3 hidden social media marketing techniques you shouldn’t ignore

Social media marketing is about much more than likes and shares. Today’s social media landscape extends well beyond posting a thought or meme and hoping it takes off with your audience. These three kinds of social media marketing should be on your radar if you want to stay current and competitive.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is the use of other experts in your industry who already have a sizable audience that respects and trusts them. Regardless of what industry you’re in, there are likely other people in your field who have a more established reputation and audience. Maybe they have larger social followings, are published authors or are a mainstream media celebrity. These are people you can learn from, and it would be particularly valuable to have a relationship with them.

Social media can be a great equalizer, particularly on Twitter and Instagram, where you can follow anyone you want. Simply find the influencers in your niche, follow them and begin to engage with them naturally. You know — like a real human being who isn’t a stalker.

Dark Social Media

One area you can’t measure, but that should be on your radar, is dark social media. This refers to all the ways people can share your content with other people without your knowledge. Examples include emails, text messages and direct social messages. In each of these cases, someone decided to share your content with one or more people, but they did so in a way that couldn’t be accurately measured or recorded.

While it’s unfortunate that you’re unable to track the impact of dark social media, that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. In fact, you should make it as easy as possible for people to share your work this way if they want to. For instance, consider putting email buttons on all your blog posts. Or, better yet, just make sure that your social sharing buttons include an “Other” button that links to email, texting apps like WhatsApp and whatever other choices someone might want to take advantage of.

Paid Social Media

Finally, you should strongly consider incorporating paid social media in your marketing strategy. Every social platform now offers the ability to promote posts, allowing them to be seen by far more people than your existing follower base. But be careful. It’s easy to run up costs without seeing a real ROI. Make sure that you’re using the best platform for your business, targeting the right audience and sending that targeted traffic to the best possible content.

Frankly, one of the least expensive platforms to advertise on is Facebook. It also has the best targeting and sports the largest global user base. So that’s probably a good place to start. But do give Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram due consideration.