8 Social Media Hacks That Are Sure To Up Your Marketing Game

If you’re in the marketing business, you’ve probably heard the words “social media marketing” so many times that the words have lost their meaning. But the truth is, if you’re failing to implement smart marketing strategies on social media platforms, you’re way behind your competitors. Platforms like Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat and Facebook are proven ways to not only get the message out about businesses you’re marketing, but more importantly, to engage with customers by getting them excited and interested.

So, how can you craft unique, effective social media campaigns? We’ve come up with 8 hacks that will help up your social media marketing game:

1. Tweet at Night: The Digital marketing firm TrackMaven analyzed nearly 2 million tweets and found that the best time to tweet is between 10-11PM Eastern Standard Time. Tweeting later at night will increase your chance for increased engagement, especially retweets.
   
2. Put On Facebook Contests: Ask people on Facebook who’ve “liked” your businesses page to send in pictures and videos of themselves with the product you’re marketing. You can give away money, gift cards or products to the fans with the most creative and enthusiastic responses. This type of marketing is cheap, and highly effective because it’s great at getting your customer base interested and excited.
   
3. Use Instagram Hashtags To Promote Customer Engagement: Even if the company you’re working for is “boring”, you can and should get creative with your Instagram pictures and post at least a few times a day. Create a unique hashtag for the business or product your promoting. “Like” your followers posts, encourage them to take pictures with the unique hashtag you’ve created, and re-post your follower’s pictures. It’s good social media marketing strategy to make customers feel heard, understood and excited. Even if you’re marketing something as boring as socks, you can use platforms like Instagram to post pictures that don’t have anything to do with your product. You can post topical pictures, memes or something for the holidays. The idea here is to project a friendly, human image of the company you’re marketing.
   
4. Offer Rewards and Coupons Through Snapchat: Snapchat, if you’re not familiar, is a platform where users can share and send photos that disappear forever after a few seconds. According to Omnicore, Snapchat’s user base is largely young (71% of users are under 34) and female (70% are female). Offer coupons and rewards geared toward the younger female demographic of your client base. You could post pictures that say, “USE THE CODE WORDS “SOCK HOP” FOR 20% OFF YOUR NEXT ONLINE PURCHASE TODAY!” The picture will get deleted in 10 seconds, so you don’t have to worry about expiration dates.
   
5. Don’t Put Off Engaging With Customers On Twitter: According to Convince and Convert, “In addition to following brands, Twitter users research and engage with companies. 42% learn about products and services via Twitter. 41% provide opinions about products/services. 19% seek customer support.” Customers now expect to be able to use platforms like Twitter to voice complaints, learn about products and talk about their experiences directly with companies. You have the chance here to help shape the image of your company, earn new business and retain customers at the same time. Don’t spend too much time away from Twitter if you want to keep up with your customers.
   
6. Facebook “Likes” and “Shares” Can Tell You Valuable Information About Your Customers: Facebook “likes” and “shares” have the power to tell you quite a bit about who your client base is, and what they want. According to the marketing firm BuzzSumo, “A study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that by analyzing the “likes” of 86,000 volunteers they could predict the characteristics of the person with incredible accuracy. They could predict whether someone was white or African American with 95% accuracy, male or female with 93% accuracy and a gay male with 88% accuracy. They found they could also predict a person’s political leaning, Democrat or Republican, with 85% accuracy.” Taking the time to find out who is vibing with your Facebook posts will help you know who your client base is. It’s important to know who is engaging with you on Facebook so you can tailor your marketing towards a specific demographic.
   
7. Encourage Your Social Media Followers To Post Video Testimonials: Video testimonials are a great way to get your social media base excited and interested. Reward customers who send in video testimonials with free or discounted products, gift cards or cash. Customers already know that you’re trying to sell them something, so they’ll relate much more when a person like them enthusiastically talks about your product or service. Testimonials are also great, because it’s a forum where regular people are able to interact with your product or service in a unique way. You can post these video testimonials on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
   
8. Write Longer Blogs: According to HubSpot, “If a blog post is greater than 1,500 words, on average it receives 68.1% more tweets and 22.6% more Facebook likes than a post that is under 1,500 words.” Take the time to write long, well-constructed blogs and you’ll be rewarded with increased customer engagement.

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