6 Social Media Marketing Hacks for Best Bang for Buck

There’s all sorts of stuff you can do on Social Media and no shortage of people telling what to do. You can do this, or that, or the other thing, to get great return from your social media.

A myriad of methods to promote your brand online, but what works? Fact of the matter is you only have so many hours in the day, so where do you spend it best?

So, quite simply, you want the best tactics you can get from your time. The stuff that will actually be effective.

It’s a new form of ROI, return on effort investment. How efficient is one tactic VS another, for the effort required to do it?

6 simple marketing hacks or tactics that bang for buck

1. Content Distribution

No doubt you’re already doing content marketing, the generation of content on your various assets for the purposes of marketing yourself.

So we’ve ascertained that you have content to market, social media is the outlet that will let that content be seen by the masses.

The simple trick here is, every time you make a new post or blog entry, publish it on all of your social media profiles. It does a number of things for you, you get more clicks and visits to your new article, you get more visibility, and with a bit of luck achieve better customer loyalty. All of these things positively impact your SEO too!

Effort cost: Only a few minutes.

2. Content Re-distribution

While content distribution is about making new content visible to people, content re-distribution is all about making it ‘re’visible to everyone. Helping maximise the value of your older posts.

This is particularly useful for when you’ve got content that never dies, so called ‘evergreen’ content, stuff that is valid all year around. You can repost them on a rotational basis to ensure you get excellent bang for buck!

This idea has an added benefit of keeping your social media profiles full, active and alive. Regular updates that ensure everyone know’s what you’re up to and that you’re alive!

The trick here is to make sure you mix it up sufficiently enough that it doesn’t look like you’re repeating. Sometimes people do get sick of that and it becomes obvious.

Effort Cost: Less than one minute.

3. Discussion Engagement

Having a discussion on your content can drive much more engagement than just posting content. Creating a new discussion that pops up in peoples news feeds gives an opportunity for users unfamiliar with your content to get involved, have their say. At the same time it facilitates the opportunity for existing and well known users to be seen as a stronger part of your community. Either way it’s a win win and it’ll drive more conversions and traffic further down the road.

It’s one that you have to be careful with though, you need to vary it up based on what your content type is and how often your’e doing it. If there’s something interesting happening in your industry then it’s a good time to launch something, where as if there isn’t you’ll have to make something up, perhaps posing your opinion to get some eyeballs and incite discussion.

Effort Cost: 10 minutes a day.

4. Influencer Marketing

You’ve all heard about it before, use influencers to get what you want and get your message out there. Well, the theory itself is great and will get you eyeballs left right and center!

The catch here is, you have to find them and engage with them, and that’s where it gets hard. There’s a myriad of ways of getting to them, a bunch of different ways of engaging them; but the basic function is the same. You get hold of the person, tap into their existing follower base then BAM you’ve got their instant level of exposure, visibility and credibility.

The math work our really well. If you’ve got an influencer who is say at 100,000 followers themselves, even a small 1 per cent gain will mean an extra 1,000 new followers for you. Not a bad return!

Plus you have the opportunity to make this as complex or as simple as you want, simply it can just be the influencer sharing your content, or perhaps replying to a question you’ve posed and that will be enough!

Effort Cost: 1 hour per week.

5. Live Updates

Social Media is ever creeping close to a real-time experience, with the concept of Instagram TV and Facebook Live meaning you can bring people into your life and vice versa really easily.

The reality is, people want to know whats happening now, not later and not what happened two weeks ago, but rather what happened right now!

The most obvious use is using social networks at live events like conferences or talks. It’s easy to use, makes sense to everyone and instantly engages you with other people in the audience. It also allows a first person perspective on what your company is up to, all for only a small cost of a few minutes!

Effort Cost: A few minutes a day.

6. Contests

Social Media contests are effective quite simply because the promise of a price or a reward leads to more initial engagement. New users will be more likely to see, like and share your material. You’re essentially buying exposure.

Sure the marketplace is a bit flooded but it’s been proven time and time again that if done correctly it will get traction.

The added bonus here is, generally the only cost you have is the cost of the reward!

Effort Cost: A few hours per competition.

Despite the plethora of different tactics you can use, these strategies will give you some of the best overall returns on your time and effort as well as any financial investment you might make.

They should be your only tactics but including them regularly will allow you to see growth over time!