How to Create a Viable Social Media Marketing Strategy
Successful social media marketing is exactly what your company needs to grow.
Social media marketing has the potential to be a dynamic force that solidifies branding, generates quality leads, and drives sales.
It can also be a huge time-waster and task-oriented flop. The key is to understand how to strategically create, implement, and evaluate the overall plan.
Businesses that want to be successful with social media marketing must overcome several common obstacles.
Setting aside enough time, creating high-performing content, and properly measuring the resulting metrics are all important considerations.
If handled incorrectly, it has the potential to derail the plan and leave them with a big goose egg as a result.
Companies that plan ahead of time are more likely to meet and exceed the payoff that piqued their interest in social media marketing in the first place.
Fortunately, we’ve laid out a step-by-step plan for you.
Follow these ten simple tips to rock your social media marketing strategy and enjoy a tenfold return on investment.
1. DETERMINE YOUR OBJECTIVES
It’s good business practice to start with goal setting before making any new plans, and social media marketing is no exception.
After all, even if you are the best bicycle salesperson in the state, you will fail if you are supposed to sell ice cream.
To lay the groundwork for successful social media marketing, use the SMART goal-setting strategy.
Particular. Vague goals such as “get more business” do not assist businesses in defining their objectives and developing measures of success.
The initiative’s goals must spell out exactly what is expected of it.
It is quantifiable. A good goal standard is to be able to say definitively, “yes, we hit the goal,” or “we missed the goal by 20%.”
Achievable. Goals that are out of reach are demoralizing and frustrating.
Stretching to achieve a goal is beneficial, but don’t set unrealistic expectations.
It is pertinent. A social media marketing goal must be linked to the overall goal of marketing. Is it to attract a following?
How can I increase website traffic? Improve your brand’s image? Make sure the goal is relevant to the big picture.
On time. Companies are held accountable for their goals by using dates and times.
Maintain focus by breaking down a large project like this into mini-goals, each with its own deadline.
Companies must decide on the “who” after establishing their social media goals, which is essentially the “why.”
2. DETERMINE YOUR TARGET MARKET
Your message will be ineffective unless it is tailored specifically to the audience you are attempting to reach.
Creating a relevant buyer persona is critical for effective social media marketing.
Three pieces of information can help you narrow down your target audience.
Examine satisfied customers. Clients who have been pleased with a company’s product or service are excellent starting points for developing a buyer persona.
Examine their industries, demographics, and goals carefully to determine who you should be targeting.
Identify and address pain points. What problem does your product solve? How does it make the job of your buyer easier?
Only by thoroughly comprehending this can an organization demonstrate its worth.
Customer service should be polled. Speak with those who are on the front lines. What are the most frequently asked questions?
Knowing this points you in the direction of creating content that will most likely engage and interest your target audience.
Let us now address the question of “where.”
3. CHOOSE THE BEST PLATFORMS
Attempting to cultivate followers on a half-dozen or more social media channels is usually a mistake.
The person in charge of social media efforts becomes overwhelmed, loses focus, and the results are mediocre.
Of course, Facebook is the social media behemoth. LinkedIn is also a great place for businesses to establish a presence.
However, neither may be the one on which businesses should concentrate their efforts.
Who is in need of the product or service? The key to selecting the best social media platforms for your brand is what you offer.
Selling to customers directly? Your best bet is Facebook. Are you aiming for a younger demographic? Snapchat or Instagram may outperform.
Marketing to other businesses? LinkedIn could be your ticket to success.
Where are the rivals? Put on your detective hat and determine which channels your competitors are using.
Examine their presence and their followers. It is not necessary for you to be on every channel they are on.
However, seeing a competitor with a large number of followers and engagement should prompt you to move that social media channel to the top of the list.
It takes time to manage successful social media marketing.
It is far better to focus on one or two channels and invest heavily in them rather than five or six channels and spread the message too thinly.
4. HIRE A QUALIFIED MANAGER
Being a savvy social media expert necessitates a unique set of skills.
One of the most common mistakes companies make is hiring the person with the shortest schedule or the lowest hourly rate, regardless of whether or not they are “built” for the job.
Strategic thinking is required. Behind successful social media marketing is almost always a strategic thinker.
Companies should carefully examine the job candidate and discuss both short and long-term objectives.
The individual must understand how to lay out posts, select content, and engage with followers in a way that leads to success.
Organizational abilities. Running a social media campaign necessitates the use of someone who can lay out the strategy in a step-by-step manner.
They must be able to manage their time and their calendars. Simply posting “when they think about it” will not move the needle much.
Expertise in branding. They may not be the company’s “face,” but they are unquestionably its “voice.”
It is critical for the social media manager to have a thorough understanding of the company brand.
Possess strong grammar and spelling abilities, as well as a professional demeanor in all situations.
5. CONSISTENTLY DELIVER
A great social media initiative is one that is constantly nurtured.
Putting up a blog here and a picture there will not result in a successful marketing strategy.
Produce content. When sharing content, always keep the targeted buyer in mind. Blogs, new white papers, and webinar invitations are all excellent options.
Content should be curated. Other ways to fill the social media calendar include posting relevant industry information and articles written by others.
