Life as a small business owner can be tough. On top of all the standard day to day operations, you need to stay on top of your social media and marketing activities, and one human can’t always do it all. We get it; we have the same problems ourselves.Over the past year or so, we’ve executed a ton of extremely effective and replicable ideas for our clients that can be useful to your brand or company. Here are some of our favourites.

1. Launch a Series

One thing users respond well to is consistency. If followers know they can expect something within a regular timeframe (for example, on a certain day and time each week), they’ll be drawn to your feed on the lookout for the newest post. For our client Two Chicks And Some Lipstick, a pair of expert hair and makeup artists, we introduced a short weekly video we called #TwoChicksTips where they briefly share a helpful hair or makeup tip in their own unique way. This assists in further establishing them as thought leaders in their field by providing valuable advice, while their fun, bubbly personalities and chemistry complement the message. The response was so overwhelming that we’ve now introduced an additional weekly video focused on their favourite products. We keep the videos organic and raw; they aren’t edited or produced, so it’s a super approachable way to dabble in the online video world.

2. Host a Contest

Everybody wants something for free, so running simple online contests is a win/win for all parties. Our client The Substance Group is an experiential marketing agency who work with major companies and brands in music, entertainment, sports, film and alcohol, and they often have access to some fantastic merchandise that make for awesome prizes. For social media contests to be successful, they need to be both timely and relevant to the brand. Substance does a lot of custom VIP experiences for companies, including some really cool events with NBA, NHL, CFL and MLB players, so we recently executed two well-timed Toronto Blue Jays contests right as the team hit the playoffs. We had ran sports merch giveaways with Substance in the past and they always do well, however the two Blue Jays contests blew up due to the perfect timing of the launch and the incredible support for the team across Canada. To encourage maximum participation, we keep contest entry rules simple and straight-forward, usually requesting nothing more than a combination of a Like, follow, comment or share. If you can secure desirable prizes, it cements your brand as one of influence and stature to your followers, and if your content is engaging you’ll have gained a bunch of new ones (on top of the brand awareness due to social sharing) for your trouble.

3. Account Takeovers

Influencer marketing is one of the fastest growing fields right now, so any time you can engage an influencer to work with your brand, you’re very likely to have some measure of success. Our client is a vacation rental and property management company who recently rebranded, and part of the launch activity was centred around influencers documenting staycations via Instagram in various rental properties across North America. We engaged people with significant social followings to ‘takeover’ the account and help launch properties in Montreal, Chicago and Los Angeles (with more to come).Part of the execution was having the influencer announce their staycation on their own Instagram, therefore attracting their followers to the brand, and then provide us with an agreed number of images and captions for us to post to the account. This was wildly successful and significantly accelerated the growth of their account by leveraging both the social currency of the influencer and the quality of the images presented.

4. Repurpose Content

If content is king, original video content is holy. BAOS Podcast is a craft beer podcast, blog and video series, and while the podcast itself is only 18 months old, they introduced video content over the last 6-8 months which more than 10x-ed their results (in both views/listens and followers). They began by shooting the podcasts and posting a shortened highlight video on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, and have now expanded into vlogs and other video content. Essentially, the videos are created with their YouTube audience in mind, however each piece of video content is uniquely repurposed to suit the requirements of the various social networks. For example, we help them create their 10 minute podcast highlight video for YouTube and Facebook; we also create a 30-60 second trailer especially for Instagram and Twitter. The two latter videos cater to the limitations of each respective network with a call to action to hit the link in the bio to view the full highlight video. There’s even an additional call to action at the end of the highlight video to listen to the audio podcast in full, thereby completing the social sales funnel. By using parts of or brief edits of the same video for each network, users have a sense that they are being catered to individually and aren’t just seeing the same thing that BAOS posts on other social mediums, while minimizing the heavy lifting on their end, giving them the time to produce more content.

5. Use an Engaging Theme

Instagram isn’t the most popular social network for no good reason. A great looking feed is a piece of modern art in and of itself, so if you’re able to present your profile in a way that’s both engaging and attractive, you’re going to win on that network. Sweet Touch Foundation, two brothers who are exceptionally talented DJs, executed a complete rebrand with us earlier this year. One element of that rebrand involved us erasing all their Instagram posts to date and starting from scratch. We consciously chose a sharp black and white theme, with a ‘minimal graphics’ rule (ie no flyers) and a consistent brand voice. By doing this, we’ve created an extremely consistent, attractive feed that has seen them grow their followers by over 3000%. We’ve implemented similar themes on Instagram accounts for other clients and we have seen a similar growth pattern. People want to look at engaging, pretty feeds, so it’s certainly something to consider to give your brand that extra edge.

6. Promote User-Generated Content (UGC)

You may have read our recent blog about our work with Toronto-based craft brewery Lost Craft and their use of User Generated Content. As we discussed, due to a combination of a great product, incredible branding and sharp, consistent social feeds, they’ve managed to attract an exceptional amount of UGC, which contributes to social proof, provides them with social content and promotes the brand via the feeds of their followers. Take a read of our post for more detailed information.

Rather focus on your business and have someone else handle social? Talk to us.

6 Killer Social Media Ideas To Market Your Business