Social media marketing, one of the key ingredients that contribute to a business’s success. Yes, we use social media on a daily basis and most of us get annoyed with the advertising BUT with the right social media strategy in place, we can connect and engage with our audiences on a different level.
You may not know this, but some of the main benefits of having a strong social media strategy in place allows you to:
- Grow your audience and connect with them better
- Increase awareness of your brand, product or service
- Drive traffic to and increase traffic flow to your website
- Generate leads
- Influence your audience
- Drive more sales = more money
Social media is a necessary part of your overall marketing efforts and with our top tips, there’s no doubt that you can’t have a successful social media strategy in place 🙂
- Set your goals and objectives
Setting goals and objectives should always be first on your list, this is essential in answering the “why” behind the actions that you are taking. Ensure that your goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Decide which platforms are right for you and treat each of them in a unique way. Ensure that your goals are based on metrics where you can see and measure the impact on business.
A great example of a goal could be “Reach 5000 followers on Instagram by end of June”. This is a specific objective that is measurable, attainable, relevant and can be done in a specified amount of time.
- Check out the competition and find inspiration
Get out there on the social sphere and see what some of your competitors are doing on their platforms. It’s a great way of knowing what they are up to and how you can avoid copying them. Doing a full on competitor analysis will give you great insight into what works, what doesn’t and how you can adapt and improve on existing competitor strategies.
Draw inspiration from your competitors in driving your efforts for creating and publishing unique, engaging content that your audience loves.
Of course, don’t only rely on your competitors for inspiration. Check out other successful businesses across different industries, see if you can find some success stories and even reach out to your own audience for ideas.
- Understand and grow your audience
This is key to almost all of the puzzle pieces. Knowing who you are speaking to and how you can speak to more of them is what will drive your overall strategy and help get you on the track to achieving your goals.
You’ll need to start developing a picture of who’s interacting with you online using data that’s accessible to you. Most social media platforms give you access to basic information like demographics, age groups and details around what type of your content they prefer to engage with. If you have multiple online platforms like a website or an email marketing database, combine all the data to build an even richer view of your customers.
- Run a social media audit
Set aside time to take a step back and evaluate how things are going. In other words, are your efforts paying off and is it worth the time?
- Keep an eye on what’s trending
Try to stay on top of what’s trending, staying ahead of the curb is quite essential in social media marketing. Trends are forever changing, and adjusting your efforts in line with what’s going on in the “now” will keep you relevant and evolving.
Let trends help you make the most out of your social media strategy. Trends often have a huge following, jumping on will help you capitalise on the mass amount of people already engaged with this particular trend or topic. A fast track way to help in reaching certain goals and objectives.
- Setup a social media content calendar
Planning is pivotal in the social media marketing world and having a content calendar in place will help you plan and execute seamlessly. Having a social media content calendar will help you keep track of posting the right content on the right platform, aimed at the right audience at the right time.
Using data available to you, gives you insights into what type of content performs best on a specific platform, aimed at a specific audience and posted at a specific time. Using this data to help plan your content schedule and help you tweak and optimize performance, will ensure that you have a healthy mix of content.
- Create a social media content and update library
With the various social media platforms out there and the unique requirements for each one of them, there’s a lot going on.
Building up a social media content library equips you with different topics, categories and content types to help you schedule into your calendar. Keeping track of posts and what you are posting will help you stay on top of your campaigns. This is also a great way to avoid overwhelming your audience with the same posts over and over.
- Deliver content consistently
Now that your social media library is built and your content calendar is in place, this is what’s going to help drive content consistency.
Having an overview and a bigger picture of your overall content layout will help you drive relevant, engaging content consistently. You want to ensure you are top of mind without being invasive or spammy.
- Visuals go a long way
Humans by nature, engage more with imagery over standard text. We need something interesting to look at that will hold our attention.
People have become accustomed to an image with every post, it’s become a standard practice in the social media world. This is also testament to the major engagement factor that visuals actually have in the social sphere. Shareable content is often static images or short videos that people find engaging so this should definitely be incorporated into your marketing strategy.
- Focus on quality over quantity
Going for high engagement means posting more meaningful content that resonates with your audience. Quality content is more memorable and less invasive than constantly posting across your platforms.
Having access to data and creating your content calendar will help you stay on top of the quality vs quantity quandary when it comes to social media marketing.
- Monitor and respond to all social media conversations
Actively engaging with your online community by answering all conversions and messages is a must when it comes to social media marketing.
Being involved in conversations humanizes your brand and gets your audience to engage with you on a more personal level. This shows them that you care and that you want to be involved.
This will also help you stay aware of conversations and comments around the online reputation of your business.
- Track and refine your performance
Keep going back to the past content, gather analytics and data, analyse the performance and based on the findings, refine your efforts and make tweaks to help drive your goals.
- Test, test and test
Keep running experiments, keep trying new things and keep testing content and strategies with your audience. Simple A/B tests for example, will provide a lot of information on what works better with your audience in relation to a specific goal.
For example, you want to get more click-throughs to your website, a simple A/B test can be the colour of your Call To Action Button. Going from Blue to Red. Conclusions drawn from these tests can help you further optimise your efforts and content in order to achieve your goals.
In Conclusion
There are many things to consider when it comes to creating a successful social media strategy, focus on the basics, and build up from there.