Before you begin formulating your social media marketing strategy, it helps to ask yourself a few key questions. First, what are your overarching goals? What do you want to accomplish with your social media marketing strategy? Do you want more traffic, followers, sales, or more awareness of your brand? You should also ask yourself what you hope to achieve in the next six months to a year. Social media marketing uses platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to build relationships and interact with potential and current customers. Social media marketing aims to build brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, or even make sales.
Some benefits of social media marketing include increased exposure for your business, more opportunities to connect with potential customers, and improved search engine rankings. There’s no question that social media marketing can be a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. But with so many platforms and strategies to choose from, it can be tough to know where to start. If you’re looking to get your social media marketing strategy off the ground, one suggestion to help you get started: Define your goals. What do you want to achieve with your social media marketing? Whether building brand awareness, generating leads, or making sales, clearly defined goals will help you create content that supports those objectives.
Try to be as specific as possible. For example, if you want to create brand awareness, you might create a Facebook contest to encourage people to share your product photos on their pages. Regarding content, specificity allows you to deliver the right message to the right audience.
With a detailed social media marketing plan, you’ll be able to take full advantage of all the incredible opportunities at your fingertips. Another smart strategy is to choose platforms your competitors aren’t already using. While taking advantage of the big players is important, taking your business to lesser-known ones could help you jump ahead of your competitors.
It’s a Social World
Although social media is a powerful tool for reaching new customers, it doesn’t replace traditional marketing. Social media shouldn’t become a distraction from other vital efforts. So, we know that online customer service is important, but we also know that we don’t have the time to write detailed responses to every customer who tweets or posts a question.
But we do not measure our work on likes, comments, etc. We measure our work in conversion rates and the quality of stated requests. Do not look for any shortcuts! There are too many possibilities and variables to consider. Such as; What if your target audience doesn’t react to your Facebook message? What if the influencer you contacted doesn’t quote back within 48 hours? What if you can’t get your content through Google’s Panda algorithm? It’s easy to get frustrated.
Or, perhaps you hire someone to make your company’s website. If they do their job well, you want them to stick around. You might even look into paying them extra to keep them from leaving for your competitor. Plus, if you’ve invested money into developing your website, you’ll want to protect your investment. With small businesses, large businesses, and technology companies all vying for attention on popular channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, it’s more important than ever to set up your marketing strategy to be consistent.
Creating a Social Media Marketing Strategy
Creating a social media marketing strategy can be fairly straightforward, especially if you already know your goals. Some services purport to deliver a certain number of followers to your account—either in the form of “fake” followers that don’t engage with your brand or real followers that you have to pay. Please don’t do it. Try this instead:
1. Identify your audience. Once you know your goals, it’s time to find your audience. You won’t get anywhere with social media marketing unless you learn whom you want to reach.
2. Create unique content. Humans are attracted to information that is useful, valuable, and entertaining. Creating and sharing content that resonates on all three levels can attract and engage more customers.
3. Broadcast your content. Once you’ve created great content, make sure your audiences see it. Sharing content on multiple platforms and using hashtags to tap into trending conversations will help get your content in front of the right people.
4. Engage with your audience. Ask your engagers questions, encourage discussion, and be present. Interact with them. The more you engage with people, the more they are influenced to follow you and check out your content.
Create a Schedule and Stick To It.
Your editorial calendar should include a social media schedule detailing the messages you plan to publish on each channel. Once you know where you want to take your company, you’re ready to create an action plan!
~By Sandra Redmond~