Approximately half of the global population is now actively engaging with social media, investing an average of two and a half hours each day – roughly 15 hours per week. You likely found this page via some social media post.
As social media becomes ever more prevalent in the lives of current and future customers, brands need to find a way to stand out from the barrage of posts going out daily. How can you establish connections with your audience that will enable you to direct them toward your site and inspire them to take the next step?
That is where a solid social media marketing strategy comes in.
When it comes to achieving success with your strategy, it’s essential to build an appropriate groundwork. In this article, we’ll look at nine ways you can make sure your social media endeavors get the most impact. No matter which brand you’re representing, each of these steps can help you maximize your efforts.
What is Social Media Marketing Strategy?
A social media marketing strategy involves utilizing social media platforms to engage target audiences and achieve specific business objectives. Content posted should help raise brand awareness, engage the community, increase customer involvement, generate leads, and foster brand advocacy.
A well-thought-out plan with paid and organic content is key to success. It’s not enough to have one or the other, but rather an effective combination of both for optimal results.
- An organic social media strategy concentrates on sharing content to enhance brand identity, show your audience ways to benefit from your products and services, and increase interaction among your followers and society (which could include user-generated content).
- A paid social media advertising strategy targets certain users to create interest in your brand and establish leads.
- Audit Your Existing Efforts
Whether changing an existing tactic or building one from the ground up, assessing what you currently have is an essential beginning.
A social media audit can provide many revelations that could be used as a foundation for crafting a new approach. Among other things, it can answer questions like:
- What kind of material is connecting with your viewers? Is there anything that needs to be revised to what you estimated it would be?
- Who composes your current supporters? What do they find appealing?
- At what frequency do you post, and at what time? What hours have been most successful in terms of engagement?
- What is your opinion about what needs to be amended? What are other people’s opinions?
- What are your current tactics for community management? How often do you respond to inquiries on social media, and how quickly is your response time?
This activity can pinpoint areas for growth and guide the strategic tasks ahead.
- Set Your Business Goals and Communicate Them
Are you hoping to expand your social media presence and construct an online following? Utilise social networks as a prime source of lead generation!
It is important to determine your objectives from the outset to give you a clear direction for your social media strategy. The two goals above can be used as a guide – this will enable the setting of more specific objectives and provide a solid foundation for rolling out your plan.
- Grow social presence
- Lead generation
Building a strong following can help to elevate engagement, maintain customer loyalty, and reinforce the company as an attractive place of employment.
Turning followers into customers, helping customers narrow down their consideration set, and driving traffic to landing pages will all aid in creating brand advocates.
Making sure all stakeholders are informed of the firm’s objectives and that everyone is working towards the same purpose will be facilitated by disseminating this information to all internal teams.
- Determine the Metrics That Will Gauge Your Strategy’s Success
Now that you have identified the main objectives of your social media marketing plan, it’s time to evaluate which metrics should be monitored to ascertain how much progress you are making toward achieving them.
For each business goal, specify what type of action and engagement you expect from your audience. Avoid sticking to traditional metrics and explore other options that reveal the real story behind the numbers.
Tracking your CTR is essential when generating leads, but examining your audience’s needs and how well your content resonates with them can provide deeper insights to help power your campaign.
For example:
Interactions per impressions: What is the effect of your content? Is it prompting reactions from your intended audience? Are they skimming over you on their timelines?
Actions per impressions: Are your posts generating the desired outcomes? Are they inducing viewers to take action?
Cost per engagement: Are your advertisements prompting the desired results from your audience? Can you deploy your money on each platform more effectively?
- Know Your Target Audiences, Inside and Out
It’s essential to understand your audience when pursuing content marketing. Doing so allows you to recognize which requirements you are trying to satisfy for them, granting you the best opportunity to achieve the desired reaction.
Think about who your ideal followers might be when creating audience personas. Ask yourself questions like:
- What demographic, age group, and interests are you aiming for with your strategy?
- At what point in their journey is your customer? What obstacles can you help them overcome?
- What kind of activities are they engaging in on social media? What topics do they enjoy, and who do they look up to?
Using an audience segmentation tool, you can swiftly assemble personas across different social media channels. You may also gather your customers’, followers’, and prospects’ feedback through surveys – which will afford a never-ending supply of information to uncover novel developments and trends and lead upcoming marketing tactics.
