<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Social-Media-Marketing.png" alt="Social Media Marketing" width="685" height="180" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-9423" />

If you’re struggling to master the art of social media marketing, you are not alone. It can be challenging to automatically know the best ways to utilize social media when it comes to your marketing efforts. What once started as a platform for casual interactions has transformed into something much more. Social media is now one of the most important marketing platforms for businesses and has become the people adults and teenagers show off to the world what they enjoying, what they are doing, and what is going on in their lives. 

One of the reasons it’s become a marketing platform is that everybody’s on it and it’s the easiest way to connect with your customers to find out what they like, what they hate, and to introduce them to your brand. Since this trend isn’t going away anytime soon, it’s time to embrace social media marketing and learn how to do it better. Here are some tips from the experts on how to better market via social media. 

<h2>There are more options than Facebook</h2>

<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Facebook-Marketing.jpg" alt="Facebook Marketing" width="275" height="180" class="alignright size-full wp-image-9422" />Many companies lean towards Facebook for social media marketing needs. Being one of the first platforms out there for social media, it’s become the easiest go-to for creating a business page and promoting the brand. Many fail to realize that your Tweets and Google+ updates may be more likely to be seen rather than getting lost in the shuffle of Facebook news feed. 

Facebook is a great place to start but don’t forget to work on different platforms to ensure you are reaching more people. People may want to pin your stuff on Pinterest, see your new product line on Instagram, or re-tweet you on Twitter, so be sure to get set up with most of the major social media platforms. Schedule out your updates through HootSuite to have your different sites updated when you’d like.

<h2>Analyze your efforts and invest more time</h2>

You should definitely the time to analyze where you’re at now with social media marketing and where you could improve. If you feel that you’re doing a great job already, take a look at your customer conversion rate, your number of followers, how much interaction is taking place, and which platforms seem to do the best. Perhaps you don’t need to be on Pinterest but you do really well on Facebook. Investing the time to really analyze where you’re at and to dedicate more time into improving. The average amount of time you should be working on social media each week would be 6-11 hours. 

<h2>Build a following and plan ahead</h2>

Part of the reason you need a social media account is because you need to develop your fan base. Increasing your exposure to customers through social media is one of the most important benefits behind utilizing this tool. It’s important to take the time to engage with your following, share interesting posts, respond to complaints, and to show gratitude to happy customers. 

Make sure you plan out time each week to work on social media from scheduling in blocks of time to keep it up to date to making sure your blog posts and other content are easily sharable on social media. 

<h2>Videos and podcasts</h2>

<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Social-Media-1.jpg" alt="Social Media" width="270" height="180" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-9424" />Another way to really market well on social media is to start promoting videos and podcasts. While you might be used to sharing news stories in the industry, funny photos, tips and advice from your company, or updates on what the company has been up to, it would be wise to start implementing more photos and videos when you post. 

People are more likely to read your post if there is an image and they are even more likely to stick around if there is a video to see. Share viral videos, how-to videos, videos explaining your latest blog posts, or podcasts of experts in the field talking about the industry or interviews with experts sharing information your customers would love. 

These are a few great tips to get you started in a smarter approach to social media marketing. 
