Social media presence doesn’t just contribute to brand perception; it impacts your bottom line. Nonetheless, every business has its own set of challenges and opportunities on social, and every social network offers a unique opportunity to increase brand awareness and create a long-lasting impression in the minds of customers.

Brands can improve their efficiency and strategy in the area by considering the following tips to help expand reach and build engagement.

These five points will help you approach social media marketing successfully and build relationships with your audience.

1. User-Generated Content
   User-Generated Content provides an excellent opportunity to offer customer recognition while also enabling potential prospects to experience authentic content that can create a community of engaged brand advocates. Only 36% of consumers said they would be more likely to purchase a product or service recommended by an influencer whereas 64% would consider a product mentioned by a friend.
2. Create engaging content
   It’s crucial to avoid solely publishing promotional messages. Instead, social feeds should include a mix of inspiring and educational content that is more likely to be of interest to your followers and will get them on board.
3. Utilise social analytics
   By monitoring and interpreting social analytics, you can leverage social data to adjust your strategy around digital interactions, increase engagement rates and traffic.
4. Customer satisfaction
   Consumers are more likely to become loyal customers with good customer service. Social is one of the first channels consumers jump on when they have a question or an issue. Most customers prefer to message a brand on social media rather than call customer service. Social is the consumer’s preferred care channel for inquiries. As such, social customer care is crucial to your overall business strategy. When a customer reaches out, use this as an opportunity to form a relationship—not just resolve an issue. Listen, respond, and use this chance to turn one negative into a positive.
5. Paid advertising
   Use placement performance results to allocate your budget for Facebook and Instagram. The cost on search per click would be a good indicator of the budget you need to run a successful campaign, but usually, the more competitive the industry is, the higher the cost. A low budget will prohibit you from acquiring sufficient data to analyse the results and decide on what direction to take in the future.