5 Ways to Stay Creative in Social Media Marketing

When social media first sprang onto the internet scene, there weren’t many marketers or entrepreneurs who put much stock into it. Social media began almost entirely as a platform for personal use. However, over the years, social networking brands have begun offering commercial entities opportunities to use their services for improving business and marketing. If you’re looking to get the best out of social media marketing but aren’t sure where to begin, these are five ways in which you can jump-start your creativity.

1. Find out what interests your audience. Most people utilize social media as a form of self expression and casual communication with peers. The sad truth is that most people in your target audience won’t immediately be interested in what you have to offer. This is why it’s your job to listen and find out what is important to your audience.

Based on what your audience already posts or follows, develop content that you know they will respond to. This takes a bit of research, but the insight is well worth it.

2. Make sure your content is “share-able.” Right now, the trends in social media sharing are list articles (for example, “21 Fluffy Cats That Will Put a Smile on Your Face”) and memes. People like sharing these types of posts because they are extremely relatable. Use these trends to your advantage by creating similar content that’s also relevant to your product or service.

3. Engage your audience. Even if you’re posting content that is attracting attention and followers, your job doesn’t end there. You should also be engaging your followers. If you make a habit out of posting content or advertisements that fail to evoke discussion, your followers are going to get bored extremely quickly. In turn, they could get annoyed with seeing your posts in general and eventually unfollow you.

Ask your followers questions on a regular basis, and don’t hesitate to jump into the discussion from time to time. Your audience will love the interaction on a personal, casual level.

4. Schedule your posts and use analytics. Rather than living in a state of mystery and wondering what your next post will be, take some time away to plan out your social media content all at once. This way, once your content is scheduled to post, you can use the downtime between them to analyze their performance rather than brainstorm new ideas for future posts. Analytics alone are great tools for determining whether your social media marketing strategy is worth developing further, or not worth the time at all.

5. Lastly, don’t focus your social media marketing strategy entirely on your business or product. Keep in mind that your content doesn’t have to be strictly about your business or product 100% of the time. Mix your content up with unrelated posts to keep things interesting and casual. You can easily find out what else you should be posting by, once again, checking out what else your target audience is interested in. The object is to speak to your followers on a personal, relatable level so that the bond of trust can be tightened even more.