By Boost Social Managing Director
Elisha Fiorentino
It’s already mid-February this year, so how is your business doing and what’s your social media strategy? As social media continues to have a strong influence over consumers in 2020, it is important for businesses to figure out your marketing strategy across various platforms.
A social media marketing strategy is not about randomly posting pictures and expecting that would instantly grow your business. It’s much more complicated than that and requires strategic thinking such as understanding target audiences, creating high-quality content and analysing metrics.
As business owners what can you do? Whether you’re looking after your own social media networks or you’re hiring a social media marketer, it’s important to understand why a social media strategy is important and create a strategy that’s going to help you attain your marketing goals.
#1. Set meaningful goals
The most important step before starting anything is to understand what your goals are and what you can expect from social media. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Do you want to increase sales? Do you want more leads? Ask yourself what you really want before jumping into it.
Also, a social media plan is unique for every business so you cannot simply copy your competition and expect more sales or leads. For instance, when your goal is to improve brand awareness, you might not have a single direct sale or lead for a while – are you ok with it?
Here are a few examples of goals:
- Increase brand awareness
- Increase brand audience
- Improve sales or leads
- Increase community engagement
- Increase website traffic
#2. Understand your audience
Never assume to know your audience without doing your research. Thanks to online analytics tools, we have access to the latest demographic data across all social media platforms.
Analysis of this data is important to help you choose the best social platforms, create content, etc. For instance, the majority of Instagram’s followers are millennials or Gen Z, who prefer bold, eye-popping photos and videos that ooze with personality.
#3. Decide your metrics
The metrics to be analysed are based on your goal. It is crucial to establish the metrics (goals) you want to measure in order to assess how well your social media is performing and what content works well. Use these metrics to modify your content or target audiences.
For instance, if your goal is ‘brand awareness’ the metrics you want to measure are Reach, Engagement, Hashtag performance, Likes, etc. Once you have the base, you then need to dig deeper into understanding what works and what doesn’t with a specific set of audiences. The other metrics could be Paid Reach, Link Clicks, Click-Through Rate, Cost Per Clicks,etc.
#4. Competitor analysis
Before creating content, it is a good practice to analyse your competition to understand what they are up to. While there are some third-party competitor analysis tools, a simple review of the social platforms is good enough to get started.
Similar businesses in the same niche can have a drastically different content strategy, theme, and goal. The goal here is not to copy what the competitors are doing but it’s to determine what’s working for them and what conclusions you can draw to adapt your own campaigns accordingly.
#5. Create engaging content
By now, you should have a clear idea of what your goal is, what platforms you want to use, the theme you want to have, audiences and the timelines. The next step is to create content. Content is the most important part of your social media, so make sure you do it right!
A few tips:
- Stick to the theme
- Have a pre-determined set of messages that you can post
- Create interactive content
- Use stories to your advantage
- Post videos to improve engagement
#6. Analyse your results and optimize
Now with everything in place, you need to have a top-view at everything across all platforms in order to analyse and comprehend what’s working and what’s not. However, it’s important that you’re able to adapt your strategy as you progress throughout the year.
A lot of social media is trial-and-error and you have to be able to adapt or change the strategy accordingly. This dynamic approach to marketing makes perfect sense in a day and age where social media is constantly evolving.
#7. Patience and consistency is the key
Have patience and be consistent! Most of the times you do not get instant results and you cannot reach your goals in one day or one week. Even when you are testing something, give it at least 3-4 weeks of time before deciding whether you want to stop it or modify it.
If you decide to work with ad campaigns on various platforms, make sure you have enough budget for a minimum of 5-6 weeks. A lot of times it is a trial-and-error.
A combination of all these steps, a lot of brain juice, time, and patience together form a formidable social marketing strategy. It is crucial for you to understand everything before jumping into it and burning your cash. Instead, you can hire someone like us and concentrate on your product or service.
