In this day and age, creating a social media marketing strategy should be simple, right? Well, if you have someone to help you out, then yes, it’s pretty simple. However, if you’re planning to tackle the social media marketing strategy all on your lonesome, be prepared to be overwhelmed.
Why overwhelming, you may wonder? For one, you have so many social media platforms and networks at your disposal, how to know which one fits your business? Then, crafting a strategy, and a straightforward one at that, which can fit your goals and above all your resources, isn’t easy. And your business depends on one such marketing strategy.
To help you out, and make this journey less overwhelming, we decided to make a little guide on how to create a social media marketing strategy that will benefit your business.
What is social media marketing and what is social media marketing strategy?
Let’s start by making clear what social media marketing is. You’ve seen it a thousand times by now because it’s on every platform you are on. Social media marketing is the practice of using social media platforms and networks to promote brands and promote and sell products and services.
Social media marketing strategy, on the other hand, is a document or some sort of summary of everything you plan to do, and all methods and tactics you plan to use to achieve those goals. As a part of your social media marketing strategy, you should also include certain metrics that will help you track your progress.
What can you achieve with a social media marketing strategy?
By implementing a social media marketing strategy of some sort, your business can benefit quite a lot. Some of those benefits include selling products and services or simply advertising your business to the target audience.
Besides that, through social media marketing, you can boost brand awareness, build a larger and more engaged community, provide social customer service, and it can even help you adjust larger marketing strategies.
How to create a social media marketing strategy?
For this part, it’s always better to have experienced web marketing experts in your corner. If you don’t, be prepared to put some work into it.
1. Set goals that suit your business
Different businesses will have different goals. Some of those goals may include increasing community engagement or brand awareness, or something else. Whatever the goal, the first step is to define it. If you fail to define it, you won’t be able to properly measure success or ROI (return of investment).
To create a successful strategy, start by setting S.M.A.R.T. goals. S.M.A.R.T. goals are short for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals. These goals will help you keep on track and head in the right direction, and stay organized while on your way to achieving real business results.
2. Research target audience
What kind of audience do you want to target? After setting goals appropriate for your business, defining the target audience is the second step in creating a good marketing strategy. You shouldn’t just assume who your target audience is, you should do research.
Knowing exactly the type of audience you should target can help you create content they want to see, and above all, it can help you turn social media followers into customers.
When researching target audiences, you should know their age, location, interests, job title and industry, and even their average income.
Another thing to keep in mind is that different platforms attract different audiences. For example, millennials and Gen Z can be mostly found on Instagram and YouTube, women will be on Pinterest and LinkedIn is a place for well-educated audiences.
3. Research competition as well
Just like you researched your target audiences, you should also research and get to know your competition. Today, mostly everyone is on social media which means that you’ll find your competitors there, too. And that’s a good thing too because you’ll be able to check out what they are doing and learn from them.
Seeing what your competition is doing will give you chance to feel out what’s expected in your industry. Knowing that will help you set your own social media goals and targets.
4. Focus only on key social media networks
Less is more when you’re starting. When you’re a beginner it can be difficult to juggle many different network accounts at once. Not only because you have so much to learn still, but simply because you can’t keep a quality social media presence on all these networks.
Instead, learn which social media networks your target audience spends the most time on and focus on building a community there.
5. Create educational content
Once you know which network to focus on, you can start creating educational and compelling content. In addition to advertising your products or services, you can provide information about what’s happening in your industry, and what’s currently trending, you can share interesting and fun facts and stats, how-to posts, tips and tricks, Q&As, BTS shots, and videos and so much more.
The key here is to make sure that your content is compelling enough so that people read it, share it, and in that way extend your reach.
6. Track your results
We already mentioned that in order to see if your marketing strategy is working, you need to track and measure results. And when it comes to social media, you will have the stuff to track.
For example, traffic is one of those things that you should keep an eye on. Also, the great thing about many of these social media networks is that they offer tools to help you track analytics.
With those tools, you’ll be able to see how people respond to certain topics, keywords, trends, and so on. Knowing all this will help you set goals, improve posts and so much more.
7. Adjust tactics
Don’t expect your social media marketing strategy to set off right from the start. You may think you’ve created an ultimate strategy, but seeing the results will take time. Getting followers, establishing your brand, and creating a community will all take time. So, you have to be patient and in some cases even adjust your tactics.
Measure and keep track of everything, every change in post views and interactions, audience demographics, and so on, and make all necessary changes.
We hope that our guide has made social media marketing seem less overwhelming to you. The point is to start right by setting the right goals, researching all that needs to be researched, and only then tackling a social media platform (preferably one at a time).