Social media can be complicated to navigate, especially when it comes to how to integrate them into your business marketing strategy. Not only do you need to consider which platforms to utilize, but also the type of content that will be most effective for reaching your target audience. The key to a successful social media marketing strategy is a clear plan that highlights strong, SMART objectives that engages with a specific audience.
Consider the following tips for creating a compelling strategy that uses the most appropriate social media channels for your brand, aims to engage with a specific audience, and optimizes results for a more comprehensive analysis of your campaign.
1) Determine the purpose of your social media based on what your business needs
What do you want to get out of your social media marketing strategy? What do you want your social media to say about your brand? A successful social media campaign always has an end goal, which means you will need to figure out how social media can help your business and create realistic, measurable goals that meet your branding needs. When you understand the purpose of utilizing social media, you can benefit greatly. Consider some of the more common objectives for social media marketing:
- Expanding brand awareness through industry-specific content
- Promoting sales and generating leads through product and service promotions
- Increasing your audience and followers through special giveaways, brand introductions, and new conversations about the business
- Fostering community engagement through user-generated content like hashtags
- Growing website traffic through monitoring of webpage conversions and URL clicks
2) Figure out where you stand in the market based on your competitors
To determine a SMART goal for your social media marketing strategy, start with understanding your competitors through a competitor analysis. Let’s be honest: you want to outrank and compete against your top industry rivals. In order to do so with a strong campaign, you need to decide which types of content your competitors are sharing and analyze the type of consumers they are attracting. Through reading competitors’ digital footprints, you can analyze their social media strategy and see what works and what doesn’t. The idea here is to be inspired and learn from others’ mistakes in the industry rather than copy or steal their ideas. Draw your own conclusions about how to implement your campaign based on the evidence you see from industry competitors.
Don’t know where to begin your competitor analysis? Start by a simple Google search — it will show the most valuable keywords and phrases that your rivals use to grow their presence online. After your competitor analysis, determine which social media metric are most helpful for optimizing and measuring your campaign. Each metric measures a different aspect of your social strategy, so it’s important to think about which ones will be most helpful to monitor so you can figure out whether your campaign is successful.
3) Research and analyze your demographic market
It’s important to learn about your target audience because it will enhance your ability to effectively implement your social media marketing campaign. Let’s face it: it’s more beneficial to focus your strategy on specific social media channels that will really speak to your audience than utilize all platforms for little to no ROI and no clear demographic to build your following. Social media marketing cannot be successful with a one-size-fits-all approach. Research which audiences each social medium channel attracts, then decide which you will use in your strategy. Facebook and YouTube, for instance, attract high-earning users so they are top-notch places to include ads for your products and services. Instagram, on the other hand, mainly targets millennials so content should be visually appealing and speak to your brand’s personality. Women greatly outnumber men on the social shopping network, Pinterest, while LinkedIn is best for targeting industry-specific, well-educated consumers. Each platform includes its own analytic dashboard so it’s easy to figure out your target audience and measure how they engage with you on each social channel.
4) Create interactive content that presents a consistent brand
Social media can be as powerful as a branding tool thanks to its focus on visual and creative content. As you decide on which channels to use throughout your campaign, think about the type of content that will help grow your brand and attract a specific audience. Curating engaging content should be the foundation of your social media marketing strategy and brand identity. Consider how you want your company to present itself to the worldwide web. What is your brand identity? What do consumers see when they come across your social profiles online? Here are tips to think about when creating effective content:
- Content themes – Compelling visuals for your social media should be consistent across the board. Thinking about an overall theme for your content prevents you from falling into a content marketing rut. Consistent content allows you to have an easier time brainstorming content that is cohesive and predictable, whether it’s focusing on a certain color scheme or switching between product stock photos and user-generated material.
- Interactive content – Unsure of what type of content your followers want to see? Pick their brains! Through your social media, ask a simple question or post a poll to engage with your audience and determine the type of content they truly want to see. What topics make them interested? Which visuals or hashtags boost the strongest engagement? Interactive content encourages customers to engage with your brand and allows you to curate a social media marketing strategy that continually interests your audience.
- Time-sensitive content – Consumers like to be involved in current happenings, so don’t let them miss out on what your business is doing through live stories on Instagram and Facebook. Such content in real-time presents can’t miss interactive opportunities for audiences to get involved with you. Time-sensitive content pops into your followers’ feed at the beginning, so your content keeps audiences’ feeds fresh. The most valuable stories are ones that show consumers behind-the-scenes actions and personal content; thus, customizing your social feed so it is unique to your brand. When curating live content, think about the best times to interact with customers so you achieve the highest rates of engagement.
5) Assess your strategy and communicate problems and successes with your team
Successful social media marketing takes collaboration between team members who have different roles. The best way to analyze and break down data and analytics is to work with each other to see the challenges with the campaign and offer solutions for resolving them. When team members are held accountable for their roles in producing an effective strategy, social media can play a significant part in attracting new clients and strengthening brand awareness. It’s fairly easy nowadays to collaborate on a social media marketing campaign; for, there are collaboration tools built into the platforms that make working together a breeze.
With these 5 helpful tools, you will be well on your way to building a successful social media marketing strategy! We do understand though, that social media strategies and constant communication can be overwhelming, so if you do need help with your social media planning reach out to Summit Collaborations, where we can help you from conception to execution and everything in between.