3 Simple Steps To Creating A Strong Social Media Marketing Strategy
Your social media presence speaks volumes about your brand. An effective Social media marketing strategy can boost your business many times.
Boasting almost 3 billion active users, social media followers are increasingly leveraging their networks to discover and connect with brands. Businesses are succeeding in their social media marketing experience better follower engagement, improved lead conversions, and increased website traffic.
What exactly does a successful social media strategy entail? How can a brand improve its efforts to boost awareness and capture attention? The big advantage of creating a strong social media strategy is that it doesn’t require weeks to develop or put together. You can take simple steps today to begin revamping your social marketing to get in front of your audience tomorrow.
Here are three tactics to bettering your social media strategy.
#1 Have Clarity of Your Goals and Audience:
The first step to a working social media strategy is having a clear understanding of your goals and the audience you aim to reach. Just being active on social media without an exact plan that aligns with your ultimate business objectives will yield fickle results. Additionally, each content piece shared on social media must resonate with your intended audience to be effective.
Set the Goal:
So, what do you want to accomplish from your social media marketing? Are you seeking to increase brand awareness or generate leads? If the goal is brand awareness, for example, then including relevant hashtags or keywords are vital to getting in front of new, targeted followers. Knowing what you want to accomplish helps you modify your strategy to meet these goals.
Once you’ve established your goals, break them down into small, actionable steps. Start with your yearly goal then break that down into the months, weeks, and the days. This way, you’re always working toward your overall business objective on a daily basis.
#2 Choose Your Platforms and Content Types:
Your next step knows how you’re going to execute your social strategy. This includes knowing which social media channels to invest the most time and resources on, your paid advertising budget, the types of content shared, and your topics.
Although you mostly want to establish a presence on each of the major networks, it’s incredibly important to hone in on the platforms where your target market is most active. Focusing your efforts drives favorable results such as better engagement and conversions.
You can utilize tools such as social groups and live-streaming video to create a community around your brand and bring them further into your culture. Selecting your platforms wisely allows you to fully optimize that channel and foster winning relationship with your followers.
Here are a few other tips to implement in your content creation on social media:
- Speak directly to your audience. Stay in tune with their needs through social monitoring and surveys. The more your content resonates with their interest and problems, the more responsive they’ll be.
- Tailor your content appropriately, so it appeals to the network you’re posting to. How you share content on Facebook, a more casual environment, will be different than how you post on LinkedIn, which caters to business professionals. Refrain from using a cookie-cutter approach that shares the same message across your social channels. Instead, modify your content, so it provides to the followers on that platform.
- Repost popular content. It’s okay to share the same link or blog article, especially if it’s generating engagement. The key is to change the headline, so it doesn’t appear redundant.
- Use influencer marketing. Leveraging prominent social leaders in your niche can help you build brand awareness and trust fast with their audience. Influencer marketing is becoming a top strategy where both parties benefit from sharing quality-rich content and engaging their audiences.
- Add variety to your social media posts by using the interactive content. Quizzes, infographics, polls and surveys, and videos enrich user experience and provide alternate ways to digest your content.
#3 Test and Analyze Results:
The final step to a strong social media marketing strategy is putting a simple system in place to measure your success. Publishing content and “hoping it sticks” does not create consistent results. It’s vital to test and analyze your efforts to discover what’s working and modify what isn’t. In time, you’ll create an ideal formula that steadily produces favorable outcomes.
Use these key metrics as a guide to testing your social media marketing:
- Best Posting Times – At what time of the day is your audience most engaged? Tools such as Buffer and Co Schedule have built-in features informing you of the best times to publish for better engagement.
- Keyword/Hashtags – What keyword phrases or hashtags are people using to find your content on social media?
- Engagement – Which topics generate likes, shares, and comments? What content types (i.e., infographics, video, and quizzes) create the most engagement?
- Shares – Which of your content types and topics create the most shares?
- Leads – How many leads did your post generate? What can you do to improve this (i.e., add an image, stronger call-to-action)?
Conclusion
Creating a strong social media marketing strategy doesn’t have to be a complicated task. By simply following these three steps, you’ll position your brand to grow your social following, boost engagement, and achieve traffic and lead generation. The key is remaining consistent in your strategy to test your efforts and make the necessary adjustments for success.
