A study in the Journal of Emerging Technologies indicates that social media is an effective emerging marketing tool among young people. This means that advertising on social media can help drive traffic to your site and improve conversion. However, having a social media marketing strategy can mean the difference between a successful campaign and a failed one.
This is because it sets a clear roadmap of the actions you intend to take to achieve your social media goals. It helps you identify the social media site and demographic to target. In this article, we will guide you on how to develop a social media marketing strategy.
Importance of Having a Social Media Marketing Strategy
Here are the benefits of having a social media marketing plan:
Provide a Roadmap
Whether your goal is to raise brand awareness or increase sales, a social media strategy will provide a road map for achieving your goal. A roadmap will help you avoid the common issues with social media marketing plans.
Have a Consistent Brand Voice
Adhoc social media marketing campaign that is reactionary is dangerous and can cause an inconsistent brand voice that can confuse your audience. However, when you have a digital marketing plan, you can create a brand voice to communicate with your target audience.
Achieve Your Marketing Goals
An old saying goes, “Failure to plan is planning to fail”. This also applies to social media marketing tips. You will likely fail if you are only running ads without a plan. But when you know when to run a campaign, what social media platform to use, and other such details, you will easily succeed in your plan. A good social media marketing plan will create stronger relationships with your customers, leading to customer loyalty and improved conversion.
How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy
Now that you understand the importance of having a social media marketing plan, here are the steps to follow when setting up one:
Determine Your Goal
Setting a goal is the first step in implementing any digital marketing strategy. You must determine what you want to achieve with your social media goal. Ensure that your goal is SMART(specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). Write at least 3 goals you want to achieve with your digital or social media marketing.
Remember that some metrics, such as followers, will look easy to track, but can be hard to determine their actual value. Overall, what you track will depend on your goal. For instance, if your goal is brand awareness, the number of views on your Instagram stories can be a good measure of your success.
Understand Your Target Audience
If you do not understand your customers, you cannot know how to reach them. Therefore, you should have details of your target demography, such as age, sex, education level, religion, average income, interests, location, etc. You can check social media analytics to get this valuable information about your followers.
Perform a Competitor Analysis
There are chances that your competitors are on social media and have a digital marketing plan. Checking what they are doing can give you an idea of what is working and what isn’t. This will also help you spot new opportunities. For instance, if your competitor is dominant on Instagram but isn’t active on Twitter, you can move your campaign to the latter.
Audit your Own Efforts
If you have running campaigns or are generally on social media, you should try to see what is working and what isn’t. Consider the demographic engaging with your brand and if there are any kind of partnerships you have built. Check also how your social media presence compares with that of the competition. This information will provide you with sound, basic information you can build on.
Choose a Social Media Platform
You should now use the information you have found in the previous steps to decide which social media platform to focus on. You will also need to define a strategy for each. For instance, you can do informational posts on Facebook and influencer marketing on Instagram. Ensure that you have a mission statement for each platform.
You should then create profiles or improve existing ones. When doing so:
- Include all profile information
- Include keywords that people may use to search for your business
- Be consistent in your branding(logo, images) across different networks.
Create a Content Calendar
Your content calendar should show the date and time you will publish each type of content creation on every channel. This will help you to space your posts well and leverage the best time to post on each social media platform.
Determine the Type of Content
You need to determine the content strategy for each channel. The content should reflect the goal you have for each social media channel. For instance, you can use half of your content to drive traffic back to your site, a third for lead generation, another third to consist of curated content from other sources, and 10% to show your company culture. You can use the 80%:20% rule, where 80% of your content educates while 20% advertises.
Final Thoughts
By following this guide, it’s possible to have a social media marketing strategy that will work for your business and optimise your brand visibility.
