Social media marketing can become overwhelming to learn for beginners, but hopefully some of these tips in this article will help you. However, in order to understand the tips I will share, you have to know what social media marketing is, where you might use these tips, and why it’s so important.
And before reading further, note that if you’re already a social media whiz, you’re eons ahead of this information, so please pass this on to your beginner pals so they can learn about social media marketing.
What is Social Media Marketing?
For me, when I started to learn about social media marketing, it was just another word for marketing… just that it was online. Social media marketing, in simple terms is marketing on social network websites. Your goal is to produce content, and get people to do things, like share your content, like it, subscribe, and if possible buy something.
Why is Social Media Marketing Important to Your Blog or Business
If you build a website for your blog or business, you’ll find that if you never tell anyone about it, you’ll be waiting quite some time for anyone to come to your website. That’s where social media marketing comes in.
It’s okay to be a bit scared about social media marketing, especially understanding how it works, but it’s simply making connections with others who have interests in what you do. You’ll connect with other bloggers, other business owners, and many more.
You may have to invest time, and in some cases, money, to do that. For beginners, it takes researching where your audience is, and how you can reach them.
This is extremely important, because you cannot just rely on organic or paid search results alone. You have to actually connect with people.
Where You Can Use Social Media Marketing
You can use social media marketing on most websites that have a group of people, like forums or social network websites. Just a few examples of these social networks and forums are:
- Facebook (they have groups)
- Google+ (they have communities)
- StumbleUpon
- Snapchat
These are just a few. There are some smaller, niche focused communities and forums out on the Internet, that may suit your needs.
14 Social Media Marketing Tips For Beginners To Grow Quickly
1 Know your audience.
If you don’t know your audience, sit down, think, and then research who you need to target.
2 Discover each social network, and learn how you can target your audience using that social channel.
Don’t go into social media network websites with guns blazing. You may find that if you’re tackling each social network the same exact way, you may find that while it may succeed on one website, the same won’t work on another.
Do your research, read tutorials and observe, before diving right in.
3 Use keyword research and find out where people are at, and what they’re talking about.
The wonderful thing about social networks are that you can search keywords and hashtags to find out if a term is actually being used, who is using, what groups are related to it, and above all, if it’s worth your time. You can target those keywords and audience, as well as plan content.
4 Follow lists or interesting people that are on lists made by influential users.
On places like Twitter and Facebook, there’s a way to create lists. You can add individual people and brands to a list. In return, other people who also create lists, are literally handing you people and brands that you can follow, and build relationships with. You can also add them to your own lists.
5 Create content using different mediums or formats, like text, images, audio, and video.
People connect with certain forms of content better. It could be because of personal preference, or because of time. Creating content using different mediums allows you to reach more people.
6 Adhere to the 80/20 rule.
When it’s you just shouting to the world, and no engagement or sharing from other resources, you look like you’re standing on a soapbox. It also seems like spam. Get out of putting yourself in the corner, and utilize content from other websites, especially influential websites in your niche, to build your own authority.
The 80/20 rules means that 80 percent of the things you share, are content from other places, while 20 percent is yours.
7 Schedule your content to be shared multiple times, and at various times.
Your audience doesn’t function at the same time that you do, when it comes to going online. Sure, you shared that post one morning, but you also need to re-schedule it several times. If it has evergreen content (content that still have up-to-date information), then you need to have a plan to still promote those articles in the future too.
8 Build an email list.
Always try growing an email list. These people actually want to read your stuff. Don’t let them be one time visitors. Grab their attention by offering a freebie, and letting them know that you’d like to see them around again.
9 Spend your time wisely with blogging and social media marketing.
Don’t get obsessed with it. You have to set time aside to do this, but also have a life. Make sure to spend that time wisely by planning an agenda.
10 Join groups or communities on social networks that are related to your field.
Groups and communities are great places to build trust and authority in your niche. You don’t have to be too involved, but if you are adding value to the community, then you certainly will garner support from other members as time passes. This can lead to more subscribers, buyers, and even business partners or collaborations.
11 Join Live chats or video hangouts related to your niche.
People want to see your face. Try a live chat or video hangout sometimes.
12 Find out where you’re getting the best engagement and traffic from, and focus on 1 or 2 social networks.
Some people may argue that you should focus on one social network, but if you’ve got the time, and have great traffic from 2 social networks, you can focus on those. Focusing on too many social networks can spread you thin.
In fact, you will probably start off with more than a handful for a few months before you have enough data to let you know where your traffic is coming from. And if you don’t know, make sure your website is hooked up with Google Analytics.
