Social Media Marketing Strategy
It may sound complicated to build a clever strategy for social media marketing. But if you have a clear picture of your marketing purpose and commitment to follow a sensible approach, social media marketing is a simple process. Below are the steps to follow to build a plan for successful social media marketing:
1. Define Your Objectives
The first thing about the strategy is to determine what objectives you want to achieve with social media. A haphazard plan with no specified destination yields nothing. Clearly identify your goals and what outcomes you expect from your social media marketing. For example:
- Awareness about your product
- Better customer service
- To engage previous/current customers
- To build a customer base
2. Find Your Audience/Choose the Right Platform(s)
The most critical part of the social media marketing is to choose the right platform(s) for your business. Not all social media channels are the same. Each one has different primary audience and focus. Facebook aligns perfectly with any kind of business regardless of its size and type of industry. In fact, it has become a norm to have a Facebook page along with a website for a business. There are hardly any businesses without a Facebook page. Twitter works better for businesses which aim for brand awareness. This is the place to be active who has continuous updates to share with the audience. Twitter is also important for relationship-building with influencers and communication with your customer base. Instagram works better for image-oriented businesses like photography, designers, fashion etc. If the target audience of your business is 18-30 age group, this is a place where you need to be. Professionals from tech and engineering companies are more connected with Google Plus. Majority of Google Plus active users are males.
3. Understand Your Audience Persona
Social media is all about connecting with people. To connect with your audience on an authentic level, it is important to understand your audience. Distinguish your audience based on different criteria such as age, gender, profession, interests etc. To better understand them to take a look at their interest, buying behaviour, mobile footprint, where they are active on social media, what influences them. Identify the key concerns of these segmented audiences: their problems, needs, hopes. Come up with solutions that can help them with the problems and tailor your content that can address their pain points.
4. Get Started
Now that you know your objectives, where you can find your audience and what to convey to your audience, IT IS TIME TO GET SOCIAL! Set up accounts for your business on social platforms that you chose. Social media needs patience as it takes time to break the ice. One and only one mantra to follow when it comes to social media is consistency, consistency and consistency. The best way to practice consistency is to integrate social media activity into a daily routine. Block the time on your marketing calendar, organize and send the content out that needs to be shared. You can change the amount of time to spend on social media based on the results you achieve. Social media content calendar is a great tool which helps to streamline and organize your social media marketing activities. It helps to segment your content and your posts by topic, time and network. It is important to know what kinds of posts are effective on which platform and the right time to post it to reach a wider audience. Here are few important things to consider while creating your own social media calendar:
- How often to post
- How often to share content
- Which platforms to post/share content
- Best times to post/share
Make sure your calendar reflects the objectives defined for each social profile. Beginners can start their social sharing of content by following “Social Media Rule of Thirds”.
5. Share and Care (Social Listening)
Social media conversations happen all the time all around. It is important to lend your ear to what customers are saying about your brand. Social listening provides the insights of your audience and helps to align your marketing strategy in the right direction. Respond to comments from your audience, appreciate their mentions and value their feedback, even if they are negative.
6. Measure, Analyze and Shift the Gear
This is the most critical step in your social media marketing strategy. Most social media networks such as Twitter analytics, Facebook Insights, come with tools which can be used to track and measure the performance of your social activity. Tracking performance data offers essential intellects about which tactics are functional and which are not. Few metrics to measure and analyze:
- The growth of your audience
- Engagement with your content
- Sharing of your content
- Competitor benchmarking
Measure if there is a growth in your audience size. Keep track of which social media platform is most engaging and driving the most traffic to your site. Identify whether images, videos or text content performs better. Know how much of your audience you are reaching and how much are engaged with your content. Find if your core topics are interesting and valuable to your audience and whether it is shared or liked. Consistently review your analytics reports and make adjustments based on the results. Online and offline surveys are also an effective way to gauge your success with social media promotion. Find out about your social media performance by asking your followers, email lists and website visitors. The most important thing about social media marketing is that it should be constantly fresh and novel. If there is a new network, you may want to add it to your plan. If your defined goals are reached, you should set new targets. You have to “rewrite” your social media strategy periodically considering the latest updates or upcoming technologies.