We love social media, people love social media, and you would be lying if you say you don’t love social media. And, as much as we all love it, marketers love it a bit more than any of us.

Thanks to social media optimization - a recent study revealed that marketing heads throughout the world consider social media as a very important means to capture brand loyalty and brand awareness.

So, if you are just getting started with the world of social media, you have to fall in love with it too – doesn’t matter if you want to or don’t want to.

So now, it’s your time to hug that sweetheart out. Let’s see how you, as a beginner, can do that…

What is Social Media Optimization?

Nowadays, who doesn’t use social media, we would be lying if we say it isn’t an integral part of our daily lives. In fact, the number of social media users grew almost double in 2022 with 4.59 billion active users from just 2.73 billion users in 2017.

In this case, optimizing social media accounts is one of the great ways for brands to stay connected to their audience. Social Media Optimization is nothing but a process of optimizing social media platforms and their content to improve visibility and engagement on the entire social networks. This is achieved through techniques such as sharing content, building brand awareness, and creating a strong online presence on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. The goal of Social Media Optimization is to drive traffic to a website from social media sites and increase brand recognition, customer engagement, and customer loyalty.  

6 ways you can utilize social media for promotion 

1. Schedule a monthly check-in

Technology evolves on a daily basis and so do social media channels. One important function of social media optimization is to utilize each and every possible feature of the platform and optimize it for better visibility. 

From our personal experience, we think a marketer must dedicatedly devote one day every month to exploring all the social media platforms to figure out if there are - a) any new features added, and b) any further scope of optimizing the existing features.  

Apart from just the features, you can also dedicate a day in the month to analyze the latest trends in social media marketing to keep your strategy updated.  

2. Emphasize cross-promotion

By saying cross-promotion, we mean executing a social media optimization strategy in a manner that cross-promotes one social media channel on multiple social media platforms. One way to do this is by including links to other social media profiles in the bio section of your profile – Facebook offers this amazing ability to add links to multiple social media channels in one’s profile.

A unique way to do this can also be sharing your profile in the form of posts on other social handles. For example, you could share the QR code of your Snapchat profile and Instagram profile on your Facebook posts to make it easier for people to connect with you.

3. Make branded social icons

Including links to different social media handles on the website has become a common practice any digital marketing company suggests to their brands. These icons serve as visual links to social media accounts and allow visitors to quickly and easily connect with the brand on their preferred social platforms.

But you can go the extra mile to make it look more appealing. With tons of theme options available online, you can customize the look of the social media icons by adding your brand’s touch to them.

You can customize graphical representations of popular social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) and design them to align with the look and feel of your brand. The use of branded social icons will help to reinforce the visual identity of your brand and create a consistent experience for users across different touchpoints.

4. Utilize your employees

Being a smart marketer, you would try to utilize every possible source that can contribute to your marketing and employees can be one such great source for you. This can be achieved by including employee advocacy in your marketing strategy to drive D2C growth.

Employee advocacy refers to the promotion of a company's products, services, and values by its employees, both inside and outside the workplace. This can be achieved through social media, personal networks, and word-of-mouth marketing.

It can be an effective way for companies to increase brand awareness and reputation, improve customer engagement, and foster employee engagement and retention. It involves employees becoming brand ambassadors, sharing their own positive experiences and perceptions of their company with others.

5. Create targeted ads

Targeted ads in social media optimization are directed toward specific audience segments based on their interests, behavior, demographics, and location. The goal of targeted advertising is to deliver relevant ads to the right people at the right time and place. It is surreal to know that in 2021, marketers around the world spent a total of 181.2 billion U.S. dollars on targeted social media ads.

Under this, you can use sophisticated algorithms that track the user's browsing history and search queries, and then use that information to show ads that are likely to be of interest to them.

Remember that running paid ads is a sensitive task as it directly involves monetary investment, so, if you are not confident enough, take the help of experts. Know what kind of agency you need to work with here.

6. Optimize bio with branded hashtags

Brand awareness is one of the primary reasons for any social media optimization strategy and branded hashtags are one of the best ways to achieve that on social media as they parallelly help in fostering community engagement, and drive conversation and advocacy around the brand.

Branded hashtags are hashtags created by a brand or company to promote a product, service, event, or campaign on social media platforms. These hashtags often include the brand name or a tagline associated with the brand and are used by customers, followers, and fans to engage with the brand and share their own experiences and opinions.

For example - #NikeRunning #JustDoIt #CocaColaLife

Okay, see yaa…

All the seven ways mentioned above are our personal favorites. However, it is just the tip of the iceberg as social media is a sea full of opportunities for marketers and it depends on their own creativity as to how they can leverage it to build a better marketing strategy to drive D2C growth.  

In case you are feeling overwhelmed to process all this information and bring it into action, you may want to hire a digital marketing company that can help you with your social media strategy. Our personal favorite is Design Process - a creative D2C Growth Studio that helps D2C brands all around the world to manage and scale their multi-functional digital projects. 

Should you really outsource your E-commerce business services? Know here.