Level Up Your Social Media Marketing Strategy with These 7 Effective Steps
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Did you know there are currently over 3.78B social media users worldwide?
With individuals spending more time online and on their smartphones, the use of social media has skyrocketed, along with the crazy amount of attention it’s getting for businesses. The definition of a social media marketing strategy is the overview of your business's social media goals, considering your specific target audience and a fully thought-out plan of how you will reach your goal. Marketing agencies define social media as one of the most effective marketing tools for small businesses, especially those looking to attract and network with new consumers while building their businesses. Businesses and industries worldwide have realized the potential of social media, as many small businesses have succeeded in utilizing this tool alone, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Taking advantage of social media platforms and leveraging a strategy that will allow you to connect your business with an engaging audience is an opportunity no small business should avoid. With social media taking over the digital marketing scope, the significance of creating and implementing an effective strategy is needed now more than ever. Your social media marketing strategy should act as a bible to help your business succeed on social media. Hence, it’s essential to ensure your marketing strategy is clear, short, and simple so you can follow it.
Here at Bold x Collective, we understand the need for innovative thinking incorporating social media platforms and trends. We always encourage and help our clients to formulate the best social media marketing strategies for their businesses.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Let’s start from the beginning! Before diving into strategy creation and the steps, we should discuss social media marketing. According to Investopedia, The term social media marketing (SMM) refers to the use of social media and social networks to market a company’s products and services.
Here is a detailed list of steps that our expert team at Bold x Collective recommends you use when brainstorming your social media marketing strategy to ensure that your social media strategy successfully flows smoothly when put into action.
7 Steps to Create an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy:
1. Build your Persona & Target Audience
2. Make Realistic Goals & Objectives
3. Platform & Content Creation
4. Scheduling & Create Content Calendar
5. Competitors & Industry Trends
6. Analyze Your Analytics & Metrics
7. Monitoring & Measuring KPIs
Let’s get into it!
1. Build Your Persona & Target Audience
One of the many essential components of an effective social media marketing strategy is taking the time to research your target audience and build a persona for your business. A persona is a unique term that defines your target audience and what they expect you to deliver within that specific industry. When you have researched your chosen target audience, you can determine what kind of content you should create for that persona that will attract engagement, for instance, more educational videos for a makeup social media page. When building your detailed persona for your social media marketing strategy, it’s essential to remember your persona’s location, desires, age group, expectations and much more.
Knowing what kind of content to create for your product or service and then analyzing your target audience's behaviour can help you make meaningful connections and progress to enhance your future social media marketing strategy. Researching what social media platforms your target audience uses most often, how they use each platform, what features they like to engage with the most, and the response you get from them are all key points to go over for your marketing strategy. Always keep an open mind during this step to allow you to accommodate your persona’s interests.
2. Make Realistic Goals & Objectives
This first step will set the tone for the plan of action and will essentially be the backbone of the strategy. Setting realistic business goals and objectives that you can achieve through social media marketing should follow the S.M.A.R.T goal format:
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Attainable
R: Relevant
T: Time-based
According to the 2021 Sprout Social Index™, the most common goals for social are increasing brand awareness (58%) and community engagement (41%). With the infinite capabilities and opportunities available with social media platforms, there are countless goals you can set out to achieve for your product or service and associate with your marketing strategy.
Another effective way to set realistic goals is by measuring your analytical metrics for each social media platform you have open for your business. Your analytical report provides you with an overall look at how your social media channels are progressing and what you need to focus more or less time on. This will allow your business to set goals based on what strategies are working well for your business.