Avoid posting anything sales-related all of the time. This turns off the audience.
Pay attention. Tools that allow businesses to listen to and discuss what their competitors and target audience are interested in and talking about guide them toward what they should be sharing.
6. WOO INFLUENCERS
Did you know that nearly half of buyers look for influencer reviews when purchasing a product?
That is the weight of the influencers’ recommendations. Why is this so? Probably because they believe these influencers.
These individuals have already established their credibility, so their recommendations are important to the majority of users.
So, find out who the experts are in the field of the product or service you’re selling. Influencers are people who have a large social media following.
- Create a network. Reach out to and cultivate relationships with these powerhouses in order to reach more people and broaden the branding message.
- Extend a proposal. Prepare to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”
- Perhaps they could attend a trade show with you or promote themselves on one of your webinars.
As you cultivate these relationships, it is critical to demonstrate how you add value to them.
Keep an eye on things. Keep an eye on what the influencer posts about your brand and make sure it is consistent with your image.
If they tried your product and didn’t like it, for example, it’s best to know this up front.
Always communicate with influencers and listen to what they say to avoid unpleasant surprises.
Additional tip: When collaborating with influencers on Instagram, use Instagram Stories to increase your reach.
When it comes to influencer Instagram marketing, this is the second most popular format.
It actually reaches 500 million users every day and has been shown to be 15 times faster than other types of feed.
7. EXPAND YOUR MARKET
The more people who see your message, the better the results.
The social media manager must focus on growing followers across all social media channels deemed relevant to the product or service.
Existing clients. Ensure that your current satisfied customers are following you on social media.
Customers appreciate product updates, new content, and industry news. If you do it correctly, the message may persuade them to buy from you again.
Fans of content. People who come across your content and digest it are primed to follow you.
It is critical that you encourage them to subscribe to your blog and make it simple for them to follow you for future updates.
A contest is an excellent way to grow your following.
Advertisements that are paid. Organic is fantastic, but some businesses choose paid advertising to increase the number of followers they have.
Ads are excellent ways to reach buyers who would not otherwise hear your message.
Read our post on how to create effective Facebook ads to learn more about paid ads.
8. MAKE YOUR AUDIENCE FEEL IMPORTANT
To be successful with social media marketing, businesses must find ways to increase engagement among their existing and prospective followers.
Take action. It is not possible to manage social media in a one-way fashion.
Respond to new followers personally, quickly answer questions and address issues, and comment on and like other people’s posts.
Embedding. When you post about something you know your followers are interested in, tag them.
Personal touches like this help to improve the quality of your social media efforts.
Link. Incorporate links into your posts based on your objectives. Otherwise, your followers will be confused as to what you want them to do next.
Connect to blogs, your website, or other calls to action (CTA).
In order to develop successful social media marketing, it is critical to encourage consumers to act.
Use hashtags to express yourself. With useful hashtags, you can help the audience cut through the avalanche of noise.
Make a list of the social media hashtags that your company will use ahead of time. These are internet neon signs that aid in the visibility of your message.
9. TRACK YOUR PROGRESS
Effective social media marketing
Close the loop by comparing your results to the goals you established.
Otherwise, you’ll have no idea which strategies are working and which aren’t.
Followers are people who follow someone else. Add up the number of new followers gained on each social media platform and compare it to the target.
Interesting social media platforms are always gaining new followers.
Likes, shares, and comments Calculate the audience’s level of engagement with the posts.
Receiving retweets, shares, comments, and likes is a good sign. Take note of which types of content elicit the most responses.
It clicks. This is where the metrics begin to show how social media efforts moved or did not move the sales needle.
Were there a lot of people who visited your blog or website? Did fans take the next step?
The ability to draw more visitors into the sales funnel is critical to the success of social media marketing.
- Downloads are available. If your audience reacted to your posts by visiting landing pages and downloading high-value content such as eBooks and white papers, consider it a success!
- Taking the initiative. Everything boils down to this. Finally, effective social media marketing increases the number of qualified leads for the business.
- This is the metric that provides the most information about your efforts. Please be patient.
Even with fantastic content and consistent posting, it takes time to convert strangers into leads. However, if done correctly, they will eventually trickle in.
10. CREATE A LATHER, RINSE, AND REPEAT
Metrics show you where you’ve been as well as where you need to go.
Companies must use the metrics they collect to fine-tune their message. Is one type of content more engaging than another?
Is there a pattern of certain posts receiving more attention on certain days or at certain times of day?
Is the content performing better on one platform than another? Use this information to revise and fine-tune the strategy.
Social media marketing efforts will yield even better results.
IN CONCLUSION
Businesses face a variety of challenges when it comes to successful social media marketing, and it’s easy to make a wrong turn and end up with less-than-exciting results.
It’s also common to get excited at first, then burn out and lose commitment in the middle of your efforts.
Keep going!
Maintain your focus on these ten tips, and your company will be astounded by the number of followers you will gain.
The increased website traffic and new leads you will receive.
10X the ROI for your efforts is only the beginning of the benefits that businesses can reap when they do social media marketing correctly.
No, you don’t have to spend a fortune to achieve these results. We have low-cost social media marketing services that are ideal for you.