Are you in charge of getting your company’s social media marketing up and running? Using social media to grow your business, generate leads and build a brand may seem like a huge task, and in some ways it is. But there are steps you can follow to improve your chances of success, which will help you take advantage of everything social media has to offer.

Whether you’re just getting started or have been active on sites like Facebook and Twitter, but haven’t had much success, follow these 21 social media marketing tips to propel you to the next level:

1. Create a Plan for Each Social Media Channel

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So many businesses make the mistake of blindly jumping into social media marketing without a strategy or plan.

If you can’t answer questions like “why are you on social media?” or “what social media platform features your target audience?” then it’s time to hit the reset button. Start putting together a plan in writing that you and your team can refer to when you need it.

Your social media plan should consist of mini-plans for each social media channel you expect to be active on. You’ll have a plan for your Twitter, Facebook and so forth.

If you’re just getting started, keep your number of active social networking sites to three or less. For most businesses, particularly small businesses, trying to tackle five different social media accounts often results in doing a mediocre job with little to no results.

Not sure where to start? Check out our free guide, 7 Steps to Create a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy.

2. Post Consistently

Sending out one Tweet per day just isn’t going to cut it. Certain platforms like Instagram and Snapchat don’t necessarily move as fast as Twitter or Facebook. This means you don’t have to publish as often. But you should still develop a routine posting schedule and be consistent.

This ties back in with your social media marketing plan. You should outline:

• How often you plan to publish on each social media channel
• What type of content you plan to publish
• Social media outreach publishing schedule (reaching out to influencers via social media)

Remember your followers are likely following hundreds or even thousands of other people. If you’re not publishing new content as often as the other accounts out there, it’s easy to get lost and forgotten.

3. Be Picky About What You Share

When it comes to figuring out what to share on social media, quality beats quantity. You want to publish content consistently, but it also has to be valuable. Quality content is:

• Relevant to your audience
• Helpful
• Entertaining

One trend becoming popular that you should be cautious of is relying on tools that “suggest” content to share to your audience. Sometimes the suggestions are decent, but in most cases, you’ll end up with a lot of suggested content that isn’t very relevant or high quality.

These tools typically run based on keywords and data feeds. For example, if you’re searching for content related to “content marketing,” your results may include suggestions like this:

If you didn’t take the time to check the suggestions and just blindly added the posts, you’d be sharing content that’s not really helpful to your audience. Strive to share the best content, not just what’s immediately available.

One way to have a steady supply of fresh content is to create a list of sites in your industry or niche that are known to publish high quality content. Add them to an RSS reader like Feedly. Then you’ll have a dashboard full of the latest posts from sites you trust and know have relevant content that you can confidently share with your followers.

You can even integrate Feedly within the Sprout Social dashboard!

4. Use a Social Media Management Tool

If you’re using the native publishing platforms for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you’re wasting time and being less productive. Social media management tools like Sprout Social make it a lot easier to:

• Publish content across multiple platforms
• Schedule posts in advance
• Collaborate with your team
• See all of your social media feeds from a single dashboard instead of logging into five different sites
• Track and measure your results

There are plenty of other benefits to using a social media dashboard, but those instances alone are more than enough to make the move. The casual user may be able to stick with managing their social media from their phones, but as a business, you need to use a tool that will allow you to be more efficient and strategic.

5. Post More Images

The results are in and photos have shown to be the most popular type of social media content for engagement. They get the most shares on Facebook.

And the most Retweets on Twitter.

The most evident example of the power of images for social media are sites like Instagram and Pinterest, which are primarily driven by images. In fact, Instagram has the most engagement of any social media channel. It’s not a coincidence that both Instagram and Pinterest were able to gain a lot of traction and see more success than other failed social networks.

Adding images to your social media posts has never been easier. Tools like Canva and Landscape allow you to create perfectly-sized images that are fit for all major social media channels. And you can also do things like use images for upcoming events, make company photos and craft other image tasks for posts to get more visual with your content.