3. Platforms & Content Creation
With your goals already set and thorough research of your target audience and competitors complete, picking which social media platforms to share your product or service should be easier now. It’s important to understand that not all social media platforms will attract attention and engagement from users. Digital marketers explain how important it is to research and analyze the social media platforms available to you. This will open your eyes to focus specifically on social media platforms your target audience uses and what features they like best about that platform. For example, Instagram Reels and TikTok may get more engagement than just regular graphic Facebook posts, depending on your target audience and how they like to consume your content. Some social media platforms include:
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
TikTok
LinkedIn
Pinterest
YouTube
Snapchat
When creating content, one crucial marketing tactic you want to keep in mind for your social media marketing strategy is gathering user-generated content. This is where your target audience allows your ideas to come to life. To make original user-generated content, the engagement and attention you receive from your audience is the content you want to be sharing on social media platforms for your content. As the visualization of your strategies forms, it’s essential to continue using the successful strategies from the previous steps to ensure consistency. With content curation, there are generally three categories: creation, curation, and creative curation.
Creation: Uploading original content using user-generated content
Curation: Sharing and reposting content on social media from other users.
Creative Curation: Engaging on social media with other users' posts by re-sharing the post on your social media, commenting and liking the posts, which can extend to networking with original or potential followers, audience, and even other brands.
Furthermore, in terms of content idea types, there are endless possibilities that you can choose from that are sure to match your business’s goals and objectives. Create a mix of content that does more than sell a particular product or service. Keep in mind the 80/20 rule, which means that 80% of your content should educate or entertain your followers while only 20% should work to promote a product or service actively. Utilize the creative and storytelling elements that platforms thrive upon, and create creative content, like pictures, videos, testimonials, blogs, contests and more!
4. Scheduling & Create Content Calendar
This next step is scheduling the content you create for your audience. When scheduling your content, digital marketers explain to their clients how important it is to post content on social media regularly to show consistency to your target audience. Therefore, it would be wise to design an organized content calendar to keep track of those daily posts.
A content calendar allows you to set a consistent plan to create, post, and share your content. Ensure you have a library and resources to store everything and planned times to post to optimize your content. The most utilized scheduling tools used by digital marketers are resources like Hootsuite, Facebook Business Planner, Later, Buffer, and more. These convenient scheduling tools allow you to schedule content on different platforms at set times and days. These tools offer a range of price plans to fit your budget and can also provide you with insights into how your content is performing.
5. Competitors & Industry Trends
This next step entails more research and will help you determine what type of content you will want to create and share. By educating yourself on competitors, you will be able to get an overview of how other businesses in your industry are operating on specific platforms, how they are garnering engagement, brand reach, and conversions and what your competitors are doing on social media will benefit you during the planning of your marketing strategy. This is known as a competitive analysis. For instance, you can analyze how your competitors perform on the different social media platforms, what popular trends and content they take part in on those platforms, what kind of campaigns they launch, and how they interact with their target audience and other brands. A competitive analysis is one of the best ways to research your competitors and industry trends; however, there are many more creative ways to gather research from your competitors to help you organize your social media marketing strategy.
6. Analytics & Metrics
One thing we always say is that numbers tell all! With that said, the next for your social media marketing plan is to emphasize the importance of data-driven analytics, as no marketing strategy is fruitful without including metrics. Outline the metrics you want to keep track of to help you monitor the growth and success of your accounts on social media. Some information and data that makes up your metrics include:
Engagement
Reach
Impressions
Awareness
Audience growth
Click through rate
Once you have reviewed your analytical report, you have an overview of what your target audience engages with the most and least. When continuing to build your social media marketing strategy, you want to remember the data mentioned above that was retrieved from your target audience to help you determine what part of your marketing strategy is working and what isn’t. This will save you time and money in the long run!
7. Monitoring & Measuring Key Performance Indicators
Lastly, monitor your metrics and develop ways to analyze your short-term and long-term progress. Remember that with the ever-changing social media landscape, you must go back and make changes to stay competitive and accommodate your target audience. Measuring the key performance indicators (KPIs) helps you grow as a brand online as you continually measure growth; the social media will be a journey that takes time and effort but is all worthwhile!
Are You Ready to Create Your Social Media Marketing Strategy?
You can implement a successful social media marketing strategy with the essential steps mentioned above! After reading this article, we hope you are more than ready to start planning your strategy today and better understand the importance of social media for your business and marketing strategy.
Need some more help? Contact our team of expert social media marketers at Bold x Collective for a complimentary consultation to help you get started.