Social media marketing remains controversial with the opinion on its effectiveness divided. While some marketers swear by it, others scoff. So, what’s the truth? The fact is that social media marketing can be profitable. But must do it right.

Just gathering thousands of follows on Facebook and Twitter won’t make any money. Nor will pumping your feeds with advertisements do much to raise the bottom line. But the following seven social media marketing strategies will help you turn your social media into a practical source of income.

1. You Need to Invest

While you don’t pay to open social media accounts or post to feeds, you must invest time and money in your social media marketing campaign to make it work. You must keep your social presence alive, and that means delivering a lot of high-quality content. It also means engaging in conversations with your fans and followers. Quality content costs money and engagement costs time. You need to invest both to make a social campaign profitable. If you can’t afford to pay a dedicated social media manager, you may need to think again.

2. Plan for Success

You must base a social marketing campaign on research and planning if you expect it to be profitable. Work out who your target audience is, which social media it favors, which content it likes, shares, and interacts with. Then devise a clear research-based strategy to find, engage, and convert your audience into customers.

3. Be Predictable and Consistent

Many social media marketing campaigns fail because they are unpredictable and inconsistent. Sometimes that is because you don’t have a dedicated social media manager. To build and keep an audience you must post frequently and regularly, ideally several times a day. Consistency leads your audience to anticipate your content and look for it rather than finding it by accident, which primes your followers for engagement and increases conversion rates.

4. Optimize Content-Based Advertising

All social media are content-sharing platforms. In social media terms, you’re only as good as your latest content. Content which offers standout value to your followers in the form of entertainment, information, or opportunities will build trust in your brand and increase conversion rates in time. A successful social media marketing campaign is a long-term, slow-burn, soft-marketing strategy which works by embedding your brand, products, and services in the ecology of the social space through the highest quality content you can afford.

5. Get Personal and Engaged

Your high-quality content strategy will build brand awareness and followers, but that’s not enough to make a profit. You may represent the company, but make sure the company’s presence on social media has a personal face, name, and voice with whom people can engage. Again, this is where your social media manager comes in. A successful social media marketing campaign means getting involved in conversations, asking and answering questions, and above all being available and helpful.

6. A Clarion Call to Action (CTA)

While you should never push direct advertisements on social media, you must invite your audience to take actions which lead to sales. If you follow the other advice given here, then you’ll have a healthy relationship with your audience, and you’ll know how to talk with them. On that basis, make you CTAs clear and explicit, but like your content, make sure the product or service you’re suggesting has high-value. CTAs should make up only 5% of your total output.

7. Monitor, Analyze, Adapt

With time, your social media marketing campaign will generate a ton of data about your audience and how they interact with your brand online. Don’t ignore it. It’s a goldmine. Use analytics tools to learn what converts and what doesn’t. Do more of that which brings profit and ditch the rest.

Social media marketing is time-consuming and demands investment in every sense of the word. But if you’re smart enough in business to see the bigger picture and commit for the long haul, it’s one of the most effective routes to boosting your profits and building an army of dedicated, repeat-buying, brand advocates. The keys are to deliver lots of high-quality content, engage at a personal level, and base your social campaigns on data and research.