For business owners thinking about getting into mobile marketing, social media marketing is a great place to start. Today, millions of people are accessing social media exclusively through mobile devices. A person’s smartphone becomes a portal to their social world. Businesses that can learn to use that channel to promote their brand can really reap the benefits.

Social media marketing is a very popular marketing strategy because it’s easy and free to get started. Anyone can start a social media account for their business and begin posting content with absolutely no investment. Unfortunately, many business owners jump right in without taking the time to create a real strategy. Here are five tips for getting the most out of a social media marketing campaign.

Engage your audience

You want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to engage with your brand via social media. Your social media campaign should be carefully integrated with your website. If you sell online, give customers the option to sign in with a social media account. Emails and texts should include links to your social media account. Ultimately, you want to make it very easy for your customers to endorse you on social media

Don’t oversell

There’s a reason overly aggressive salespeople aren’t successful. Nobody likes to feel pressured to make a purchase. The same goes with social media marketing. If you regularly post self-serving content in an attempt to sell to those who follow you on social media, you’ll scare many of them off. Many successful social media marketing campaigns rarely if ever promote a company’s products or services. Fight the urge to use your social media account primarily as a means of selling.

Be creative

Variety in the content you post will make it less likely for people to stop following your social media account. Try mixing it up and use text, photos, videos, and even polls and giveaways. The more ways you can find to post content, the more likely you are to appeal to a wider audience and attract more followers.

Measure and fine tune

As you learn the ins and outs of social media marketing, you’ll begin to see what is working well and what is not. A great thing about social media marketing is that it yields a lot of data you can use to measure the effectiveness of your campaign. It may be that you’re posting the wrong type of content or you’re overselling. You might find that the social media platform you’ve chosen isn’t the best choice for the content you’re posting. You should constantly fine tune your strategies and then track what changes produce good results, and which ones produce negative results.

Offer incentives

Something many business owners find out when they get started with social media marketing is that it can be easier to get followers than to keep them. One reason people stop following a brand on social media is that they don’t feel they are getting anything of value from the relationship. Through social media your followers give you valuable feedback and endorsements. In return, you should give them something of value by offering special deals and other incentives.

Source: huffingtonpost.com/ian-mills/5-social-media-marketing-_b_5416086.html