There is a certain kind of apprehension that comes with social media marketing. Some may call it temporary while others term it as erratic. While calling it fickle might be a choice, including it in your digital marketing strategy isn’t one.

The biggest pro of social media is that it works in ripples. A single content post can be the event that pivots your brand from anonymity to popularity. In fact, this happens so regularly that the concept of overnight success has its own term now – going viral.

Hiring a social media agency in London can be the best way to stay ahead of the times without creating a complete hassle for yourself. But, even an agency needs to be given some kind of direction regarding your goals and ideal consumers.

Social media gives you the space to explore your brand through continuous testing and implementation. There are multiple paths to reach the top, and each one is unequally winded. So, here are seven different tactics to build a strategy that amplifies your digital marketing efforts.

Bring the Influencers on Board

There is a reason that brands are willing to spend around $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022. Influencer marketing is an alternative take on the traditional models where a person with an established social media presence promotes your brand and its products in their unique style. Since they command a sense of authority with your target audience, it gets much easier to propagate your brand messaging and recognition.

If you have a low budget and a specific niche, you can engage with micro-influencers with up to 10,000 followers. Given the small group, it would ensure better targeting with lower costs. Paying attention to their relevance to your brand is the key to striking gold in this mine.

Harness Lookalike Audiences

A strong social media marketing strategy shifts the focus from your current buyers to the prospective ones. Once you have your consumer profile at hand, social media networks analyse the group of people who might come within the same umbrella and suggest marketing to them as well.

Platforms like Facebook apply this feature through their algorithms, hashing out an audience based on your demographic and behavioural requirements. This aids in expanding your reach when you’re stuck in a rut.

Boost Your Reach with Contests

A fool-proof way to spice up your engagement is running social media contests. For a small PR hamper, you could ask the audience to follow a certain page, share your content, comment on a post and whatnot. You can even choose a multichannel approach where the contest on Facebook requires the users to ramp up your Instagram reach.  And guess what? Everyone does it without asking a single question because everyone loves free goodies.

The best part is that the whole process can basically run on its own with social media tools that take care of everything. The process is simple – define your goals, select a platform, choose a deadline and post the creative with the caption. All that’s left is to see the numbers go up.

Build Relationships Through a Community

Social media is so much more than just having a huge follower count. When you truly engage with your audience, you create brand advocates who love to talk about you without any ulterior motive. This kind of marketing, you cannot buy. Focus on establishing a rapport with your consumers by replying to their comments, mentioning them in stories, reacting to their tags and being present for their problems.

To take it a step ahead, you can use Facebook groups to give your audience a discussion panel. It acts like your own feedback loop where the products and services can be tested with your most loyal bunch of followers.

Say Hello to Automation

Keeping a manual check on your social media strategy can be cumbersome and prone to glaring errors. The internet can be an challenging place at times. The best way out is to plan and implement your strategy in advance. Social media automation tools make your life leisurely by taking out the guesswork.

However, automation is not the final answer. Replying to your customers in real-time helps come across as a genuine and authentic brand. Using automated replies can turn off a user and make your account seem too robotic. Remember, speed is essential, but so is quality.

Promote User-Generated Content

A user is more likely to trust another user than any promotional brand. Utilising this very concept, social media marketing involves sharing reviews, images and content created by the consumers on different networks. The opinion from a peer instils buyer confidence, priming them for a doubtless purchase.

Encouraging your consumers to upload such content through different hashtags and challenges further creates a conversation around the brand. It aids in increasing brand loyalty and displays the overall credibility of the products.

Maintain a Consistent Brand Identity

There must be a certain kind of uniqueness to your approach. Social media and digital marketing in general, are an ocean full of similar fishes. To typically stand out and be noticed, you need to define your brand goals and be creative about pursuing them. It can either be your content style, a colour palette, a design format, graphics, videos or an accumulation of it all.

Think of it as producing a story around your organisation that resonates with your audience on a human level. Once you have that story in place, use it as a base to derive all your communications across various networks. Remember to keep your messaging consistent with the brand image, no matter the digital or physical platform.

Get Moving

Social media might change with time, but it is bound to be around in one way or another. The smart move here is to get with the times and strategise its positives into your digital marketing efforts.

With the right placement and promotion, you can easily amplify your brand awareness, creating a compounding effect that helps with higher revenues and recognition. It is also equally important to take a break once in a while and go back to look over everything you have already done through the periscope of social media analytics.

Don’t be afraid to change and experiment with different tools and formats. You never know what might make you go viral tomorrow.