Social media ranks incredibly high when it comes to the effective promotion of digital publications. Thanks to them you can actively engage your fans or get constructive feedback from followers, as well as vividly increase the number of readers and subscribers. And the best part is, you have got everything at your fingertips.
It doesn’t mean the only task required is to set up accounts on the most popular social media channels and the rest will fall into place. It never worked this way. Achieving significant and measurable results requires three elements: strategy, engagement, and regularity.
Sticking up to them along with using tips included in this article is a recipe for effective promotion.
Why do you need it at all?
If you had to give one name for a carbonated soft drink, what would you say? Or one brand of a fast food chain?
We bet we chose the same names.
It’s not the quality of the products that made them our first choices. It’s the power of promotion that causes us to think about these companies automatically. Of course, you can say that they are multinational corporations with loads of money and giant budgets for marketing campaigns which are perfectly known all around the world.
Sure, it’s hard to deny that. But the point is, the budget doesn’t play as important role as many think. This is all about goals and mechanisms, which work out in the same way, no matter the number of employees, company budget, or size of the market. Promotion is nothing more than a brand sending the message to the potential or regular audience for three purposes:
- to make people discover the brand and get to know it better,
- to encourage people to try and buy products,
- to build and increase brand awareness.
This message can be sent by various channels these days but there’s one option which has leveled the rules of competition in the market and made smaller companies no longer excluded in terms of marketing campaigns. It’s all about social media, of course.
The significance of social media
The times when the only powerful way to enter houses was television or radio spots were completely gone. As well as the times of needing giant money, equipment, and staff to do it. We owe this mainly to the development of technology, the Internet, and the appearance of social media.
The fact that promotion on social media is easily and commonly accessible is only one side of the coin. Apart from that undeniable advantage, there are others.
- Search Engine Journal says that there are 4.8 billion social media users worldwide, representing 59.9% of the global population and 92.7% of all internet users. That’s a lot of people to target.
- According to Hubspot, 27% of consumers are discovering products and their features through social media.
- They generate traffic to your website, blog, or digital kiosk.
- The communication is both ways and immediate, there are no boundaries between the brand and the audience.
- You receive immediate feedback in the form of users’ comments and reactions.
And so on. We could expand this list with many more points. However, the time has come for what you really came here for.
The overall rules and practical tips
Having a social media business account with a loyal and active audience requires a separate, well-thought-out, and based on strong analysis marketing strategy. This is not what we want to deal with right now.
Instead, we want to equip you with some general principles and practical, universal tips for social media usage which will be helpful for every digital publication publisher. Playing such a role and running such a business, you already have half the success behind you. All the stuff you collect while preparing an online issue are ready-to-use materials that can be a great base to prepare engaging posts on social media.
So, go through the list of pieces of advice, then grab and use in practice whatever you want. In case of any questions or hesitation, ask us for help. Are you ready to start?
Choose the right platforms for your title
Being everywhere makes no sense. Define your target group and focus only on platforms they are interested in. Simply speaking, be where your readers are. Most of them are probably on Facebook. You can consider promoting your magazine there as it remains the most popular social media channel.
One crucial factor when choosing a place to publish may be age. If you’re publishing for a younger audience, you’re more likely to find them on TikTok and Snapchat than on Instagram which is one of the favorite channels for Millenials. Just take a look at the chart below.
Apart from that, take into account the character of your title and its main subject.
- If you publish a publication in which photos count the most (like cooking, traveling, or designing magazines), try Instagram in the first place. This platform was made to emphasize the power of nice visuals.
- The X (formerly Twitter) channel is dedicated to publications providing news and daily updates, especially about politics and sports. There’s no space for long, evergreen content; short, live comments on what is happening right now will do better here.
- For business topics, LinkedIn will be the best choice. This is because it is the largest concentration of professionals on the entire Internet.
Complete the account fully in a clear way consistent with the brand
No one should ever hesitate, where they are, seeing your profile. Apart from obvious elements such as the title of the publication, profile, and background photos, don’t forget about a few words of explanation of who you are, what you do, and how often you publish new issues. You can write your mission statement, goals, or short history instead. Anyway, don’t let Intro empty, whatever path you take: The New Yorker’s or HuffPost’s.
The first one decided to write a longer, clearer explanation while the second limited themselves to the mysterious motto. As you can see, both of them perfectly know that links to places where readers can read and buy the magazine are a must.
Adjust the content to your audience’s preferences
Before you prepare your content strategy, get to know who your audience is and what preferences it has (again!). Only after understanding your target readers can you prepare tailor-made social media posts that meet their specific interests and needs. Gaining and maintaining interest through content leads to higher engagement, conversions, and loyalty.
For example, if you want to address your content to professionals, you may create content that focuses on career development, work-life balance, finding job strategies, and financial planning. On the other hand, if you’re targeting women who are moms, you may create content that focuses on parenting tips, pregnancy, family activities, and educational resources.
However, guessing based only on the magazine line is not enough. The path to understanding your audience leads through conducting market research, using social media listening tools, analyzing website analytics, or even conducting surveys and interviews.
TIP! The best tools you can use at the beginning are dashboards from social media networks like Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, and LinkedIn Analytics.
Remember that visuals say more than words
Apart from a great, engaging copy, a great social media post consists also of visuals: photos, videos, and gifs. They have a tendency to become viral and their role is extremely important because they are something that users bump into while scrolling their feeds; they are the ones that catch the eye and encourage them to read more and go deeper.
This doesn’t mean, however, that it must be beautiful, breathtaking, and of artistic merit. It’s more often about a unique and catchy idea.
Be active and regular
Publishing one post in a month or only when something happens is not enough. If someone has already followed you, they have expectations, they are here for something. One of the best ways to stay active and consistent is to prepare a content calendar, which is a schedule of the content you plan to post. It can be done in Excel or the form of a table in Word. It should include the types of posts, the frequency of publishing, the platforms you plan to use, and sometimes even a draft of the content with graphics.
TIP! Use the 5:3:2 rule and plan your schedule according to it. For every ten posts, five of them should be content from other sources relevant to your audience; three posts should be content you’ve created that’s relevant to your followers; two posts should be personal, fun content that makes your brand close to everyone who is here. Of course, along the way you’ll see which type works best, then you can change the ratio a bit. Sometimes, it’s worth publishing something experimental, completely different from what you’ve done before. Who knows what can happen?
Reward your followers
Don’t forget about people who have already followed you. They have to be taken care of, otherwise, they will leave and maybe never come back.
Offering rewards to your followers is a great idea that leads to boosting engagement, increasing the reach, and creating a buzz around your brand. Even if it requires a small investment from your side, the return may be massive and even viral.
What can you offer to your followers?
- Give them a special discount for a single purchase or subscription.
- Offer earlier access to the content or fragments, and issues for free.
- Organize a competition based on engaging followers. They will have tasks to do like writing a comment, reacting to a post, or sharing it. People can do it easily, and you will have a promotion for free.
It’s never too late to start a social media adventure
In the end, we want to mention one more important aspect of promoting a digital publication on social media. It is always an ongoing process that should start even before the title launches. If you did that, good for you, keep going. If not, there’s always a good moment to start and show your brand to the wider audience. And social media is the best place to find and engage them.
Before you know it, they will become your regular subscribers.