Social media marketing:
As the name suggests, when marketing is done using social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and so on, it is termed social media marketing.
Social media marketing involves publishing content on your social media profiles, engaging with your followers, analyzing your results, running social media advertising campaigns, and driving website traffic.
Social media's power is commendable as you reach many people within seconds.
Currently, platforms used for social media marketing are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat.
What is a social media marketing strategy?
A social media marketing strategy is a well-thought-out plan indicating your business objectives, goals, and everything you plan to do to achieve those goals using social media marketing.
A proper social media strategy helps you to use resources effectively and efficiently and helps to reach the targeted audience.
Building a brand from scratch on social media without a well-planned strategy can be challenging and counterproductive. You'll find yourself posting and seeing no return from the invested efforts.
9 simple steps to create marketing strategies for social media:
Choose goals that match your business objectives:
Start by creating SMART goals, where S stands for Specific, M stands for measurable, A stands for attainable, R stands for relevant, and T stands for time-bound for creating winning marketing strategies for social media.
Different social media apps may have other goals to track meaningful metrics by focusing on click-through, engagement, and conversion rates.
For instance, If LinkedIn drives traffic on your website, you would measure click-throughs. Furthermore, if Instagram is used for brand awareness, you can track the number of story views and analyze your Instagram engagement rate.
Lastly, if you advertise your brand/ product on Facebook, cost-per-click (CPC) is a common success metric.
Learn as much as possible about your audiences:
Knowing your followers' basic details (age, interests, average income, occupation, hobbies, and so on) can help target and engage them on your social media channels.
Social media analytics can be used to know much about your followers, allowing you to refine your strategy and target your audience better.
Know your competition:
You can learn many things from your competitors who already exist in the market and are using social media marketing. A straightforward way to know your competitors well is by conducting competitive analytics.
This analysis provides strategic context to identify opportunities and threats. Competitive analysis in marketing and strategic management helps to analyze the competitor's social media channels and helps to assess the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors.
Perform a social media audit:
If you are already a social media user, then ask yourself a few questions to understand whether the efforts you are putting into social media marketing are worthwhile or not.
Questions like:
What strategies work and what do not?
Who are all engaging with you?
What are your most valuable collaborations?
How is your targeted audience networking?
Are there any imposter accounts?
A few more questions to understand whether your account's purpose is clear.
Do I have a targeted audience linked to my social media profile?
If so, how is my targeted audience making use of this platform?
Can my social media channel help me to achieve my desired results?
Once you answer all the questions listed above, it will keep your social media strategy focused by finding a proper way to make any improvements.
Set up a social media profile:
Social media platforms with different business goals and objectives can be used for social media marketing. But, before setting up a social media profile, it is crucial to decide the purpose of each social media channel of your business.
For instance, Twitter may be designated for customer services to keep email and call volumes down.". On the other hand, Facebook may be used to drive traffic to Instagram profiles, which are used to post high-end educational infographics and product announcements and promotions, and Stories to cover live events or quick social media updates.
Once the profile is set up, it is essential to fill out all the profile fields. Add keywords that people might use to search for your business. Use images, logos, etc., for consistent branding across your network.
Search for inspiration:
Although your brand must stand apart from others, you should still look to the brands doing great on social media for inspiration.
Staying active on social media helps to know what is trending, who is going on the top, who is on the bottom, and what is new with the platform.
Have you ever wondered what attracts people to engage with some popular Instagram profiles like National Geographic? Nothing but a social media marketing plan.
Create a social media content calendar:
Of course, sharing great content is essential, but it's equally important to plan for when you'll share content to get maximum reach.
The social media content calendar maintains the date and time at which you will publish different types of content on each channel, including both your regular posting and content for social media campaigns.
Separate time to post on social media platforms also allows users to interact with the audiences as mentioned on the content calendar (although you must also allow for some unexpected engagement with the audiences).
Create influential content:
Remember what you did in Step 5? It was about deciding on a different objective for different social media channels. Now it is time to go deeper.
Here's a long list of content ideas to write engaging posts for social media channels.
Create a daily, weekly, or monthly series
Run a contest, or giveaway
Celebrate "National Whatever Day!
Make a meme
Give customers the spotlight.
Do a "This or That" poll.
Go behind the scenes.
Make a slow-motion video.
Share secrets or hacks
Ask your followers for advice.
Fill in the blank
Congratulate someone for an achievement
Introduce your team members
Do a charity drive
Tease a product drop or upcoming release
Tease a product drop or forthcoming release
Track and analyze your social media marketing performance:
Social media marketing strategy is vital to running a business but more important is to examine whether the strategies you used worked precisely right on the first try.
By reviewing the performance metrics, you might experience some of your strategies failing and some working better than you had expected.
Moreover, conducting surveys can also be a great way to determine how well your social media strategy works. Ask your website visitors, followers, and email list, whether you're meeting their expectations and what they'd like to see more often.
Make sure to check the performance of all your social channels at least once a week to track your growth over time.
Closure:
Using social media platforms to promote your brand products and services is nothing but social media marketing (digital marketing form).
Conducting proper social media marketing needs proper social media strategies.
Where social media strategy is a pre-planned action that indicates your business objectives and everything you plan to do to achieve those goals on social media effectively and efficiently.
With a social media strategy, social media marketing is undoubtedly a good use of time.
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