Social Media Marketing Lessons Learnt in 2018

2018 has been a busy year in the social media marketing world. From major news feed changes to the introduction of exciting new features, social media marketers have certainly been kept on their toes. Join us as we reflect on all the valuable lessons we’ve learnt from working in the social media space this past year.

Creativity is key

With hundreds of thousands of updates being posted to popular social media sites every minute, creativity is key to standing out in the crowd. It’s no longer enough to share a simple piece of text on your business’s products or services – marketers need to create compelling copy and captivating imagery and/or videos in order to catch, and hold, their customers’ attention.

In the interest of building an online community of consumers who love your brand and what it has to offer, it’s also imperative to go beyond the scope of your actual offerings to share interesting, non-promotional content that entertains your followers or that helps solve their unique challenges.

Publishing is just the beginning

A social media marketer’s job is only half done when they hit publish on a post. Because of the innumerable pieces of content posted by followers’ friends and other businesses all vying for the same news feed real estate, your promotional content will need to be promoted further by way of paid advertising.

This is crucial in order to reach more of your audience and achieve the results you’re after, whether it be increased engagement, link clicks to your blog or purchases from your online store. It’s also important to note that, as more businesses start making use of social media advertising, it’s getting trickier to achieve the same results working with the same budget as years before.

Strategies shouldn’t be set in stone

If there’s one thing Facebook’s big algorithm change taught us in January, it’s that social media strategies shouldn’t be set in stone. While it’s important to plan ahead for campaigns, marketers should be open to adopting new strategies as the rules of engagement change. Brainstorming ways to make the changes work for your business, instead of resisting them, is key to a successful digital marketing strategy.

Additionally, marketers shouldn’t shy away from trying new things. Ephemeral content and influencer marketing campaigns may be intimidating and require more effort to execute, but that doesn’t detract from their ability to expose your business and its products to people from your target market, drive results and ultimately make your brand more relatable and likeable.

User-Generated Content drives results

From our time spent managing multiple brands’ pages, we found that social media users are partial to User-Generated Content (UGC), especially images taken by consumers as they use a product in their everyday lives. Socialtoaster.com recently revealed a number of statistics which support these findings: UGC posts have a 28% higher engagement rate than standard brand posts, while UGC-based ads have 4x higher click-through rates and a 50% lower average cost-per-click.

If your business isn’t already making use of User-Generated Content, now’s a great time to start experimenting! The first step would be to create and promote the use of a branded hashtag so you can track submissions. Some great examples of this are Coca Cola’s #ShareACoke, Nike’s #JustDoIt and Calvin Klein’s #MyCalvins. Remember to first gain permission from the consumer before reposting their images or videos, and always give them credit.

Resources are worth paying for

As the ever-changing social media space gets more crowded and competitive, it’s becoming tougher to tame the beast alone. This is why we believe its important to invest in paid resources that make the task altogether easier, such as social media scheduling software which allows marketers to schedule content in advance or stock libraries which give marketers access to scores of high-quality images and videos.