The marketing environment is always changing. Tested and proven marketing strategies are being overtaken by the latest techniques. So, how do you stay ahead? Read on to find out.

Build Pillar Content

When you’re a small business, resources are always a stretch. Try to do multiple social media platforms, make videos, make content and everything else that you need for your online presence to stand out. In order to maximize those resources, make videos that are 30 minutes long. That is going to allow you to chop them up into smaller pieces and use those pieces on different platforms.

Focus On One Platform

Once you build that pillar content and you’re able to put it on different platforms, realize that the plan and the goal of that content is always going to cater to the platforms that you want to focus on. If you’re a small business, try not to focus on all of the platforms. Don’t spread yourself out too thin. Try to focus on the one platform where you want to make native content for.

Build that pillar content for that specific platform where your audience is, where your customers are and where your niche is. Then, if you want to have all the platforms and you want to validate each of them, cut up and use those pieces on the other platforms. It might not be native if you make a native Facebook video and post that Facebook video to Twitter. It might not be native to Twitter, but you can still do that. It is virtually impossible to build content that is native to every platform or pillar content that works everywhere. 

Post Consistently 

All social media platforms are built around an algorithm that either up-ranks or de-ranks your page based on how you’re performing and how many of your followers are engaging with your content. When you’re marketing for medical practices, tell your audience when you’re going to be posting and do it consistently. For example, if you say you’re going to post twice a week, then go out and post twice a week. If you’re specifying the days, post on those days and don’t miss. There’s so much noise in so much content out there that if you miss your days and you’re not consistent, then people are going to find that information elsewhere. And at the end of the day, the goal of your marketing is to stay top of mind with your audience until the timing is right for them to buy your product or your service.

Be Authentic

It doesn’t matter what business you’re doing. Recognize that everything you put out isn’t going to be perfect. But what matters is that you’re authentic to your product and to your personal brand. Whatever you’re trying to market, be yourself. Talk about your products in the most authentic way. Talk about how you make the products and how people can use your products. Using that in a non-selling environment is going to offer that value back to your audience, and they’re not going to see that you’re faking it. 

Learn From Your Competitors

Most people often ask, Should I be liking my competitors? Should I follow them? What should I do? And the answer is absolutely to go out and be part of the community within your niche. Recognize that if you post something, it doesn’t mean that they can’t post it too. If they post something, it doesn’t mean that you can’t cater it to your authenticity and post it to your brand. There are no barriers to entry to social media. It is your job to go out there and make content authentic to you and put it out there. You can’t control whatever everyone else does. So be involved in the community. Watch what your competitors are doing. It can give you an idea of what your audience and what your niche is looking for. Then focus on creating and correcting to make that content better and better every single week.

Be Involved in the Community

Be involved in the community means that you’re following groups related to your service or your product. You’re getting involved in the real community, getting out to networking events, and talking about your product and about your service. You have to develop relationships with people and with your audience. Back in the day, you would have started your business just shaking hands, going out and meeting people. But now you have the Internet. What you do with that is now you’re developing that same handshake relationship through your social media presence again. Get out there and do whatever you would do in a normal networking event online. Meet people in groups. 

Comment Back to Everybody

When you are starting out and building an audience, it’s really important that you engage with your audience constantly. You’re giving value back to the audience because you expect value to come from them with the engagement. It’s a give and take relationship, going back and forth. Recognize that every single person that comments on your page needs to get a response back. The biggest mistake some small businesses make is when they put all this content out and they start getting some engagement, they usually don’t answer back. They don’t give any of that value back to their audience. And then they wonder why the audience disappears. Be involved with your audience. That’s going to take those true believers and make them stay fully engaged with your brand as you get a go.

Whatever you’re doing online, keep people on the platform that you are focusing on. For example, if you’re posting to LinkedIn, focus on it. You don’t want to divert people’s attention away from LinkedIn to YouTube, Facebook or anywhere else. If you look at their algorithms from a common sense aspect, they all want to keep people on platform. They want to be able to retarget and put their ads to that audience. So when you take them away, you’re starting to make your content not get the full organic reach that you’re looking for. Focusing on keeping people on that specific platform is going to make a huge difference.