8 Social Media Marketing Hacks to Ensure Success in 2018

Social media marketing is more than just regular publishing of content on social networking sites in the hope of growing an audience and ultimately making money. This is especially true for business organizations that want to open social media accounts today in an already crowded marketplace.

Without a proper strategy to stand out, the likely scenario that will play out will only result to heartache and disappointment. To succeed on social media, you must post relevant, unique content and then do everything in your power to boost engagement. Over the years, the tactics that can give you results have changed. Now in 2018, here are eight social media marketing hacks that all but guarantee results:

Video will be everything

For the last few years, videos have been the social engagement goldmine. Marketers who have figured out how to make viral-ready videos have maintained high engagement no other types of posts can match. Now, there is every reason to believe that video will without a doubt take over all social media. The attention span of the average social media user is steadily declining, making it all the more important to create content that will capture even the most passive users. No content does that better than videos. A growing number of social media marketers are using social media video content to drive leads and conversions to business sites. Expect this to become the order of the day in 2018.

Hyper-personalization

Everybody in social media marketing circles is talking about hyper-personalization. Indeed, this is why entrepreneurs and business executives are pouring money into a central part of their digital marketing plans. Today’s consumers want customized solutions, forcing marketers to work round the clock to figure out how to package products in ways that will speak to individual customers.

Some time back, you could have gotten away with shoddy social media marketing. But today, even Instagram which was a relatively easy platform to grow and make money, now requires brands to do more to stand out (like these tips from Growr). As a strategy, you can expect this to continue to gain traction as more tech tools emerge to make hyper-personalization possible and easy to pull off. As a strategy, you can expect this to continue to gain traction as more tech tools emerge to make hyper-personalization possible and easy to pull off.

Perfect your content strategy

In 2018, only marketers with data-driven strategies will stand out. These marketers will use the data they have gathered over the years in different social media projects and campaigns to perfect their content strategy. Instead of using the trial and error method, these marketers will roll out social media campaigns based on an incredible body of data that will give them precision in targeting and retargeting, budget allocation, and campaign types.

By taking time to redesign your strategy based on the data you’ve been gathering over time, you can take the necessary steps towards strengthening your brand and resonating more strongly than you have in the past. This year, don’t shy away from using social media tools to find and share unique content with your audience. Remember, the better your content strategy, the better your brand will perform on social media.

Use hashtags

Perhaps this point might seem obvious, but sometimes when you’re overwhelmed, even an obvious hack can be pushed into the innermost recesses of your mind. The rule of thumb when using hashtags is to find those that relate to your brand, create social media posts around these hashtags and publish them for your audience’s consumption. Each social media platform has its own culture that includes how best to use hashtags within the network.

Therefore, it is in order to learn a thing or two about using hashtags in these platforms so that you can stay certain that you have optimized the lurking opportunities. To find the hashtags ideal for your brand, try searching social networking sites natively. If that doesn’t give you the results you had hoped, consider using databases like Hastagify.me or Hashatit.

Conduct polls

Social media polls are excellent hacks in social media marketing. They are an effective and easy way to boost engagement, especially because they are easy to set up and require very little of users in order to participate. What’s more, polls will give you insights into your fan base that you would have otherwise never received had you not conducted one. In the recent past, many entrepreneurs have embraced social media polls to engage with their audience as well as find out what those who follow them think about emerging issues in the industry. This trend will continue into the better part of this year.

Ask interesting and creative questions

Every marketer knows that one of the most effective ways of engaging audiences is though interesting, creative and thought-provoking questions. Posing these questions to your followers pushes them to want to answer you as well as respond to those other fans who post their answers to your company’s social media timeline. To get more people interested with answering your questions, you can consider using an image or a video to explain your query further.

Meaningful messaging

Just recently, Facebook announced that it was changing its newsfeed policy, preferring posts from friends to those published by pages for its over 2.13 billion active users. This is because the social media giant wants its users to engage in more meaningful and personal conversations as opposed to receiving unending promotional content from the business organizations around them.

This speaks of a much larger trend where meaningful messaging is taking over the social media space. To stand out in this changing landscape, businesses will have to come up with such incredible value that their followers will request to “see first” content from their pages. You will no longer get away with superficial messaging meant to generate clicks yet it has zero value.

Use current events

This tactic takes advantage of the ongoing events to boost engagement. For instance, the Black Panther movie phenomenon is making rounds on social networking sites. Already, many marketers are using theme messages from the movie to talk to their audiences about their business propositions. Using such current events is extremely powerful and has the potential to grow your audience exponentially.