Top Social Media Strategies You Should Know

Whatever your business, if you want to see it thrive, it’s important to spread the word. And what’s the best way to do that? You’re right — on social media platforms. According to Global WebIndex, more than 5.24 billion people use social media, which means more than two-thirds of the world’s population is there.

The challenge? Cutting through the noise on social media isn’t an easy feat. With so many businesses doing the same thing, you have to be really smart to outperform your rivals. More importantly, your offer must be of real value and catchy enough to grab the attention of your potential customers. 

How do you do that? You need to have a strong marketing plan in place, a plan that will allow you to get into the social media arena and keep up with its pace. Let’s unveil some of the best social media strategies that will help you set yourself on the right track.

1. Know Your Audience

The first step to any successful social media strategy is knowing your audience inside out. Who are they? What are their interests? What are their pain points and behaviors? Take the time to define your potential customer persona. This will help you create compelling content that will engage people and make them want to come back for more. 

2. Set Clear Goals and Realistic Metrics

Your plan should start with defining key metrics that are important for your business to track. Whether you’re looking to increase your brand awareness, boost sales, or just increase following, your goals should be written out so you know where you’re standing and in which direction you’re moving.

At the same time, make sure you don’t set unrealistic goals. While the end goal should certainly be big, it’s much more reasonable and effective to break the path towards it into smaller milestones. This will not only help keep you motivated, as you will actually see results, but you will also have a chance to pivot quickly if you find your initial approach doesn’t work.  

The Goal: Increasing Brand Awareness

Let’s say you’re working on improving your brand awareness. In this case, the plan is to post content related to your brand and the story behind it rather than just flood the Internet with promotional campaigns. People love brands that regularly interact with them through stories, quizzes, surveys, and other engaging content and feel trust in them. 

The key metrics to watch for would be:

• Reach – the number of unique users who have viewed your publication.
• Impressions – the number of times your post was displayed to someone. An indicator of a successful post is when it gets multiple views.
• Hashtags – the way people discover content.
• Video views – if you’re promoting your business on TikTok or through Instagram Reels, check out views to understand how often people watch your content – and if they like it. 

While we’ve mentioned hashtags here, it’s important to note that they aren’t as relevant for Instagram, for example, as they are for TikTok. This is because they were overused by spammers, and in 2024, Instagram announced they were going to remove the option to follow content through hashtags. 

The Goal: Boosting Sales

If you’re an online store or offer services and want to increase the number of sales, you should prepare a clear plan of how you’re going to keep your customers informed about new products. People don’t just wander into a store. They are guided there by marketing tactics like ad campaigns, exclusive deals and promotions, promos of new products, etc. 

In this scenario, you’d be watching the following KPIs:

• Conversions: the number of people who have taken the desired action on your website.
• Conversion rate: the higher the CR is, the better your ad resonates with your audience.
• Average order value (AOV): tracking this metric will help you understand how much money people spend in your store per order and optimize your sales strategy accordingly. 
• Cart abandonment rate: If this rate is high, you’ll know there are issues with your checkout process. To optimize, you could offer free shipping or discounts for completing the purchase.
• Influencer ROI: the revenue or profit you’ve earned compared to what you’ve spent on your campaign. If this number is negative, the campaign is likely either not targeting the right audience or the content lacks the necessary engagement. 

The Goal: Growing Your Following

Increasing the number of followers is important for pretty much any business. First, it gives you greater exposure, as people often share content they find valuable through their own profiles. And second, it also gives you insights into customer sentiment. By learning what people are saying about your brand, you can refine your existing strategy to better meet their needs.  

• Follower growth: the number of new users over a specified period of time.
• Follower growth rate: the speed at which new users follow or unfollow you over a specified period of time. 

3. Choose the Right Platforms

There are over 100 social media platforms out there. Do you have to be on all of them? Absolutely not. What you should do is research where your target audience is most active and focus your energy and time on building your presence there. 

For example, if you’re in the B2B space, most likely, your customers are on LinkedIn. So rather than trying to get on Instagram and Facebook, which would require money, effort, and time, it’d make more sense to choose LinkedIn and craft a laser-focused content strategy to appeal to your audience. 

On the other hand, if you’re in the B2C space, LinkedIn would be less appropriate. Instead, platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok – depending on your audience demographic – would be a better fit. Instagram is great for visual storytelling, while TikTok is ideal for targeting younger audiences who predominantly watch short videos.

Besides Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn, you may want to consider social media networks like X (formerly known as “Twitter”), Bluesky, and Threads. These three platforms are great for establishing an online presence and increasing brand awareness. Again, you don’t have to be on all of them. Even if you do only one or two, this will give you an edge.  

Interestingly, after Elon Musk bought Twitter, the platform didn’t see the expected growth. Quite the opposite happened. In just a couple of months after the 2024 US presidential election, it lost more than 2.7 million users. Over the same period, Bluesky started to gain traction. Now it has over 26 million active users, making it a decent alternative to X. 

If you’re mainly working with Instagram, Threads might be an even better fit. Part of the Meta machine, it allows companies to expand their reach organically and makes advertising much more efficient. 

Another platform worth trying for businesses is Pinterest. With over 522 million active users, it’s a great “niche” market for companies with lots of imagery content. On the other hand, if most of your content is video, you should look into building your presence on YouTube. Second largest social media app and second largest search engine, it’s an ideal platform for increasing visibility.

