how to build social media marketing strategy infographic
Businesses are always on the look to find new channels to promote their services and products. In this age of fast internet, more people are getting online every day and enjoy spending time on social media platforms.
In a recent report by We Are Social, around 4.5 million people are using the internet, and more than 3.8 billion people are using social media channels. As the numbers are growing at an exponential rate, it is ideal for businesses to build their social presence and tap into new markets for their services.
Social media marketing is a delicate component of the digital marketing process. You should seek it as an opportunity to connect with your audience. Businesses usually think social media marketing is all about blatantly promoting their services, and this is why they fail to bring positive results.
In this article, we will discuss every ins and out of social media marketing and how you should create a strategy that scales your business growth.
With that being said, let’s dive in.
How To Build An Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy?
Creating a social media strategy for your business is not a rocket science process. If you just follow the basics, then you can engage with your targeted audience innovatively.
The first and foremost thing to keep in mind is that you are interacting with humans, and you ought to bring some value with your every post. Apart from that, you also need to engage with others and build a healthy relationship.
Once you accomplish these two things, you will see better results in terms of your brand image, reach, and engagement.
Now, for a specific SMM strategy, here are some tips.
A. Set Goals That Address Challenges
Before running any social media campaign, first, identify your primary objectives and then set S.M.A.R.T goals.
S.M.A.R.T. goals are:
- S = Specific
- M = Measurable
- A = Actionable
- R = Relevant
- T = Time-bound
An example of an S.MA.R.T. goal is, “Increase Twitter followers by X amount within the first quarter.”
With a social media marketing campaign, you can work on fulfilling the following purposes for your brand or business.
1. Increase Brand Awareness
If you have just taken your business online, then your first objective must be to start building your brand and reaching out to more people. Now, the strategies to increase brand awareness differ from platforms to platforms. For example, you can run a Facebook Ads campaign to increase the number of likes or follows on your business page, or you can boost the reach of an explainer video defining your business.
In the case of other social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and many others, the general idea is the same. However, not all businesses can afford the advertising costs, and in some cases, it also doesn’t make a sense.
I usually recommend businesses to focus on the organic growth of their social media profiles. As it is rightly said, it is not the quantity that matters but the quality. Followers gained using paid ads are not worth it and will not bring positive ROI. You should only opt for paid advertising if you want to gain quick followers and want to showcase yourself as an established entity.
On the other hand, building followers from scratch requires high efforts, but that will help you attract an audience that has a high potential of buying your services & products. But that’s a story for another day. Stay updated with my blog, and I will share all my tactics using which I created a 10,000+ audience on Facebook.
Tips for social media creatives to increase brand awareness:
- Encourage your followers to share or engage with your content
- Organize contests and reward the winners
- Publish quality images with catching captions
- Ask questions or organize a social media poll
- Share social proof of your product
2. Improve ROI
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Most businesses aren’t getting an ROI because they do not measure it. Social media reports usually lose their charm as companies focus more on PPC campaigns and SEO.
As a business owner or manager, you should continuously ask yourself these questions.
- What is the purpose of your social profiles?
- Is it to bring more people to the website?
- What brand message you want to share with your customers?
- Do you want to drive more in-person sales.
- Are people engaging with your social media content?
- What are your competitors doing for better social media performance?
These are just a bunch of relevant questions whose answer you should know for getting positive results.
3. Drive In-Person Sales
Most businesses miss an essential point that social media is for engaging in meaningful conversations with your potential audience. Engaging with potential customers and providing them the right content at the right time is also a part of conversational marketing.
People who engage with your brand on social media have more chances of ending up buying your services and products. Additionally, you can also delight them with exceptional customer services to turn them into your brand advocates.
4. Create A Fanbase
With constant and consistent effort on social media, you can create a fanbase and turn your customers into your best cheerleaders. How can you do that? Start by giving free trials of your services or run contests with exclusive rewards. If you don’t have the budget, then you can work on quality content that drives emotions, and your audience feels connected with it. With emotional, social media creatives, you can improve the chances of getting your content viral on social media.
B. Research Your Audience
Researching your audience to target on social media is a critical process and may define your success. The first step is to map your buyer personas with potential customers that you want to connect with on various social media platforms.
- Identify your target audience
- Determine the size of your potential customers
- Run a survey with your customers to understand their requirements
- Research the online behavior of your audience
- Find your audience and connect with them
Stay tuned, and I plan to cover this topic in detail.
C. Establish Critical Social Media Metrics
Here is a list of some critical social media metrics that should focus on while starting your social media journey:
1. Reach
Reach tells you how many unique users saw your post on social media. Almost all major social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn displays this social media metric.
Based on this metric, you can decide which type of social media creative – text post, link post, image, video, and live show are performing better. For example, Facebook reduces the reach of link posts tremendously. Therefore, on Facebook, you should focus more on sharing native content to reach out to more customers.
2. Clicks
Clicks demonstrate how many users clicked on your link posts. Let’s say you published a new blog post and shared it on various social media platforms. Moving forward, you should also track how many clicks you are getting for measuring content performance. The critical thing is to optimize your content accordingly.
3. Engagement
How many people are retweeting your tweets or resharing your LinkedIn posts? These numbers define the measurement of engagement of your audience. People always engage with relevant content with emotional signals such as laugh, empathy, motivation, etc.
Social media marketing is not only about mindlessly sharing four posts per day with your latest blog posts, motivational quotes, etc. With the growing noises of business profiles on social media, you have to stand apart by creating a unique brand
4. Hashtag Performance
Twitter and Instagram algorithms majorly work based on hashtags. You should use relevant hashtags in your posts to garner more views and increase your reach. However, hashtags work differently for each platform, and you should research how you can best target hashtags. Hashtags with more posts are usually competitive. Therefore, you should examine which hashtags your competitors are using and which are popular among your target audience for the right balance.
5. Sentiment
Now, if you are sharing memes, social stories, or other content that drives emotional impact on people, then you should also see how your followers are responding to your content. If the response is negative, then you should immediately change your strategy. Always be kind and show your true self on social media for better emotional engagement.
Final Thoughts
Social media platforms are growing at an exponential rate. As a business, you should consider having an efficient and smart social media marketing strategy to grab new eyeballs and increase your revenue. Here, we discussed some must-have ingredients for building an excellent social media marketing strategy. In case you have any doubts, then leave your comments or drop me an email at [email protected]. I will be more than happy to assist you in growing your social media presence 🙂
