to invest in social media ads within the next few weeks.
With these easy hacks, you’ll be well on your way to getting loads more ROI from your social media content. But if you’re looking for someone else to take care of sourcing, writing, and scheduling your content, try MixBloom with our 7-day trial (100% no-risk guarantee). Start with booking a free consultation.
Related Reading
- 5 Brands That Are Nailing Their Social Media Strategy
- Ultimate Guide to User-Generated Content for Agency Owners
- Ultimate Guide: How to Find And Hire a Social Media Manager
