Five Steps For Creating A Solid Social Media Strategy
The key to being successful within social media marketing is developing a good strategy. The best strategies help you stand out from the competition and capture the attention of your consumers.
This style of marketing involves using social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, to promote what you are selling and to engage with your customers directly.
Your social media marketing strategy should list all of your plans, and already existing social media accounts, along with their goals and objectives.
It is important to remember that different platforms have different types of users, and therefore your goals should be unique to the specific platform you are using, and its users.
Furthermore, each platform engages with its users in different ways which should also be considered when creating your strategy. For example, Instagram content is much more visual and focuses on pictures, whereas Twitter is mainly verbal.
Your strategy should include all the things you plan to do and achieve through social media marketing. Your plan should aim to maximise engagement and interactions in order to achieve your business objectives such as, improving brand awareness or creating a viral effect.
As the world is gradually going digital, and more and more consumers are going online, it is becoming compulsory to have a strong social media presence if you want to remain competitive.
Especially now, since the covid outbreak, causing online sales to increase dramatically, and in some industries increase as much as 100%, it is ever more important to educate yourself on how to successfully strategise your social media marketing.
In addition to this, other businesses are also recognising the change in advertising and marketing trends and as a result, social media has become saturated with competition.
More businesses than ever before are using Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc to market and advertise what they are selling, with all kinds of brands trying to catch the attention of their own target audiences and consumers.
If you want to stand out from these other brands, and effectively grasp the attention of your target audience, then having a solid social media marketing strategy should be your top priority.
Understandably though, this is easier said than done. Within this article contains a simple, but effective, five step plan that will help you stay on the right track. If you want to have your content stand out and connect with your consumers despite the competition, then use these five steps as a guide to help you get there.
Step 1 – Set Achievable Goals and Objectives
A social media strategy will do better if achievable goals are set in place. Not only will it keep you on the right track, but it will also keep your team united and working towards the same goals, and create a long-term vision and short-term motivation.
Ask yourself, what do you want from social media?
Without clear objectives, you will struggle to successfully establish a social media presence.
Your goals will determine your strategy. Do you want to build a community and gain more dedicated followers? Or perhaps you would rather simply increase your revenue? Different advertising techniques will generate different results.
The areas you should be focusing on include:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Increasing customer engagement
- Bringing in traffic to your site
- Generating leads and sales
- Growing your audience
In terms of how you present your goals, they should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time relevant
Also known as the S.M.A.R.T framework.
It is important that you keep your goals realistic and tackle the smaller objectives to begin with. Too many objectives may be distracting or difficult to follow.
Step 2 – Research Your Audience
Researching your audience is a great way to gain insight into what grasps their interests as well as their buying behaviour.
It is important to do this because unrealistic assumptions and marketing don’t go well together, and knowing who your audience is and what they want is key.
There are tons of tools online that you can use which will help you analyse specific social media platforms and collect demographic data.
For example, according to Hootsuite data, Facebook users click on an average of 12 ads per month, and it’s more women than it is men. You can then use this information to establish a more effective marketing strategy, and for example, run ads more specifically for women.
When filtering out your target audience, important things to consider include:
- Age
- Location
- Average Income
- Job Title
- Industry
- Interests
Get to know your followers and customers, and then you will know how to engage with them strategically.
Remember – different platforms have different audiences.
Chose the platform that you think has the best suited audience for your brand.
Key differences between some platforms include:
- Instagram and TikTok users consist mainly of a younger audience
- Pinterest users consist mainly of women
- LinkedIn users are educated and can handle more industry-specific content
By choosing the correct platforms, you have a better chance of generating business leads, as you will be able to engage with the correct audience that will have the most interest in your brand.
However, be careful not to spread yourself to thin. If your business is small, then it is best sticking to one or a couple of platforms to begin with.
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Step 3 – Establish Your Most Important Metrics and KPI’s.
Your metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators) help you determine the performance of your social media campaigns and are easy to track. One of the best social media KPIs you can measure is social media engagement, which measures the return of public shares, likes, and comments on a post or campaign.
Here are some examples of the metrics and KPIs you should focus on:
- Likes
- Comments
- Average engagement rate
- Click through rate
- Cost per click
- Hashtag performance
- Customer testimonials
- Impressions
- Follower count
- Audience growth rate
- Reach
- Potential reach
Without keeping a close eye on your metrics and KPIs, it will be difficult to realise when you have hit your goals, and to assess which content is most effective.
Another thing to consider, is that different social media platforms will have a different style of usage, and therefore, different KPI’s.
For example, Instagram is great for brand awareness, and LinkedIn is better to drive traffic to your company website.
Step 4 – Content Creation
Your content is the face of your brand, and now it’s time to create content that will successfully serve your business!
Great content can help you build trust and connect with your target audience. By following the previous steps, you will have gained insight into what content works for your brand and what doesn’t.
Content can include blogs, images, videos, and graphics, etc. In order for your content to be of good quality, it needs to be tailored specifically for each platform. Each platform consists of a different format and communication style, which should be considered when deciding what to post.
The best content is original and concise, and here are a few examples of the kind of content you could create:
- Images
- Videos
- Blog Posts
- Company News
- Infographics
- eBooks
- Interviews
By this stage, you should have an idea of what to publish based on your chosen goals and objectives, and have done extensive research into your target audience.
An important part of publishing content is sticking to the same theme. This includes your filters, captions, colour schemes, and writing styles.
Short-form videos are becoming increasingly popular, especially with younger audiences. The rise of TikTok and Instagram reels have contributed massively to this new trend and are a great way to market products due to their high engagement rate.
Step 5 – Review and Analysis
This final step is crucial and maybe the most important when it comes to successful marketing through social media. It involves reviewing your activity throughout the year across all your social media channels.
Analysing your results by looking at your insights, website analytics, and sales data, gives you valuable insight into which strategies have been most effective and generated the best results.
Did you achieve your objectives? How could you improve? Even the best social media marketers rely on trial and error.
By reviewing your results regularly, you can ask yourself these questions and ensure that you are constantly making the best decisions for your business. If you try a campaign that results in hardly any kind of increase in engagement, then you won’t make the mistake of more wasting time and money by repeating it!
A great social media strategy is a constant work in progress that can change with the times and whenever it is necessary.
By constantly reviewing your social media you can ensure that the successful strategies are repeated and the unsuccessful ones are forgotten!
By carefully considering and carrying out each of these steps, you are ensuring that your efforts are well spent.
