There are over three billion people worldwide who have at least one social media account, and many have more than one. It makes sense, then, for any business to do a large amount of its marketing online on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

In order to market well in this way and make an impact when so many other people are doing the same thing, you need to have a good social media strategy in place. If you can create one and follow it, your business and your profits will grow. Here are some things to consider when creating your ideal social media strategy for marketing.

Create Fresh Content

Posting just once and then hoping that that post will be interesting enough to go viral or to at least capture a few people’s attention is never going to be enough. If you intend to market through social media, you need to constantly be creating fresh content. That means regularly posting new, interesting, helpful content that people are going to enjoy; you want them to keep coming back for more.

Video is particularly useful for this. Not only can you provide the content your potential customers may need, but you can also show the human side of your business, and that will help hugely too. Of course, ensuring that you are a regular contributor not just to your own social media business page but that you comment on other posts too can be time-consuming, and you may need software for Gantt charts to ensure that you keep on track with your plan. Once you do, however, the payoff will be worth it, and you’ll find more customers much more easily.

Build Trust

It’s important to make your social media page or account somewhere people want to come back to time and again. The more they visit you, the more they will be inclined to buy from you, especially if your products and services are high ticket items. These purchases will always have a longer decision-making process behind them, so the more times you can engage with a potential customer, the better; it will make that decision a much easier one.

One way to ensure they keep coming back is to build trust. This can be done by posting fresh, exciting content as we’ve mentioned above – content that resonates with the customer – but it’s also about replying to comments, generally engaging with those who are visiting your page, and even posting non-business related information that will help those customers in other ways. You might, for example, share a post about a local community event. All of this will help to show you are a trustworthy business to buy from.

Use Your Ratings

On some social media platforms, and certainly, on your own website and external sites such as Yelp, customers can leave ratings and reviews for you. These are ideal for use in your social media marketing plan, even if they’re not one hundred percent positive.

Using good reviews to prove to customers that you’re good at what you do is an excellent idea, and the more reviews you have, the more likely this strategy is to work. However, even when you have bad reviews or have made a mistake, if you handle it in the right way, it can work for you too. Make sure that bad reviews always have a reply attached, apologizing and making things right if at all possible. Everyone makes mistakes, and allowing people to see yours and see that you did what you could to rectify it could be a positive in the end.