5 Steps To Create A Social Media Marketing Strategy {Updated}
There is no denying the impact social media has had on the way we do business.
What was initially a means of socializing online has become a potent marketing tool that has become, in a way, quite indispensable for businesses seeking to establish their brand, among other things.
As with any endeavor of its kind, social media marketing requires a strategy that will serve as the blueprint for whatever it is you’re hoping to do and achieve to further your business on social media.
Your social media marketing strategy will dictate all your actions
For example, which may range from connecting with social media influencers to engaging in Facebook advertising.
Your strategy should also be able to help you tell whether you’re succeeding or failing with what you’re doing on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and all the other social media platforms.
If you’re raring to market your business on social media, but you don’t have a strategy in place yet, then you might be able to find these steps to create a useful social media marketing strategy.
Step 1: Figure out why you want to be on social media in the first place.
The reality is, social media sites can be used for business in a number of different ways.
For example, lots of businesses choose to use social media platforms to attract traffic to their websites.
It’s pretty easy to turn social media traffic into sales. So, you’ll be able to increase your sales with effective social media advertising.
Plus, social media promotion helps businesses boost the awareness of their brands.
In addition, social media sites can be used by businesses as an effective online communication tool. Let’s say that you have social media channels that you constantly update with fresh content.
If so, sooner or later, people may begin to leave comments on your social media posts. People may ask you various questions about your products or services or, maybe, they will give you suggestions on how to improve your business.
And of course, you need to reply to all of these comments as soon as possible. By doing so, you will communicate with your prospects or existing customers and connect with them.
But most importantly, social media marketing provides businesses with a great opportunity to improve their online reputation. People may leave reviews about your business on popular social media sites.
So, you should use every single thing possible to take advantage of these reviews.
Let’s say that people leave good reviews about your business on social media platforms. If this is the case, each of these reviews will contribute greatly to the success of your business.
On the other hand, bad reviews will help you figure out why things go wrong with your business. So, you’ll see what people like or dislike about your business.
And of course, this will make it possible for you to improve an online reputation of your company and take your business to the next level.
Social media promotion should always begin with goal setting. Before you create accounts on every social media platform you can get your hands on, you have to be clear about your social media goals first.
- Are you doing it to increase awareness for your brand and increase engagement for it?
- Is it a means for driving traffic to your website?
- Do you intend to use social media to boost sales and signups and therefore grow revenue?
It goes without saying that you should get the answers to all of these questions in advance. By doing so, you’ll be able to set goals for your social media marketing strategy.
After you set your social media marketing goals, you have to do your best to accomplish them.
In all likelihood, you’re going on social media to achieve all three goals, and more, such as generating new leads and providing social customer service.
It’s great to have multiple social media marketing goals, but it’s advisable to hold your horses when you’re just starting out as basically a one-person team.
Unless you have an entire social media marketing team at your disposal, be more realistic, and focus your efforts on achieving just a handful of them at least at the beginning.
Step 2: Determine who you want to market your business to.
When it comes to social media promotion, it’s incredibly important to provide users with the right type of content at the right time.
If you use paid ads to promote your business on social media, you need to show relevant ads to the right people.
One way or another, you need to determine who you want to target first.
That’s the reason why you need to create a buyer persona before to get started with a social media marketing strategy.
Identifying your ideal customers—and finding out what you can about them—is key to your entire social media marketing strategy.
After all, knowing your audience is essentially the only way for you to know not only who to direct your content to, but also the type of content you ought to deliver to them.
One way of understanding your audience better is to create highly focused audience or buyer personas.
These are generalized and fictional representations of your ideal customers which you can create by answering questions that cover their specific demographics, location, and interests.
With the basic information contained in the personas you create, you should be able to tailor your content and everything you have to offer according to their specific needs.
In order to create a buyer persona you have to get the detailed information about your prospects.
- What social media sites do your potential clients choose to visit?
- What type of content they would like to engage with on social media?
- When your potential clients are the most active on social media sites?
You’ll be able to get the most out of your social media promotion efforts if you get the answers to all of these questions.
Step 3: Choose the best social media platform for your business.
It’s a no-brainer that you have to establish a presence on the biggest social media platforms, but which one would be most appropriate for expanding your reach and growing your business?
Among the most popular social media platforms are: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and many others.
