Social media marketing never stands still. Neither should you. Keep the following tips in mind to make sure your work grows and brings value.

A social media marketer has a lot to do. But the biggest part of the job is making sure that growth happens. This means optimising your social media assets so that they are growing consistently, every day.

Below are just a few tips to help you optimise the work you have already done, and fine-tune things so that you are in a position where you are seeing the kind of constant growth that makes both you and your clients happy.

Carry out an audience check

You may be on top of this, but if you’re not growing there is a chance you have work to do.

Go back to the definition of your audience, and the work you put into demographics, and make sure that you are still creating content that speaks to them. There may not be big changes involved, but a couple of tweaks here and there may open up new audience segments, and at the very least build engagement.

For example, new trends on social and in life may be highly important to your audience, but completely ignored in your content. Undertaking an audience check on a regular basis helps you take the pulse of the people you are talking to.

Strengthen the connection

Maybe it’s because the world has recently been through a hell of a tough time, or maybe it’s because social media is changing, but marketing now is more human-centered than ever.

People are just generally responding to human content more than they do bland, corporate stuff. That means checking your content and making sure that it speaks in the language and style of the people you are talking to. Be human, down-to-earth and real, and focus on the customer.

There is next-level stuff involved here too. Once you have checked in on your content and you’re confident it is aligned with your audience, it’s time to make sure that it is managed. As in actually managed.

When your audience interacts with you, it is your job to notice this, respond and build relationships. It’s been said many times before, but having a million followers who don’t know who you are is pointless. Having 1000 followers who regularly interact with your brand and who you regularly communicate with is infinitely preferable. It also ensures growth.

How you do this is kind of dependent on the relationships you already have, but some key considerations:

  • If you’re making a reference to someone in a post, always @mention them
  • Always reply when people mention your content
  • When you retweet or upvote content, or Like and so on, always respond with an actual comment

Embrace automation

You absolutely must have automated content and management of much of what you do if growth is your aim. Perhaps the best way to make this happen without getting into spam mode is to set up a content curation automation tool (of which there are many) and make sure it covers the content your audience likes. Then, make sure you monitor it with your social media metrics platform, so you can test and see if automation is working for you.

To embrace it fully requires constant monitoring, and decision-making. If certain content types are not working, your metrics platform should show you this. You then go to your automation tool and make changes accordingly.

Optimise

Our final tips are all about optimisation. It goes without saying that your profiles on all your accounts are optimised to grab attention and engagement. You also need to introduce your hashtags here as well, to make sure that people are focused on what you cover.

You also need to level up your profile in the way of imagery and professionalism. Change your profile imagery regularly by all means, but make sure it has been professionally produced and speaks to your audience.

Growing your online presence is mostly about communicating. The more you communicate with your audience and the more you focus on being genuine and human, the more likely it is they will stay, engage, and recommend you. That grows your presence. It’s a slow burn, but a worthwhile exercise in every way.