Social media dominates the world in 2020, with more than 3.5 billion active users on popular social media channels. 

To put that into perspective, that’s 45% of the human population. What’s more, people spend around three hours every day on social media channels, with Facebook being the market leader. 

That’s a huge captive audience.

But marketers have to invest a significant amount of resources into their social media strategy if they want to see a good ROI. You need to initiate your social media marketing plan as soon as possible.

But where do you even start?

Here are some actionable social media content marketing tips that can help you structure your next campaign.

1. Set Goals and Objectives

Our first social media content marketing tip is goal setting.

Having clear goals is essential to building a secure and rewarding social media content marketing campaign.

After all, if you don’t know what you want, how are you supposed to achieve it?

Furthermore, you also need goals to see determine if your strategy is working or not. 

Your social media goals should go hand-in-hand with your overall marketing strategy. 

Write down your goals and objectives to refer to them regularly. Research shows that by documenting your goals, you increase the chances of a successful campaign by 30%.

2. Find Your Ideal Audience and Connect

A lot of brands fail because they target the wrong audience. 

Having a customer persona in mind can drastically improve your social media marketing campaign results.

Learn about your audience’s interests, behaviors, and pain points, as this will better inform you of how to structure your campaign.

But how can you better understand your target audience? Here are a few tips:

• Survey your customers to reveal their pain points.
• Look carefully at demographic information.
• Take part in conversations on forums your target audience uses.
• Reply to their questions and comments on your social media channels.
  

Once you get a feel for your target audience, you know what you need to do to help them. Try engaging with them in the following ways:

• Interact in Twitter chats.
• Retweet on Twitter.
• Find Facebook Groups with similar target audiences and engage.
• Reply to comments on your Facebook business page.

3. Focus on Producing Valuable Content

Our third social media content marketing tip is straightforward: create great content.

Content is one of the most crucial elements of your social media content marketing campaign.

As a brand, you need to make sure that you provide as much value as possible for your potential customers. 

But each social media platform has a different audience.

Therefore, you shouldn’t just copy and paste the same piece of content across all platforms. Try instead to create visually appealing photos, infographics, and videos. 

Another approach is to use interactive quizzes or even create an online course for your audience.

These are unique types of content that can help you stand out from the competition and get consumers to take notice.

4. Leverage the Power of Live Videos

Video is one of the most powerful ways to build a relationship with your audience. 

People want to hear the full story behind your brand, and video content marketing is an excellent way to portray your values and show a “behind the scenes” look at your business. 

When it comes to live video, the potential is even higher. Instant sharing and opportunities for interaction help viewers feel a closer connection to your brand. 

Live video is a great way to improve your audience’s customer experience and create a strong sense of community that will ultimately help convert viewers into customers.

And there are a variety of approaches you can take to live video: go behind-the-scenes of your production process, company events, or even your workplace culture.

The possibilities are endless, and the return on investment can be enormous.

5. Create Facebook Groups

The best social media tips are useless unless they reach their intended audience. 

Groups are a great way to build a better relationship with your audience and foster a sense of community. Facebook Groups can broaden the reach of your brand and create new networking opportunities. 

You can interact in Facebook Groups by answering questions, sharing customer testimonials, and organizing Facebook events or webinars to improve user experience and generate brand affinity.

A strong customer base that engages with your brand is a good testimonial for future potential customers.

Here are some additional benefits of leveraging Facebook Groups:

• An increase in your website traffic.
• The opportunity to promote new content to a targeted audience.
• The opportunity to grow your email list.
• The opportunity to understand your audience’s needs better.

6. Host Giveaways and Contests 

A social media contest is a great way to improve brand awareness, engagement, and increase your followers. 

But you need to be offering a prize your audience wants in order to generate the interest you’re looking for. You have to make it a no-brainer to participate.

Here’s what you need to do to organize your first social media contest:

• Set goals (Maybe Facebook likes, or Instagram followers, etc.).
• Decide the social media channels that you will leverage.
• Come up with an end day and the prize.
• Create the contest (platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow you to do this).
• Promote it far and wide.
  

To get optimal results, aim to have your audience help you promote the contest. Set the contest up so that they are incentivized to share it with their networks by offering them discounts or exclusive deals.

7. Use Promotions and Retargeting Ads

As we mentioned earlier, outstanding content can have a massive impact on your brand awareness—but if your audience isn’t there to engage, you will not see great results.

That’s where promotion comes in.

Promoting your content is essential. Facebook Ads offers an excellent tool for targeting and retargeting users based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and more.

(Pro tip: set up your Facebook Pixel to gather more data)

Run one or two Facebook ad campaigns, then analyze the results to see whether your ad is working. For your next campaign, use the data gathered from Facebook Pixel to create even more targeted ads that maximize the impact of your ad budget.

But remember: You also need to have great visuals and a strong call-to-action to entice the user to take your desired action.

You can also promote testimonials as Facebook ads, as this creates social proof and can help overcome any objections your audience may have. We recommend starting small with Facebook ads, then ramping up as you get a hang of the platform, and a better understanding of your audience.

Using Our Social Media Content Marketing Tips

Social media marketing can be hard work, but it offers plenty of opportunities.

With the right strategy and our social media content marketing tips, you can crush your goals and reap the benefits of a more engaged, loyal audience.

Try to implement one new strategy every week and experiment to see whether it’s adding value to your existing marketing plan. That way, you will understand which of these social media content marketing tips is helping you achieve your goals, and which don’t work for your brand.

Keep in mind that you need patience with social media. Keep testing, and don’t be afraid to pivot if a particular tactic stops working.