Promote your brand for free on social networks

I don't think I need to remind you anymore that it is very important to use social networks to promote your products. For the past ten years, it has become essential to create Facebook and Instagram pages, it is now the basis of any marketing strategy.

The number of brands present on social networks has become so great that you will have to stand out from the crowd in order to be visible and attract the interest of potential customers.

Today, what we call "social marketing" requires a good dose of creativity and a constant presence. Beyond promoting your products, you need to interact with your audience and give of yourself to personalize your relationship as much as possible.

It is important to build a real relationship with your subscribers to instil a positive image for your brand.

Before you start posting on social networks and creating your ads, there are a few things you need to know to get your social marketing off to a good start without taking a single euro out of your pocket.

One of the most important things is to succeed in generating engagement organically (naturally/free of charge). To do this, you need to multiply the different types of content on your page, and not just promote your products.

1 / Complete your entire profile

A complete and regularly updated profile is proof of a functioning shop that inspires confidence in potential customers.

Make sure you have filled in all the features of your page to give as much information as possible to the people who will visit your profile.

- Complete your biography to humanise your shop

- Add a link to your store

- Add your logo as a profile picture and make sure it is legible enough when it is in the news feed

- Add a cover photo related to the products you sell. Don't hesitate to update it when you have a promotion or when you launch a new collection.

- Pin (highlight) to the top of your page a post that has generated a lot of interaction. This is "social proof" for new customers, who will see that you have an active community.

2 / Use famous quotes as images

Quotes are a way of communicating with your audience in a fun way that captivates them more. There will certainly be more comments on this kind of post.

To discover a variety of quotes to borrow, you can go to Pinterest for example and search for "quotes". You're sure to find something you like!

3 / Talk about current trends

Don't be afraid to talk about hot topics with your followers, it's a great way to get them to interact with your page. If you like to play with images, you can also create montages and parody news. Creating social content is the way to reach new people.

Example: during the 2018 football world cup, a lot of articles and parodies were published about the fact that the player Neymar often falls (one could even say "fakes" the fall). Many brands then evoked the subject by hijacking images, thus provoking engagement with their audience through humour and improving their organic reach.

4 / Add emoticons to your publications

We are now all used to using or reading emoticons, it has become commonplace. You should know that studies have been done on this subject and it turns out that a post containing emoticons is read twice as much as a post without them... Yes yes, it's curious 😄

These little icons not only make your post more visible but they also make your shop look nicer hence the value of using them to drive more engagement from your audience and improve your organic reach 🙂

5 / Organise a competition

Already mentioned in the previous article, the contest is an excellent way to interact with your audience and especially to win new subscribers. It's an easy way to advertise and gain notoriety quickly.

Obviously, you'll need to offer an interesting prize to hope for a large number of shares. It is also a good idea to ask participants to "tag" (name) two of their friends in the comments of the post. This way, your contest can go viral and reach a maximum number of people.

6 / Invite your subscribers to participate

In addition to the contest, you can also invite your followers to react to your publications by asking them to "tag" a person.

You've probably already seen or commented on those publications that start with "Tag a person who": these can quickly go viral as they often appeal to emotions or habits common to many people.

For example, you can encourage tagging someone who sticks their fingers in their nose while waiting for the light to turn green (I'm sure you know some of them...).

You will have to be a little creative to find a topic that speaks to a lot of people. You can use a humorous tone, or tap into the heartstrings of affect. You can also challenge them to name people who might do it.

The aim of the operation is above all to provoke engagement from your audience and, if possible, to create a buzz.

7 / Use gifs

The GIF is a format that lies between video and image. It is now frequently used on social networks. It is an element to take into account for your marketing, because it allows you to communicate with your followers in a playful way.

Sometimes a simple GIF is enough to make yourself understood and above all to provoke a smile or even a laugh from the person reading you.

You'll find plenty of them on GIPHY and TENOR, and you can also find GIFs on Facebook.

If you are an artist at heart, you can create them yourself by turning your videos into GIF images.

You can also use the Boomerang app to quickly create and loop your videos.

8 / Add as many #hashtags as possible to your Instagram posts

Instagram doesn't work like Facebook: on this social network you have to make yourself known to your target audience. One way to do this is to use hashtags that are relevant to your brand.

First of all, you need to avoid "spam" users and bots that are not part of your target audience at all and that comment on your publication just to get a "follow". To do this, do not use hashtags that are too popular, with more than 500,000 posts.

How do you spot them, you might ask?

It's simple: go to Instagram and search for hashtags in the # section. The number of publications is written just below.

We can see below that the #tshirt is quite widespread with more than 24 million publications...

You may then decide to spell your general keyword in a different way (if possible). For example, if you change the spelling of "tshirt" and search for #teeshirt, you will find fewer publications (822 007).

To target more, I suggest you add another word related to your products. If you sell t-shirts whose design is inspired by the geek universe, you can search for #tshirtgeek and there, it becomes interesting, since we arrive at 6073 publications.

It is possible to put 30 different hashtags on a single publication so it's up to you now ;)

If you like treasure-hunting games, you'll love searching for your keywords (well, if searching isn't your thing at all, you can help yourself to sites like hashtagify).

Do you already apply all these tips?

Roll up your sleeves!