Social Media Marketing that actually works

There are so many different strategies and tactics that can improve your social media marketing results. If you search “social media marketing tips” you will find about 200 million hits on google.

Tips that are geek-specific ranging from what pixel size works best on photos in twitter to generic corporate buzz slogans like “content is king and context is queen ”.

It’s TMI (Too Much Information) on steroids, making it difficult for newcomers to figure out which tactics actually work best.

Every expert is talking about his own expertise or the social channel where he was successful without necessarily looking at other options in this field.

As a marketer who has made the move from traditional marketing to social media 3 years ago, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the most efficient social media tactics, without limiting my self to a specific platform.

Here are 3 signals that currently stand out according to numbers in the ever changing world of social network.

Stay Organic

Organic is alive and kicking

Organic reach means reaching your audience without having to pay the social network you are posting in. Many have claimed organic reach in social media is dead.

But if a brand like Nike is still getting more than 400k likes per post organically on Instagram, then you can say organic is still alive and kicking.

The secret to getting organic reach is to first spot a social platform where organic is working and then invest time and effort in order to get great results on this platform.

This is not a scientific chart, just based on observing how posts are performing on the different networks. It is not always evident on the big networks what is paid and what is organic, but there is no question, that your posts will get much more organic reach and engagements on the networks on the right side of the organic scale. If you have different experiences and a good case to show how these networks perform please share and I will be happy to update this . The networks keep evolving and their algorithms keep changing their organic performance, I will try to update this when there are significant changes.

It takes time to get things moving, it took me one year to get 10k followers on Instagram, but I am now enjoying great engagement numbers with up to 2000 likes on some posts.

Social Media Artists

Let the experts make the campaign for you

If it’s too late for you to get organic reach on a social media network but you still want to have reach there because its where your audience is hanging out.

You can reach out to influencers on this platform, those who have succeeded in gathering a big number of followers.

You can find many with over 10K followers on Youtube and Instagram and you can work with them as content creators as they obviously know how to create social content as well as a media channel to talk to their followers in a fun and engaging way.

Here is a detailed post on social media artists and why they are disrupting the advertising industry.

Social Media Ads

Data Play Works

If you are placing ads on Facebook or Youtube it does not mean you are doing social media marketing. It means you are placing an ad on a social media network.

Social media marketing is when you place an ad on a social network and it performs better than the average ad performs elsewhere because of virality.

If your ad is being shared and liked and reposted after you spent a relatively small budget to promote it, then you are doing social media marketing the right way.

Placing ads that are social by design or traditional ads on social media networks will get you good results. However social by design ads will outperform the traditional ones.

Social network ad spending will reach $23.68 Billion Worldwide in 2015. The main driver and winner is Facebook . It’s just been announced that there are currently 2 Million active advertisers on Facebook.

$23.68 Billion will be spent in 2015

According to a report by Kenshoo, for every dollar you put on social ads you get potentially the average of 2.58$ in return. Once companies get better at doing social media marketing the right way I think the return numbers will go even higher.

Conclusion

Defining which tactic to use depends on your objectives and budgets. If you are looking for a long term plan then your best option is to invest in the organic platforms and use social media artists and social ads to build your network.

If you are thinking short term or looking for here and now results then you are better off focusing on social ads and social media artists.

No matter which tactic you choose, you will need to work hard to get things moving. Social media is working well for brands but also for human beings and you will need to compete with both.

Do not hire a young intern and expect things to fly off and go viral, social media marketing is a complicated science and needs time and resources. If done correctly the results are outstanding and by far beat any traditional marketing tactics.

Have you tried different social media marketing tactics that work well? I will try and update the article with recommendations in the comments area.