7 Unique Ways to Enhance Your Social Media

I was recently asked to chime in on a series of questions related to social media skill enhancements. While at it, I thought I’d add some tips to mix.

Here are the seven tips I provided that are a little different than you are used to reading about.

Learn from the experts.

One of the best ways to enhance your social media marketing skills is to learn from the experts. You can follow industry leaders, influencers, and peers on social media platforms and see what they are doing, how they are communicating, and what results they are getting.

In addition, network with people you wouldn’t normally to find out what they are doing in the digital marketing space. For example, join forum of mixed industry marketers, ask questions on blogs, and respond to questions on podcasts, videos, and blogs.

Experiment with different formats.

Media works differently on various platforms. Knowing what works best on each is paramount to your digital marketing and social media success. Also, knowing the media format your target audience prefers is important. Be sure to mix and match media formats for your content to maximize its impact across your audience.

Engage with your audience.

Engaging with your audience can help you build trust, loyalty, and advocacy. It can also help you understand their needs, preferences, and pain points, and tailor your content and offers accordingly.

In addition to more traditional means, such as asking questions, commenting, contests, giveaways, and posting shareable content, consider these social media engagement tips:

• Think outside the box with trivia, bingo cards, interactive media, and controversial topics. 
• Use media in an unexpected way, such as black-and-white imagery versus color, interesting photo angles, and unique, AI-generated images.
• Have fun. Check out Semrush’s Instagram page for an example and some inspiration.

Leverage the right tools.

You can use various tools to help you plan, create, schedule, publish, monitor, and analyze your social media content and campaigns. You can also use tools to help you automate, streamline, and optimize your social media marketing tasks and workflows.

Working smarter versus harder is a mantra I believe it and you should too. Find ways to automate your social efforts, such as:

• Automatically resize images across platforms. Canva is good for this.
• Use AI to help you craft social media posts for various platforms.
• Explore SEO tools to find the right keywords to incorporate into your content and increase searchability.
• Leverage a scheduling tool to maximize posting effectiveness.
• Monitor with ease using any of the top social resources, such as Hootsuite, HubSpot, Canva, Sprout Social, and more.

Stay updated on the trends.

Staying updated on the trends can help you adapt your social media marketing strategy and tactics to the changing environment and expectations. You can do this by:

• Following the news, updates, and changes of the social media platforms you use.
• Researching the latest features, algorithms, formats, and best practices for each platform.
• Monitoring the trends, topics, hashtags, and keywords that are relevant to your niche and audience.

Also consider this. Keep your audience in mind. They might not be trend followers, but are rather trend setters. On the other end of the spectrum, you might have trend laggards. Does that mean you need to be everywhere at once? No. It means, you need to know where your target market is hanging out and what they are consuming.

Keep Learning and Improving

Learning and improving can help you grow your skills, knowledge, and confidence as a social media marketing professional. But what can you do besides monitor your success, seek feedback from mentors, coworkers, and colleagues, or challenging yourself to take calculated risks?

Consider learning something outside of social media and digital marketing that could impact your area, such as taking sales, accounting, or business development courses. Take the time to learn how marketing can be an asset versus a cost, and you’ll have a more well-rounded view for your strategy, budget, and goals.

Also Consider

Find ways to track what your competition is doing. Go ahead, follow their social profiles, subscribe to their newsletter, read their blog. Then consider the gaps between them and then fill in the space.

Also, look for inspiration in an unlikely place, such as quotes, following a non-industry brand, engaging with people outside your industry and specialty, and reading or listening to content that helps you to think creatively.  

What would you add?

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