- Pick the Social Media Platforms Where Your Audiences Are
To move forward, one must figure out which social media platforms suit their brand to form an effective presence.
For each of your target personas, what daily networks inform their routines? Today’s brands widely use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn; however, your audience insights will also point you to additional popular networks like TikTok, Pinterest, or Clubhouse.
To get the most out of each platform, analyze how their particularities can help attain your business objectives. Become acquainted with the dissimilarities and peculiarities between them. For instance:
- Users find their way around the platform and seek out certain experiences when they use it. They’re looking for a unique social experience each time.
- What can you learn about the algorithms each platform utilizes, and how can you adjust your approach in response?
- Which content types receive more interaction on each platform?
Socialbakers’ research revealed that carousels were likelier to elicit reactions from Instagram users than videos; live video, however, proved to be the post type with the highest degree of engagement.
- Create a Detailed Social Media Calendar
The secret to a successful social media marketing strategy is to provide consistent, compelling content. This will help your brand gain more followers, maintain engagement amongst existing ones, and keep your company at the forefront of potential customer’s minds when they begin their buying journey.
Creating a social media calendar is an effective way to ensure that your content is consistently flowing. Not only does it help you stay organized, but it also allows you to plan for future pieces of content, create an even mix of different types of posts, and track past successes.
- It’s important to plan and have a roadmap for your posts. Take the time to think about what content you will disseminate and which channels you will use. Doing so will allow you to see your upcoming posts in advance, whether days, weeks, or months away.
- Discover any unmet needs in your communications and devise a way to satisfy them.
- Map out your content distribution plan to back up any promotional efforts in the future.
- Enhance your understanding of when to post by visualizing the timing of your posts. This will help you plan postings at suitable intervals (if multiple posts are scheduled on the same network).
Every platform is unique, as is how its users engage with it. To ensure your posts have optimum reach and remain organized, follow the new guidelines for each network and integrate them into your scheduling plan.
- Generate Content That Engages and Converts
Creating content and ads that stand out from the crowd and engage with your audience combines art and science. It takes creativity to be seen amongst the posts and ads your target viewers view daily.
Your social media audit (Step 1) and audience insights (Step 4) can be utilized as references for this step. Examining how others accomplish this step may also provide stimulus and aid in generating fresh ideas.
Here are some questions to ask during this step:
Content Types: Are you providing content that your audience desires? If not, are there types of content (e.g., videos, infographics) that evoke more engagement to which you could dedicate more time and attention?
Influencers: Are any micro or macro influencers followed or interacted with by your audiences that could open up an opportunity for influencer marketing?
Competition: It is important to evaluate how other brands engage their audience’s similarities to yours. Explore their content, examining what pieces resonate and what goes unnoticed. This exploration may reveal a content gap your brand can fill on its profile.
Personalization: Is it possible to use dynamic ads that are personalized to the user? What possibilities exist for personalization to support social shopping without appearing “creepy”?
Style: Are there any brands, inside or outside of your industry, to which you may want to adopt a similar style and approach?
- Set Up a Social Media Listening Structure
Posting on social media is only one piece of the puzzle. An effective strategy should also include a comprehensive framework for listening to social media to achieve success.
It’s important to keep an eye on how people interact with your content or discuss your brand to measure your strategy’s success. In addition, it provides valuable insights to refine your plan and make future campaigns even better.
A solid media listening structure consists of several types of reporting. Some examples include:
Audience Analysis: Audience analysis is essential for gaining insights into your current audience, their goals, and what content resonates with them. It’s a key element in tailoring material that meets the needs of specific target groups.
Sentiment Analysis: Sentiment analysis can help you understand and interpret conversations about your brand and related subjects, allowing you to prioritize where to direct your focus. The process should be automated with machine learning technology and natural language processing.
Competitive analysis: Undertake a competitive analysis to determine how your most significant competitors reach out to their followers. Look for fresh methods to engage with your current followers and attract new ones.
- Review Regularly and Adjust Accordingly
Your social media strategy should be regularly revised, with a team of stakeholders responsible for studying the most recent data to keep it at its best.
This step also helps ensure that your team’s energy is used to create content that inspires the desired response from your target audiences. This could lead to increased profits and cost reduction too.
