Creative social media marketing strategies to boost your ROI

Are your social media marketing strategies moving the needle? Are you gaining new customers from your social channels? These are some of the frequently asked by marketing leaders come to us as new clients because they need help seeing the business value of social media.

If you’ve been asking yourself these questions, you aren’t alone.

While 75% of CMOs say they’re under increased pressure to “do more with less,” social media can be a great marketing channel to focus on. With the right approach, you can squeeze out more value from social and reach a wider audience for minimal investment.

Keep reading for best practices and creative social media marketing strategies to amplify your brand awareness and bolster your sales pipeline.

Get the most bang for your social media buck

One of the trickiest things about social media is that it’s constantly evolving. From the changing platform algorithms to the latest user trends, it can be challenging for marketers to keep up. Adapting your social media marketing strategies continuously and regularly measuring how different campaigns and channels perform is crucial.

That being said, some proven social media best practices do have staying power. You can be confident implementing these as mainstays in your social strategy, and they can make your efforts more efficient.

Prioritize quality over quantity

Coming up with fresh content every day is exhausting for social media managers, and it’s also not an efficient use of their time. There’s never a real need to post on social channels just to get something out there.

In most cases, fewer, high-quality posts will outperform more frequent mediocre ones. Focus on producing social media content that adds value for followers so they’ll be more inclined to engage with it and share it with their networks.

Post during high-engagement windows

Use analytics to discover the days and times when your target audience is most active and schedule social posts during those periods for maximum organic reach.

For example, you can use Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics, LinkedIn Analytics, etc., to see when your followers are most active and engaged with your content. You can also use third-party tools, like Sprout Social or CoSchedule, to recommend the best times to post on each platform.

While using your unique engagement data to inform posting schedules is best, you can get more general recommendations in HubSpot’s guide, Best Times to Post on Social Media.

Repurpose existing content for social

Look to your high-performing content assets for social media inspiration. You can pull out impactful elements from a great blog post, ebook, video, podcast episode, etc., to create new social media assets.

For example, if you have an intense customer testimonial video that’s getting a lot of views, pull out a compelling quote and share it in a simple social graphic. This is an efficient and effective way to repurpose your team’s work and get continued use out of it.

Use AI to curate topics and generate content ideas

Using AI technology in marketing isn’t a trend; it’s the future. And it’s a low-cost way for marketers to generate content and create creative ideas for social media.

AI writing tools can help your team get “unstuck” when creating content for social media posts. While AI can never replace your quippy human copywriter or social media manager, it can provide some solid ideas and assist your team with production.

You can use AI tools to identify trending topics in your industry and generate potential ideas and first drafts of posts around these topics to help get the ball rolling.

11 creative tactics to increase social engagement

If you feel like your company’s social posts are falling flat or you’re struggling to come up with fresh ideas, you’re not alone. According to a 2023 Social Sprout survey, 49% of marketers say identifying and responding to emerging trends on social media is the biggest challenge in managing their brand’s social presence.

To improve engagement and inject some life into your social channels, try the following creative social media marketing strategies and tactics.

As mentioned above, repurposing content for social media use is a smart way to stretch your marketing budget and squeeze the most juice from your existing assets.

Extract bite-sized pieces from longer content (e.g., a pull quote from a blog article or a 15-second clip from a video) and post these snippets as social posts.

Use the carousel features on platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn to tell a story or elaborate on a complex idea. The need to scroll or click through the carousel encourages users to engage with your posts (rather than just scroll on). These clicks also give you better engagement data to know how many people see the content.

In addition to your branded company posts, consider having your subject matter experts publish articles on LinkedIn, Medium, and Threads to establish credibility and thought leadership in your industry.

Audiences typically prefer to learn from (and trust) real people over brands, so sharing content from your resident experts can increase social engagement.

As a bonus, publishing expert content can improve your website’s SEO. In 2018, Google released an algorithm update called “E-A-T” (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), which prioritizes search results that contain legitimate and reliable information authored by true experts.

The large majority of content on social media is passive, meaning people may glance at it and scroll past it in a matter of seconds. Break up the monotony for your audience with interactive posts.

Things like polls and quizzes can increase your engagement and provide valuable audience insights that can be used in other content.

According to Deloitte’s 2022 Digital Media Trends Report, 70% of GenZs report spending more time than intended watching user-generated content.

People are more likely to engage with your business when they hear good things directly from other customers. Consider all the places customers are talking about your business or industry and find ways to use that user-generated content to your advantage.

While you want to keep your social presence professional, occasionally giving your audience a peek behind the curtain is okay. Let them see the real people behind your organization through an unpolished lens.

You can post unfiltered photos or videos to give your brand a more authentic feel. Believe it or not, these posts often get higher engagement than more highly-produced content.

Do you ever see those “throwback Thursday” (#TBT) posts on Instagram? It’s fun to reminisce!

Take advantage of this trend with some throwback posts of your own. Share an old ad from your business or a picture of something relevant to your industry and take your followers down memory lane.

Influencer marketing isn’t just for beauty brands—any industry can leverage it to increase organic reach. Social media influencers can persuade their fans and followers to take specific actions based on their recommendations. By partnering with them on social media posts, your brand gets exposure to their loyal audiences.

Sometimes, you have to pay influencers, but some will work with you for free just to get visibility with your audience, which helps them grow their reputation.

One easy way to find social media influencers in your industry is to search hashtags that match your target audience’s pain points.

Host live conversations or debates on platforms like YouTube or Instagram Live with experts discussing hot topics in your industry. You can ask the audience to comment or vote during the event to drive engagement and reach.

Use Google’s concept of micro-moments—when consumers turn to their devices for quick answers to questions—to add value for your social media audience. Create content that directly addresses these quick, frequently-searched questions.

For example, a kitchen supplies brand might post a 15-second video on “how to clean a coffee maker” or a mental health provider could share a short video with easy mindfulness breathing exercises to help workers focus during stressful times on the job.

The default setting for most social media platforms is “sound off” (and many people prefer it that way anyway), so be sure any videos you post make sense without a soundtrack. If you include an audio component, it’s best practice to include captions for engagement purposes and to make the content accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing.

Get tangible social media results with TBH Creative

By embracing these innovative and adaptable social media marketing strategies, you can significantly enhance your brand’s online presence and customer engagement.

TBH Creative specializes in turning these insights into actionable, results-driven plans tailored to your unique business needs.

If you’re interested in modernizing your strategy for social media but aren’t sure how to get started, our team of experts can help you develop a plan and reach your business goals.