4. Create Consistent and Authentic Content

When it comes to social media, consistency is key. However, it’s not just about posting frequently. First and foremost, it’s about maintaining a steady stream of content that is authentic and valuable and reflects your brand’s identity and voice.

You can’t post a blog or two and then disappear for a while. If you start doing that, your audience will quickly lose interest and may even forget about your brand altogether. At the same time, you can’t just post for the sake of posting or just to push sales. People quickly recognize when companies do that and choose to follow other brands.

Sure enough, the whole idea of you being on social media is to increase sales, but you can’t just do it bluntly. You need to breed trust with your users and strive to build long-lasting relationships with them.

Think of the type of content your potential audience might be interested in. Can you share any life hacks? Or perhaps your brand could educate customers through guides, newsletters, and tutorials?

Many people love watching behind-the-scenes glimpses of the company’s life. Share your daily activities with customers so they feel closer to you and see the human side of your business, not just flashy ads.

It goes without saying that the content you post should align with the concept of the platform on which you’re posting. What works on TikTok may not work on LinkedIn, and what yields great results on Instagram might fall flat on Facebook. Tailor your posts to fit the tone and expectations of each platform while keeping your message consistent.

5. Engage with Your Audience

What’s great about social media is that it’s a two-way tool: you can broadcast your message here as well as engage with your audience. And engaging with your audience is just as important as creating great content. 

When you respond to comments, answer questions, and directly speak to your customers in chats, you’re showing that your brand values its followers and listens to their feedback. As a result, people will feel more inclined to come to your platform and engage with your brand.

For social media algorithms, this interaction is particularly important. When people engage with your brand, social media algorithms get a signal that your offer is valuable, and they will start displaying your posts before potential prospects more frequently. 

Use social listening tools to monitor what people are saying about your business. This will help you identify trends, spot issues even before they arise, and grasp new opportunities, giving your rivals no chance to catch up. Aside from that, actively engaging with your audience also gives you insights into their preferences, helping you fine-tune your marketing strategy over time.

6. Partner with Other Brands

According to the 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, over 49% of purchases are made through influencer posts, which is a big market share. If you haven’t been partnering with other brands yet, make sure to consider this direction. Moreover, this doesn’t have to be huge brands. The key is to find brands from your market niche whose audiences overlap with yours. 

For example, if you’re a fitness brand, partnering with a health food company for a giveaway or co-branded campaign could be a win-win situation. Similarly, if you’re in tech, partnering with an industry-related podcast or an influencer for a joint webinar can significantly drive engagement and attract more followers. 

Here are a few most popular ways for partnerships:

• Cross-promotions
• Co-hosted events
• Joint webinars
• Social media takeovers, etc.

The goal is to create valuable content that benefits both you and another brand and provides an engaging experience for potential customers. 

7. Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC)

User-generated content is one of the most powerful tools for social proof. When customers share their experiences with your brand, this helps build trust and credibility among potential buyers. 

Encourage your audience to post content featuring your products or services. To do this, you can run content, feature customer testimonials, or offer any other incentives for tagging your brand in their posts. 

For example, if you’re a clothing brand, create a branded hashtag and ask people to share their outfits using it. Then, feature their posts on your official account to boost engagement and make your customers feel valued. 

The beauty of UGC is that it not only enhances brand authenticity but also reduces content creation costs, as you get fresh and relevant content directly from your customers. 

8. Take Advantage of AI

Last but not least, make sure to actively use AI. You can use AI to populate your profile with content. There are many tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity that can lend you a helping hand here. With the right prompts and a few tweaks and twists, the content generated by these AI tools can sound just as human as the one written by a copywriter.

Besides content generation, these tools can come in handy for building a content strategy, analyzing competition and keywords, creating personalized ad campaigns, and even crafting images and videos. In fact, even a website can be created with the help of these tools.

AI can also be used for advertising. You might have heard about TikTok Smart+. If not, this is an AI-powered tool designed to automate the advertising process by creating and managing ads for you. 

Speaking of AI tools, we should also mention the famous HeyGen tool. Many businesses and marketers take advantage of it to produce engaging video content for their social media profiles. One of its best features is avatar video creation. With the choice of over 100 avatars, anyone can find a suitable solution that reflects their brand. Likewise, an AI logo maker can instantly craft a custom logo that aligns seamlessly with your visual identity.

9. Measure Results and Adapt

No social media strategy is perfect. What works today might stop working tomorrow, which is why it’s important to keep track of your key metrics, stay on top of the trends, check what your competition is doing, and be quick to adapt.

If you understand that something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to pivot. Social media marketing is about experimentation and learning from your mistakes. Only through continuous optimization can you stay ahead of the curve and ensure your brand attracts followers and gets leads. 

Final Thoughts

To bring it to an end, social media is an exciting area to be in, but you need a strong marketing plan in place. This requires a combination of creativity, consistency, and the ability to quickly pivot and adapt. You should also understand who your audience is, set clear, actionable goals, and choose the right platforms for building your online presence. 

Remember, social media is a long-term game. Success won’t happen overnight, but with the right strategy in place, it’s going to be much easier to level the battlefield.