13 Re-publish longer form content in places like LinkedIn or Medium.
Wait a week or so after you publish a post, and then re-publish it on bigger networks like LinkedIn or Medium. Both of these places get massive traffic, and could really help get attention to your content.
14 Automate what you can to save time.
A little automation can help you save some time, especially if you want to engage in conversation with others.
These are just a few social media tips to wet your whistle, especially if you’re a beginner.
If you’re a beginner at social media marketing, have you already done anything listed here? Are there things that you still don’t understand?
Hey Nile,
If our blog post is more geared around professional readers and business we might have more potential traffic from LinkedIn and Google+ but our target reader is more visual it might make more sense to focus exclusively on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. One of the most effective ways to increase our Relevance Score or Quality Adjusted Bid and therefore, the visibility and potential CTR of our ads is by using the best-converting ad copy from your PPC ads in your social campaigns.
Growing a mailing list is possibly the most efficient way we increased the reach of our blog. By growing a mailing list of people who are passionate about the topics you cover on your business’s blog, this outreach job will pretty much take care of itself. A blog mailing list is also a great way to nurture relationships with prospective customers
The first stage of engaging an audience is to get their attention, and shareable content is a huge part of that equation. Eventually this one is best post regarding this topic and seems full of information. These marketing tips will really help many newbie blogger and also provide good opportunity to learn some thing extra from it.
With best regards,
Amar kumar
Amar- this is for beginners. I know I’ve mentioned this in other posts that are also for beginners, and I’d advise you to save advanced comments for advanced posts. Your information for a beginner, will scare them away.
For every advanced social media marketer out there, there’s many more newbies. while you and I will understand your comment, they won’t. If you want to bring in new people to social media marketing, you have to start with the basics… and I mean, the very beginning.
And the first stage, is not to get their attention. It’s to connect with them. If you cannot connect with even 1 person, you’ve failed in social media marketing. This ends up where you don’t engage enough with your followers and clients that are trying to connect with you, live, over social network websites.
For beginners, their first 1000 or 2000 people, even on Twitter, isn’t going to be shouting to the Internet about their content. It’s gotta be engaging in conversation and adding value. Example: When I started on Twitter, I started adding value to #blogging and #wordpress early on, answering brief questions, and referring to both other content and my own to build my authority. I also started talking to influencers and others in the different niche that were related to what I blogged about.
Good post Nile,
I think that to use different sources for your Social Media is a good keywopoint. Video, text, image and focus on some of them where your customers are is the key for success.
Thank you for the list!
Hello Nile
Great post ! It was very insightful and informative. I basically now just use Twitter and Facebook,those are my go-to platforms. #6 was something new for me as far as sharing 80% of someone else’s content, I will have to try that,before I just shared all mine. Thanks for sharing this valuble post.
Hi NILE ! Your Tips are very useful. I Should follow your instruction for building a relevant connection.
Tips you have shared in your post are very helpful. I personally liked 3, 5, 11 points in your tips. Keyword research is very important part in if you want to go professional level. I am using long tail keyword research on my blog too and they are very effective.
I found video content form is very effective in many blogging niches. And visitors finds it better than a plain text content these days.
Your 11 point saying join live chats or video hangouts related to your niche. I have not yet tried it but will surely go for it, as it sounds good to me and I can imagine how great it can be if its used properly.
Thanks for all tips you have shared in this article appreciate your effort.
Social media marketing is one of the effective way to promote a business but one major problem is take takes time to handle all the social media at the same time.
Facebook group seem to be the best alternative.
You made quite a few good points here. The 80/20 thing was very interesting and something I will implement right away. I wouldn’t read this article if I wasn’t a beginner. Thank you for the great advice.
I’m guilty of violating the 80/20 rule. I need to start sharing other people’s stuff!
Yes Nile! Thanks for this post. It really gives a lot of information in using social media as marketing strategy. Like what you’ve said we should do research to find and think for the target audience and learn more things before entering to any social media sites so that we can use time wisely and get ready for success.
Very useful list for me as a beginner. Thanks for the tips!
Hey Nile, You have shared most important and useful tips for social media beginner. It will help them to start and generate plans for brand promotion in social sites. Above you have listed best social media sites. I would like to suggest “plurk.com”. This is also one of the best site for social media.
Hi Nile,
Really Like the Guide as one of the Social Media is one of the most important place where your blog gets exposure. People come to know about it and in turn it helps in ranking stuff.
Really loved the whole post. 🙂
Hi Nile,
Facebook is the best platform for a beginner for quick results. you can just join some facebook groups related to your niche and start posting in those groups.
If you can produce viral and shareable content then you should use facebook group posting. you will start getting results with 10 minutes.
Don’t over do it otherwise facebook may block your account. post only in 15-20 groups daily.