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Just 10 years ago, only 25 percent of adults 50-64 years of age and 11 percent of adults 65 or older were using social media. Those numbers have changed drastically! Now, 73 percent of adults in the 50-64 age range group and 45 percent of people over 65 are on social networks.
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Social media platforms provide tools for their users to stay connected with friends, family and peers online. While each platform may deliver this in different ways, the general idea is the same. People input information about themselves on their social media profiles that can connect them to others who share the same interests, allowing them to network socially online.
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Some of the most popular networks are:
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Instagram
Pinterest
TikTok
Each network has its own rules, and sometimes, its own audiences. But businesses can also create social media profiles, input information about their company and connect to other businesses or consumers. Using social media to promote your business means you can reach new audiences in a variety of demographics based on the interests and hobbies they’ve provided to the social media platform.
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What is Social Media Marketing?
By definition, social media marketing (SMM) is the use of social media platforms to promote a product or service. When included in a marketing strategy, SMM helps you connect with your desired audience. You can engage with customers and share information. You can even advertise.
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Effective SMM is not a simple task though. People see through continual promotion and advertising. Your social media efforts should be a balance between creating trust with your potential customers, engaging with them and discovering their pain points. Then continue the conversation online with posts, comments and explanations on how your product or service is the solution they need.
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Crafting an effective social media campaign requires much planning, content creation and monitoring.
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How Can a Marketing Consultant Help with Social Media Marketing?
You can try to start your social media journey on your own but a marketing consultant will make the task much easier. Social media consulting services often include choosing the most effective platforms, planning your content calendar, creating the best organic and paid content, and analyzing the results.
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Choosing the Most Effective Social Media Platforms
What do you want to get out of your social media strategy? It can save you a lot of time if you know what your priority is. Some priorities you may want to consider include:
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Develop trust with current customers
Drive conversions
Get more newsletter sign-ups
Find new customers
Build up a conversation around your business
Encourage customers to spread the word
Get former customers to come back
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Social media marketing can accomplish all of these goals, but identifying the priority and measure of success will ensure you and your marketing consultant can determine the most effective way to reach these goals.
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Depending on your goals, your marketing consultant can help you determine which social networks hold the most value for you. One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is trying to post to all social media platforms all at once.
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Each social network has an audience that is more likely to use it. You may be wasting time creating content for Pinterest, but LinkedIn content might bring stronger results.
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Planning Your Content Calendar
How often should you post to each social media platform? There are a lot of general studies that suggest once per day is optimal for Facebook and Instagram, with a maximum of two to three posts per day. However, for Pinterest, the recommended minimum is 3 Pins per day, with a maximum of 30 Pins per day.
That is a ton of content to curate or produce. Having a social media scheduling tool, automating some of your posting, and hiring a dedicated social media marketer can do amazing things to increase your followers.
But then when should you post each day? There are even more generic studies that recommend times of day based on your audience, but a social media marketing consultant will analyze what type of content and when content performs best to continually optimize your content calendar.
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Creating the Best Social Media Content
The type of content you post on social media business accounts should be decided by your target market. A marketing strategy consultant can help you evaluate your target market and determine what kind of content they are most interested in.
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Social media content can include:
Videos
Images
GIFs
Text-based posts
Blog posts
Links to industry news
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Those posts can be entertaining, informative, or amusing. It’s important to remember that your content shouldn’t always be about you and your business. Your social media marketing consultant may want to help you set up automated social posts from your blog and other blogs related to your industry. Depending on your needs, your marketing consultant may recommend hiring a dedicated social media marketer or purchasing a library of social media posts from an outsourcer.
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Social Media Advertising
Organic social media content is a necessary first step in any SMM campaign, but it takes time to see an increase in followers and engagement. Paid advertising often provides more immediate results.
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Every social media platform offers one or many paid advertising options Several options include:
Creating paid posts and videos that direct traffic to your website.
Promoting or sponsoring posts or videos to increase brand awareness and engagement.
Offer PDFs, white papers, PowerPoints, videos, podcasts, etc. to generate new leads.
Drive traffic to your newsletter signup or online store.
A marketing consultant can help you set an advertising budget that will help you reach your goals immediately, and then aid in lowering and optimizing that as your organic engagement grows.
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Analyzing Social Metrics
Is your social media marketing working? This question is a strong reason to hire an SMM consultant. When you're working on your own, it's hard to tell if you're getting results or just throwing posts into the wind.
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Many business owners may think that marketing on social media is only a matter of posting or advertising specials and new products. Doing this, they will often learn that this kind of marketing gets minimal results.
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Social network algorithms are designed to display posts that users find engaging. When very few social media users like, comment on, or share your posts, it tells the algorithms that users don't want to see your content.
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Marketing consultants are trained to analyze this data and provide you a summary of useful information with actionable items to optimize your campaign. They can tell you how many people you are reaching and when people are reacting to which posts and ads.
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You will also have information about the age groups and genders of the audience you're reaching. You can even learn if you're reaching people in the right locations.
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All this information helps your business reach a more targeted audience interested in your product or service.
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Hire a Social Media Marketing Consultant
If you are committed to building your business and reaping the rewards of SMM, then it is time to hire a social media marketing consultant.
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Our team wants to help your lawn care or landscaping business attract more website traffic and leads from a social media campaign.
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We offer several social media marketing packages that set you up with a marketing consultant. You'll get a plan that will help you move forward with effective, actionable steps.