A good plan is vital to activating any business strategy. While social media is simple and attractive to use, and organic posting is free of charge, it seems logical to jump in and begin your social media marketing program immediately. However, social media marketing isn’t always the best course of action for your company. Since good planning is crucial to the success of any business strategy, it’s just as logical to integrate this same philosophy with social media marketing as well.
In fact, if you don’t have social media marketing goals or metrics in which to review them, how can you tell if your efforts are successful or not? It’s due to this fact that slowing down to create a social media marketing plan is the best way to ensure that your efforts will pan out.
There are several keys to creating a solid social media marketing plan. Let's get started on how to implement social media marketing strategies for your business.
Setting Social Media Objectives And Goals
Social media marketing plans should be detailed, specific, attainable, measurable, practical, and time sensitive. Make sure all goals are established with metrics that will directly impact your business growth, such as reaching and attracting new customers, improving your conversion rates, as opposed to simply increasing post likes or shares.
Do Research On Your Competition's Social Media Marketing
It’s important to review the success and failures of your competition. Although it’s not a smart idea to duplicate their efforts or post-type, the learning curve will be reduced by reviewing their mistakes – or successes.
Do A Social Media Audit
Sometimes it’s a good idea to take a few steps back before moving forward. Such is the case with social media marketing. Completing a social medial audit will help you review what you’ve done in the past. It’s also a good idea to search for any unauthorized duplicate accounts that might be duplicating your efforts.
Look For Ideas On Social Selling
If you’ve reviewed your competition’s social media efforts, why not take it one step further by scoping out what local businesses are doing online? Quite often, you can find social media case studies that are posted in their business sections, blogs, or other sections. Not only does this provide you with valuable data and social media strategies that work, but it may plant some seeds for creation.
Create A Social Media Content Calendar
Knowing what to post is important but having a schedule of when to post is just as critical. By completing your research as listed above, you can gain valuable insights about when to post on social media accounts as well. It’s suggested that 80 percent of social media content should be used to educate, entertain, or inform the audience, while only 20 percent is spent on promoting products.
Who Is Your Content Targeted Towards?
An effective social media marketing strategy means having a solid understanding of your audience. Gather data and insights on your current consumer base for starters, but don’t stop there. Social media analytics can also help you determine a good plan on reaching like-minded consumers that may be attracted to your business or brand.
Growing Your Audience With Social Media
There are several ways of expanding your social media footprint. For example, Facebook Groups are exceptional communities to create relationships and establish brand affection. This is also a powerful way of attracting influencers and entrepreneurs that share interest in your niche. The key to building a social media following is to work with mid-level influencers first (those with 10,000 followers or around that amount). This will help you gradually build the brand, without spending too much on influencer marketing.
After you’ve established dominance within your initial niche, social media tools can be used to capture new demographics and audiences. Facebook for one has multiple campaign options that allow you connect with audiences in similar interest groups. Geographic target marketing is another powerful tool to connect with local social media users. In fact, Hootsuite offers a geo-search platform that helps you find social media posts about your business, so you can connect directly with those local consumers.
Sharing Is Caring On Social Media Platforms
More consumers today expect visuals within their social media engagement. In fact, according to Twitter data, people are willing to engage with social media posts by more than 300 percent when there are infographics, GIF’s, photos, or videos attached.
Images and videos also have a powerful influence on millennial users. In fact, 50% of them indicate that they’ve gone out of their way to visit restaurants simply by them posting images or videos of their location, or if a friend has shared similar content on Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram. These are visual-first social networks and have a powerful influence on those users.
It’s just as critical to use exceptional imagery with your social media postings. This is especially vital for those in the service industry but can be a challenge. Videos and images help to tell stories that are impactful to potential consumers. For those in a service industry, consider posting images about your office culture, or that of customers using your services, on your company social media platforms.
Engagement Is Important On Social Media
There is much more to social media engagement than simply replying to direct inquiries. It’s important for any social media marketing strategy to include reviewing posts and conversations posted elsewhere. It’s called social listening and comes with an entirely new level of strategy that is crucial for maintaining a strong and positive online reputation. Visit the Social Media section of our website to learn more about SMM!