8 Habits Of Successful Social Media Marketers

Social media has become firmly established as an effective way to market almost any business, but there are so many sites, tasks, profiles and publishing to manage every day, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.

The most successful social media marketers have several habits that enable them to do it all successfully.

See how many you’re already doing, and add those you aren’t to your day to see what a difference they can make.

1. Know Your Niche

Know what the people in your niche are most interested in, and come up with content that satisfies those needs.

For example, any new golfer will want to know about perfecting their swing.

Think about the beginners new to your niche, and intermediates, and how you will become a magnet for them as they look for solutions to their main issues.

Create a customer avatar to identify your ideal customer and target your marketing towards them.

2. Block Time On Your Calendar

Make an appointment each day with your social networking profiles.

Thirty minutes per day 2 or 3 times a day will prevent you from getting distracted and eating up your time.

Log in, look around, and interact as needed. Don’t constantly crank out content with no thought to what’s actually happening in the account.

For example, if you have a Tweet that is getting a lot of traction, don’t tweet more items that are just going to push it down the page. Instead, let it ride as long as it can.

3. Leverage Advertising As Needed

Even a small budget can go far with the right content on the right network.

Using the example of the hot tweet above, consider turning it into a sponsored tweet.

Also consider running a campaign to add more followers while the tweet is prominent, in order to give it more exposure to those interested in your niche who are on the network but not connected with you yet.

4. Using Automation As Needed

A growing number of tools will allow you to manage multiple social media accounts, with just a few clicks.

Pay particular attention to publishing content during the times you are not online, for around the clock marketing.

Do a search to find the best times to post on the various social media platforms to your audience for maximum impact. The best time will vary between platforms and this is where automation tools, such as ContentStudio make things so much easier.

5. Think Engagement, Not Just Eyeballs

Your content should have a high potential to evoke a response, such as a comment, like or share.

Make your calls to action obvious to get the response you want.

Here are some ideas for calls to action:

• Poll
• Survey
• Provocative or thought-provoking question
• Sharing interesting articles and other niche-related content, and encouraging others to as well
• Creating a range of content at your site and sharing it
• Comment on a recent news item

If you get a comment, reply to it as appropriate. Stuck with a troll? Don’t engage on their unprofessional level in front of the entire world, just delete their nonsense and block them.

In the posting, give a clear call to action, such as “Like or share if you agree.” For more details, invite them to share more with, “Let us know what you think in the comments box below.”

6. Follow Others And Engage As Needed

See what others are doing and be helpful in all your interactions online, and people will soon be checking out your profile and starting to follow you because you look like someone worth paying attention to.

Remember that these are social media platforms, so you need to be social.

You must engage with people or you will end up being ignored and people won’t even see your posts. It doesn’t take too much effort to like a few posts and to write a thoughtful comment or two does it?

7. Connect With Thought Leaders

Connect with the top people in your niche.

You can learn from them, and will be keeping good company, which over time may result in a range of profitable opportunities.

Your network can be a really valuable asset so try to grow and nurture it whenever possible.

8. Track Your Results

See how many engagements you get from each activity.

If driving traffic to your site, create a unique URL for each network campaign so you can see the results from each network quickly.

So, there are 8 habits of successful marketers. Now let’s look at the flip side and look at some of the mistakes less experienced social media marketers may make.

7 Costly Social Media Mistakes

Social media gives unprecedented access to people interested in your niche or industry, or the products and services you offer.

However, some new users of the networks can get so excited by the prospect of more profits that they actually end up costing themselves through simple yet avoidable mistakes.

Here are the top 7 to watch out for if you are a newbie social media marketer.

1. Unclear Goals

Do you want sales, subscribers, followers?

Plan every campaign around a specific goal, which you can measure by getting the target market to take particular action.

By limiting the number of actions available in the message or campaign, you help to reduce returns, unsubscribes, and unfollows.

2. Unprofessional Profiles

Make your profile as informative and professional as possible.

Include basic information that potential customers or clients want to know, along with info that makes you stand out from your competition.

A logo and colors help you to be recognized at a glance, so be sure to add a unique and professional logo to your profile.

3. Following Too Few People

As soon as you sign on for most social sites, they ask you what you are interested in and give recommendations as to who you might like to follow.

Take these suggestions seriously and sign up, because the ones they are suggesting are usually the top participants at the site in relation to your niche.

Growing your network of likeminded people is important so don’t neglect this step.

4. Promoting Too Soon

Most newbies to social networking are there because they’ve heard it is a great way to reach millions of people.

They no sooner sign up with their profile than they start to crank out posts, tweets, and promotions at lightning speed.

Social networks are just that, social. It’s not about you hammering out promotion after promotion.

Focus on building relationships and connections that are based on your common personal and/or business interests.

5. Publishing The Wrong Content

Every social network attracts people who prefer a specific type of content or type of delivery.

For example, most Twitter users want very short and to-the-point messages.

Most content online is text-based, but many social networks are driven by eye-catching content, such as images and video.

Organize your material into folders for each network so you deliver the right type of content to each social media network, based on its specialties and the preferences of their users.

6. Ignoring Daily Search Results

Conduct a quick search each day for a couple of your business’s keywords and/or brand products.

Look for mentions of your business, product, and/or your name. Also look for questions and positive or negative comments on other sites.

If you see questions, answer them and/or refer the person to a specific URL for more information. If you see positive comments and reviews, thank them.

If you see negative, refer them to your customer service email for more details on what their issue is.

The offer of help will show good will to anyone who might have seen it and sort the real customers from those who might be doing nothing more than trying to damage your reputation online.

7. Retaliating

No matter how unfair they have been. Just don’t retaliate in public.

It could cost you more than you can ever imagine. Keep it professional at all times.