Actually, this list could go on and on. It’s important to note that each of social media sites has its own pros and cons.
When choosing a social media platform, you need to go for the ones that your target audience uses the most.
And much as you would want to use all available channels that are popular among your target audience, it would best to stick with the top two initially so you can focus your efforts.
You will also need to understand the facts about each social network to determine which one is appropriate for your business.
Facebook, for example, is the biggest of them all with more than 2 billion monthly active users, so there’s a great chance that most of your audience is on Facebook.
In fact, Facebook social media platform can be used for advertising any type of business.
In fact, the same can be said about Twitter.
Do you have great images that you would like to share with your target audience? If so, you need to promote your business on Instagram. Instagram has 1 billion users, and it’s a highly visual platform.
If you want to reach out to B2B consumers, LinkedIn would be great. LinkedIn is a popular social media platform that brings together lots of entrepreneurs, employers and employees from different parts of over the world.
Do you have videos to share with your target audience? If so, YouTube needs to be a part of a social media marketing strategy. Create a channel on YouTube and share videos on it regularly. YouTube videos are likely to generate high amounts of traffic to your business.
Step 4: Post high-quality and engaging content, both original and curated.
So you’ve finally picked your social media platform, and you’re ready to post original and curated content. So what should it be?
First of all, you need to pick the best social media platforms to promote your business. Then, you have to share the right type of content on social media sites.
You can share different types of content with the target audience on social media platforms. It’s a great idea to add a blog to a website and keep it updated with fresh content on a regular basis. Each time you publish a new post on a blog, you should also share a link to it on social media platforms.
Blog posts are par for the course, and so are images. Videos have also grown in popularity, and will likely be the most dominant form of content in the future. You can also post company news, eBooks, interviews, and infographics.
Assuming that you already know your audience, the content you share on your social media channels should align with their interests.
Whether it’s original or curated, the content you post on your social media account has to provide value to their lives. High-quality, relevant, and engaging content will attract and hold their attention, which is why you’re reaching out to them on social media in the first place.
It’s incredibly important for you to publish content on social media sites on a regular basis. Each time you share a piece of content on your social media channel, you’ll remind people about your business.
Obviously, you may find it difficult to update your social media account with fresh content every day. However, publishing 1 piece of content on social media profile once a week would be enough. Try to update your social media profile with new content at the time when your target audience is the most active.
Creating a content calendar can help you plan which ones to share on which social media platform, and when.
Updating content on multiple social media channels is no easy task. Also, it will take you too much time to share a piece of content on multiple social media platforms.
It’s a great idea to use online tools like Hootsuite to update content on multiple social media channels. This process will take you no longer than a few seconds to publish a link to your blog post on all of your social media accounts.
Step 5: Measure your results.
First and foremost, you need to build an effective social media strategy that works for your business. Then, you have to analyze the efficiency of your strategy. You need to make sure that you are making a progress all the time.
If you find that your social media strategy doesn’t work well, then you obviously have to make changes to it and try your best to improve your results.
So how would you know how you’re doing on social media? The only way to do that is to track your results, analyze the data, and make the necessary adjustments to your strategy. For social media success, tracking the data is probably the single most important thing you have to do.
There are so many social media success metrics to measure, including reach, time spent on website, shares, volume, and engagement. On top of that, you have to pay a close attention to the social media platform’s conversion rate.
Of course, you’ll be having a tough time monitoring, much less measuring, these metrics without using a good social media analytics tool, so find the best one for you and invest in it.
It makes a lot of sense to invest time and money in social media platforms that provide the most effective results. Once you find out which social media channels are delivering the best results for you, consider doubling down on your participation in them.
One thing you should know about creating a social media strategy is that it’s always a work in progress. The ones listed above are just the basics, and you might want to add your own steps as you go along. So create your own social media strategy and prepare for a period of trial and error before you stumble upon the perfect social media approach for your brand.
If you would like to learn how to build an effective social media marketing strategy for your business, contact us today. We at Finepoint Design are always looking forward to helping you with any of your social media marketing needs!
Still looking for more on Social Media? Check out these posts
How to Build an Authentic Brand on Social Media
How to Hire an Experienced Social Media Marketer
Here’s Why Your Social Media Isn’t Bringing In New Customers
10 Reasons Why Your Business Needs A Social Media Specialist
