How to Have a Fantastic Social Media Strategy with Minimal Spending

W.D. Strategies Team
December 15, 2021

Share This Post

Creating and maintaining a killer social media presence is one of the best ways to gain new customers and maintain lasting relationships with your audience. Your online presence can make or break your entire brand, so it’s important to invest time and energy into your social media strategy – but you don’t have to invest a ton of money into it.

In this article, we’ll go over some of the essential elements of a great social media strategy that won’t break the bank.

Maintain your brand voice across platforms

Honing your company’s unique voice is everything when it comes to branding; you want to speak the language of your target audience to ensure you’re reaching them, gaining trust, and building a relationship. In fact, in 2020, Sprout Social’s Index found that 40% of consumers thought memorable content made a brand stand out, with 33% voting for distinct personality.

Since social media will be your main way of connecting with consumers, consider what sort of interactions you want to have and how you want to come across. Is your brand playful, funny, and well-versed in memes, like Netflix? Or is your content more informative and professional? There’s no wrong way to go, but it all comes down to your avatar.

While brand consistency is important across all platforms (you don’t want to juggle multiple personalities!), different mediums do offer different opportunities for switching up tone, terminology, and length. Twitter, for example, only allows 240 characters, so your posts will have to be snappy and straight to the point. Meanwhile, Facebook and Instagram will allow you to make lengthier posts, possibly going more in-depth and even weaving a relevant story – which can be helpful, as 32% of consumers said compelling storytelling makes a brand stand out.

Post consistently

Consistency is truly key. Even on social media, you want to send the message to your audience that your business is dependable. Consistent posting is also a way to train consumer behavior and to build and maintain relationships with your followers, which is what social media branding is all about.

Maintaining a consistent online presence will take more than posting on a whim or whenever the idea strikes you. Creating a content calendar can be a helpful way to stay on top of a consistent posting schedule across platforms. If you have a business account on Instagram, you’ll even be able to look at metrics that show the best time to post based on the activity of your followers.

Want to establish a steady, effective social media presence? Our Business Influence service can help by automating posting across platforms whenever you publish new content. Whether it’s a blog post, podcast episode, video, or anything else, you’ll be able to instantly share and distribute each piece of content across all of your social media platforms, email lists, and more.

Take advantage of the hashtags

Hashtags are more than just trendy tools; despite the reputation they’ve garnered over the years from use and abuse, they can actually be a highly effective mechanism for reaching the right audience when utilized correctly.

Hashtags are a great way to indicate to a platform’s algorithm what your business is all about and who should be seeing your content. Using the right ones will help you become more discoverable and land you a spot in the right users’ feeds, whether it’s the work of the algorithm or users searching the hashtags themselves.

Using hashtags effectively will require a delicate balance. Each platform has its own suggested number of hashtags; using too many in one post can cause you to be flagged as spam or even banned, while using too few may lead to missed opportunities. Here are the recommended number of hashtags for a few platforms:

Instagram: This is a hashtag-heavy platform. 9-12 hashtags are best for engagement
Facebook: Avoid seeming like spam by keeping it to 1-3 hashtags per post
Twitter: Since tweets are tiny, keep it short and sweet with 1 hashtag – 3 at most!

How do you know what phrases to use? It comes down to research, and possibly some trial and error. As a good rule of thumb, you should be relatively specific – avoid using hashtags that are too vague or common. You may think you’re just casting a wide net, but without balancing it out with something more niche, you’re likely just wasting a hashtag due to the high volume of competition. Something as ambiguous #technology, for example, will likely be virtually useless in the sea of hundreds of thousands of other #technology posts.

If you do use a highly popular hashtag, make sure to mix it up with something more specific. At times, it may be helpful to take advantage of any relevant trending hashtags, especially paired with the more specialized ones.

Look for W.D. Strategies among DesignRush’s list of top Instagram Marketing Agencies.

While getting too specific to your business alone may not work the best for widening your reach, creating a brand-specific hashtag can be a good way to keep your current following engaged, especially as part of a specific campaign. An example of this is Coca Cola’s #shareacoke hashtag.

Essentially, you should use industry-specific, specialized phrases that have a high likelihood of being searched and easily categorized.

Respond to all comments and messages

Like we’ve mentioned, social media marketing is all about building connections with your audience. And you can’t do that effectively by just posting and not interacting at all with followers; it shouldn’t be a one-sided situation. That’s why it’s essential to respond to each comment and message.

Your social media should be an extension of your customer service. Whether customers are dropping a comment to tell you they love your services, have a question about your business, or have a problem that needs solving, show them that you care with a thoughtful response.

Yes, this includes negative comments! In fact, these are some of the most important ones to respond to. Your brand can take a real hit if negative comments are left unaddressed. It’s helpful to acknowledge complaints with a public response and to also offer to resolve the issue by taking the conversation to direct messages, if the commenter would like.

Your social media is the most public representation of your business. If you prove to be helpful, personable, reliable, and trustworthy across platforms, consumers will be more likely to feel positively about your business and services. It’s a great way to garner trust, boost loyalty, and even create a solid community of fans who will spread the word about the brand they love.

To ensure not a single comment or message goes ignored, Business Influence can help. Our service allows real-time notifications for each comment across each platform. The best part is that Business Influence’s all-in-one dashboard will allow you to view every notification from every medium in one single place, so you don’t have to worry about juggling responsibilities and switching apps.

Business Influence has your back

Every business owner wants to have the perfect social media presence, but maintaining that can be a lot of work on your own. We can help you out along the way with Business Influence. With automatic content distribution, inquiry reports, and real-time notifications of each comment and message on a single dashboard, you can stay on top of your social media game with ease.

Want to learn more about how we can help you create an effective social media strategy? Book a demo with us today to get started.