Social media plays a vital role in every aspect of online marketing. Modern marketing teams understand the importance of social media and no wonder they use it to create buzz around their brands, products and services. Unfortunately most businesses are still unaware of the true power of social media.

Whether we like it or not the fact remains, we are living in an age where we can’t afford to wait for the opportunities to strike; that is why organisations need to be ahead of time. They need to use social media intelligence to generate the maximum value for their businesses.

Quick facts:

• A staggering 77% of B2C companies have acquired new customers through their Facebook presence.

• Twitter has approximately 320 million monthly active users.

• More than 16 billion photos have been uploaded to Instagram since its launch.

Here are a few tips to utilise these social media sites effectively:

• Spend time – Since social media marketing is a time consuming task, you must give special attention to the timing of your posts on different sites. This form of marketing requires deep involvement, toengage your customers and develop relationships with them.

• Generate traffic – You need to be creative, innovative and experimental while using social media platforms. You should understand the current marketing trends before developing your content. This will maximise the impact of your efforts.

• Post regularly –It is very important to keep your customers engaged besides attracting potential customers. This is how you can convert a browser into your fan in no time. You must share interesting and informative content with your customers to inspire them and build trust in the community.

• Analyse your competitors – You must find out what your competitors are doing to attract new customers. You must identify what sort of information they are using to improve their customer base. Thus, you can improve your social media strategy and its effectiveness.

• Post valuable content – You should postinteresting and useful content for your customers. Always write structured content. Create short, clear, practical, informative and crisp videos for your customers so that they can understand your message.A focused content campaign improves your customers’ engagement and helps you to achieve more traffic. Your originality will reflect in your brand and improves its reach.

• Business promotion – You can promote your business through brochures, infographics and other materials. You can post discount coupons and offers for your customers to encourage them to act.

However, you must be very careful while posting any content on social sites. You must proofread and edit them to make them look more credible. Unfiltered content can tarnish your image and may repel your potential customers.

In addition, you can use advanced Social media tools to promote your website efficiently. You can use Hootsuite, Agora Pulse, Social Oomph, Sprout Social, Buffer, MeetEdgar, Crowd Booster, etc. to drive more traffic. Make sure you strike the right balance.