Your social media marketing strategy can be done in easy to do steps. This strategy will let you know if your goals are being met or not. Every post that you make, comment, like and reply should have a purpose.
A detailed strategy helps in making execution more effective. Keep in simple and concise. Make sure that it is attainable so that it will be easy to measure.
Set Your Goals
The first step in your social media marketing strategy is to list down your goals and objectives. Not having goals, will give you no way to measure your progress and your ROI.
Using the SMART framework is a good guide for any business. When it comes to goal setting they should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Keep track of meaningful metrics like leads generated, web referrals and conversion rate. Retweets and likes are fun, but they don’t give proven value to your business unless they lead to conversions.
Know Your Audience
Content creation should be based on knowing who your audience is. Find out what they like to see on social media and create content that they can like, share and comment on.
Think about real people and their needs and desires. This will help you pinpoint what to offer them.
Creating a funnel for them to be turned into customers should be a part of the strategy.
Don’t make assumptions and gather real data instead. Some platforms are better for reaching out to specific audiences. For example, Facebook data shows that there are more Millenials (82%) on their platform compared to Baby Boomers (59%).
Using social media analytics is a great way of getting valuable information about your market. You can find out their language, location and how they interact with your brand.
We look at an example from Jugnoo, an Uber-like service for auto rickshaws in India. The company used Facebook Analytics and learned that 90% of their users who referred riders were 18 to 34 years old, and 65% of them used Android. They used the data to target their ads which resulted in a 40% lower cost per referral.
Know Your Competition
There is a considerable chance that your competitors are using social media. This means that you can learn from what they are already doing.
Doing a competitive analysis allows you to see what your competitors are doing well and where they fail.
Use this to your advantage by either copying what works or improve on their strategies. You can also avoid the mistakes that they have made.
Opportunities will also open up for you when you study your competitors. They may be focused on one platform alone which leaves other platforms open for you to dominate.
It is easier to market on networks that are not being served than trying to get a portion of the market on a platform where your competitor is on top.
Conduct An Audit
Your campaign may be running for a while now; it’s time to evaluate your current tactics.
- Know what works and what doesn’t
- Find out who is connecting to you on social media
- Learn what sites does your target market use
- Compare your efforts versus your competitors
Completing all the data will help you plan your next steps moving forward. Your goal is to improve your performance based on the current information given.
After your audit, you should have a clear picture if a particular social media account is worth keeping or if you should focus on another platform.
During this evaluation process, you can look for impostor accounts who are using your business name or names of your services and products.
These accounts can harm your brand, so you need to report them. You can have your accounts verified on Facebook and Twitter. This will ensure your followers that they are dealing with the real you.
