Top 33 proven Social Media Marketing Tips for 2018

Social media marketing can be a challenge so we put together our top 33 social media marketing tips for 2018 that are guaranteed to help you in your journey.

#1 – Come up with a plan

What kinds of posts will you publish? Where? When? How often? These are all questions that should be answered (and perhaps even tested) before you begin your social media campaign.

#2 – Post consistently

Don’t just post when you feel like it. Follow your plan and keep the posts going on a consistent basis. Why? This allows you to measure your results, stay accountable to your fan base and perhaps most important, stay top of mind!

#3 – Super content

Only post the good stuff! Seriously, focus quality over quantity. Be picky about what you post. Your brand’s reputation depends on it.

#4 – Stay productive

You might have multiple Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, WordPress blogs or Pinterest boards. How do you manage it all with only 24 hours in a day and 100 other important business tasks? You ask for help of course.
This doesn’t always mean asking a co-worker for help or hiring a virtual assistant. Before you do that, start by finding some great social media marketing software such as Postradamus. Postradamus will help take much of the work load off of you, especially the tedious parts like scheduling, locating content and publishing it for you on time.

#5 – Use lots of images

Photo posts get shared more than 20x as often as text and link (and even video) posts at Facebook according to a 2014 study by eMarketer. Postradamus recommends a majority of your posts having high quality visuals of some kind. Not sure how to create these images? It’s actually really easy. Check out this video we put together.

#6 – Get creative

Stick to your plan but don’t be afraid to experiment with the content you post. Try posting different types of content occasionally to test the waters. Take notes and incorporate the winners into your strategy going forward.

#7 – Measure your results

Each week, use tools like Facebook insights or Twitter analytics to measure your efforts. See what’s working and what isn’t and adjust your strategy accordingly.

#8 – Connect with others

Facebook groups, Twitter lists, forums and other community sites are a great way to connect with people in your niche. Become an authority by answering questions, offering tips, advice, etc. Be careful never to directly promote your brand or product. Instead focus on providing value to the people in these groups. Interested people will want to know more about you and will do so through your profile.

#9 – Reciprocate

Many social media marketers don’t bother to follow their fans and like their posts but you should definitely be the exception. Doing so does two things.
1) Your individual fans become much more engaged and loyal.
2) Those fans get notified when you like or interact with their posts, keeping your brand top of mind.

#10 – Watch your competitors

Watch your competitors closely and see what types of posts are working best for them. Use them for inspiration in your own posting strategy.

#11 – Stand out

Give people more reasons to follow you. Great content is important but exclusive discounts, coupons, promotions that you post only to your social media sites can get people who normally wouldn’t bother to follow you into avid fans. It’s a fact: 58% of Facebook users like a company to receive discounts or promotions (eMarketer) – or 79%, according to (Marketforce)

#12 – Team up

Find other marketers in related niches and establish relationships. Occasionally share and like each others posts to double each others efforts.

#13 – Use Hashtags

Pretty much all of the social media sites have hash tags. Hash tags are a way for people that aren’t yet your fans/followers to find your posts. When first starting out on Twitter (with few followers) this is especially important and can net you a huge amount of new followers. Check out HashtagPicker.com to see which hashtags you should be using on a weekly and yearly basis.

#14 – Pick the right networks

There’s dozens of popular social media sites out there but that doesn’t mean you should try to do them all. We recommend focusing efforts on no more than 3. Try to find the 3 that work the best for your niche. For example a cooking niche might want to focus more at Facebook and Pinterest whereas a gadgets niche might do better at Twitter and Facebook. Experiment with many different networks but in the end choose just a few to focus on.

#15 – This or that

There are some proven types of posts out there such as the “this or that” post which can bring in some huge engagement numbers. Don’t post these all the time, but mix them in once in a while to promote a little extra engagement out of your fans.

#16 – Post it again

Don’t be afraid to post the same thing more than once. Some sites like Twitter, it’s highly recommended to post the same article or content at different times of the day to reach different people. Consider changing the headline and image however, to keep your feed looking fresh.

#17 – Pay attention

Pay attention to the engagement on your posts. Likes and shares tell you what’s resonating well but sometimes fans will leave comments that will give you great ideas for new content (or what content to remove from your strategy).