Don’t forget to add Twitter Cards to your website so any blog posts you Tweet will have a featured image built right in like ours. It’ll help your Tweets stand out in your followers’ streams.

View image on Twitter

6. A/B Test

This is a tip that a lot of social media marketing professionals take advantage of, but not many small businesses on social media are even aware of. A/B testing or split testing, involves using multiple headlines for the same piece of content to see which generates a better response. Marketers use A/B testing a lot for landing pages and sales pages, but you can also incorporate split testing into your social media posts.

Instead of publishing a Tweet or Facebook post once and then forgetting about it, schedule the link to be shared multiple times and change the headline out with each post.

A/B testing is important because people will react differently to a post depending on the copy. In our post, Call to Action Phrases That Will Convert, we went over some of the psychology of words and how we interpret them.

The reason why a piece of content is lacking success on social media could be due to low quality content or that your headline in the Tweet, Pin or Facebook post didn’t capture your followers’ attention.

Use Sprout Social’s post planning feature to schedule your posts to be shared throughout the week and test different headlines. Then see which one has the best engagement.

7. Measure & Analyze

To go along with the previous social media marketing tip, you need to measure your efforts and analyze the results. Over 40% of businesses don’t track their social media ROI at all, so they have no idea whether or not anything they’re doing is working. If you don’t want to fall under that umbrella, start tracking your social media activity right now.

Some of the metrics that you want to look for include:

• Reach and engagement for Facebook
• Impressions, visits and mentions on Twitter
• Views and actions on Google+
• Impressions, clicks and interactions on LinkedIn
• Impressions and engagement on Pinterest
• Likes, comments and mentions on Instagram

You should track these metrics on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis so you know when and if you need to make changes to your social media strategy.

8. Don’t Be Afraid to Pay-to-Play

Facebook and other social media networks continue to significantly reduce the amount of organic visibility on your posts, which has more businesses resorting to paid social media advertising to get their message out there. Whether it’s boosting a post or promoting a Tweet, social media advertising is a lot more common as these platforms start to grow.

If you want to accelerate your social media marketing efforts and have a budget for it, exploring paid advertising might be worth a try. The costs are generally lower than other platforms like Google AdWords or even media buying, which makes social media advertising appealing for small businesses and startups.

On top of that, you have nice targeting options like a user’s interests and detailed demographics. If you’re new to paid social media advertising, here’s a good starter kit that’ll show you some of the basics.

9. Join in on Communities

Within large social networks, smaller communities form. Whether it’s Facebook Groups, Twitter Chats, Google+ Communities or LinkedIn Groups, there are plenty of opportunities for you connect with like-minded people and companies within your niche.

Participating in these communities will help you establish yourself or your company as an authority. Use communities as an opportunity to share your knowledge and interact with influencers. As you start to connect with these influencers, they’ll be more likely to share your content with their followers on social media and maybe even on their own websites.

Look for communities related to your industry on the social media channels you’re active on, then start joining and actively participating. Try starting with Facebook groups or Twitter Chats because they tend to be the most active. But this can vary.

If you’re new to the world of Twitter Chats, join in on our next #SproutChat to see what it’s like!

10. Build a Community

What if there aren’t any existing communities for your industry, or none that are active? Then it’s the perfect time for you to be proactive and create one.

Assuming that your industry has a decent amount of people active on a social media channel, start reaching out to let interested people know you’re starting a Facebook group, Twitter Chat or LinkedIn Group and you’d like to invite interested users to join.

Some ideas for groups you could start are:

• A local small business group for your city.
• Groups of people within your industry.
• Groups with other companies related to your industry. For example, real estate agents, mortgage brokers and construction companies.

A lot of the time, there is a desire for groups, but either nobody thought of the idea or they just didn’t take the effort to put it together. You can be a trailblazer and lead the group.