#18 – Track clicks

When you include links in your posts, be sure to track how many clicks they get. Twitter does this for you automatically with Twitter Analytics but for Facebook or other sites you may need a URL shortener such as Goo.gl or Bit.ly. This is important for measuring your social media marketing efforts.

#19 – Perfect your bio

Don’t underestimate your social media bios. New fans DO visit these when they see your posts so be sure to tell them as quickly and concisely as possible who you are and what your about. These can be a great source of organic traffic to your site as well so be sure to include a link back to your site.

#20 – Use emojis

Postradamus just recently added support for emojis. Why? Because when there’s thousands of posts going through users feeds every day, you need every little extra advantage you can get to stand out. That means interesting photo, text and yes, even emojis (sparingly). Most posts on social media sites DO NOT contain emojis, so this can be a great way for your posts to stand out.

#21 – Create polls

Some sites like Twitter and Facebook offer built in polls you can create. These can have multiple benefits.

1. Gain valuable insights about your fans. What they like, what they think, what they do. Use this information to create more tailored content in the future.
2. Polls are a great way to promote engagement from your fans.
3. They aren’t used very often by other marketers so this is a good way to stand out as well.

#22 – Be patient

Building a successful social media page takes time. Be patient. Commit to the long game and have faith in your overall plan. Slow, steady growth leads to massive results.

#23 – Nothing stays the same

Facebook is notorious for changing things up, especially their algorithms which determine which types of posts get seen by more people. Don’t expect what’s working today to work tomorrow. Be ready to adapt when things change or risk being left behind.

#24 – Get people talking

People love to talk. You just need to be creative in order to get them to open up. What’s the easiest way to do that? Ask questions.
This provides another benefit in the form of more engagement. More engagement also happens to be the “One simple trick to building a successful Facebook page”.

#25 – Create beautiful images

Tip #5 was “Create lots of images” but quality is important so make sure they’re beautiful too! Notice this article is full of them. Some of these will be posted to our social media sites as well. There’s lots of psychology behind visuals and the human brain. We like it, we share it, we talk about it.

#26 – Laser targeting

Facebook and LinkedIn both offer targeting features which let you get super specific about who you want to reach with each individual post. Only reaching people you know will be excited about your post’s topic will cause your engagement rates to soar for those posts and means you aren’t clogging up fans feeds that would rather not see them.

#27 – Share tips and facts

Just look at this article – You’re here because your interested in social media tips. It works! Use this technique for inspiration in your own niche. Come up with a list of tips and post each one individually. Fans will love it and keep coming back for more. Here’s a quick video on how to easily create such “tip” images.

#28 – Kick start engagement

It’s a psychological fact that people are more likely to engage with content that is already engaged with. When just starting out it can be hard getting engagement on a new post though. Ask a friend or co-worker to like or share it. Return the favor.

#29 – Pay to play

Ever since Facebook started to limit the exposure of non-sponsored posts, the reach of company pages has been dropping. The best way to increase your reach and brand exposure now is to pull out your credit card and “pay to play”. Boosting/promoting your posts will help you show up in users’ feeds more often and expand your audience.

#30 – Virtual Reality is coming

Facebook is bringing live-streaming to virtual reality, the future of social media. The new feature is another attempt by Facebook to popularize virtual reality. If people have the ability to watch VR live streams from Oculus Rift users, they may be more inclined to purchase the headset and play with others in VR if the live streams are compelling enough.

#31 – Be trendy

Social media keeps evolving. The content that may not have worked yesterday might go viral today. Your content strategy should evolve together with social media, so stay on top of the trends and revise your strategy on time!

#32 – Make yourself the star

Video doesn’t have to be professionally edited and produced to generate views and reach consumers. Live-streaming makes it possible for anyone to create video content, and one of the best ways to utilize this for your marketing strategy is to show yourself. Be the content! Put a spotlight on you or your brand and let consumers peek into your business.

#33 – Post native videos

We have already mentioned the importance of videos in social media marketing, but there’s one more tip we have for you. Wherever possible, create or upload native videos using the social platform’s own tools rather than redirecting your audience to external sites.
Search Engine Journal compared native video with embedded YouTube videos on Facebook and came to the conclusion that native video content reaches twice as many people as embedded video.

Conclusion

Building a successful online presence requires a solid plan, consistency, patience and creativity. Have any tips you’d like to share? Comment below.

P.S. – Here’s one more tip: Be sure to bookmark this article for your future reference.