Why social media marketing strategy?
Today, more than ever in history, social media platforms have become the principal source of information surpassing print and other media platforms. Further, the current COVID 19 pandemic has acted as an impetus to the ever increasing adoption of social media.
More and more people are staying up to date through Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, and Instagram. As the enterprises over the world are grappling with decreasing profits and staff well being, a social media marketing strategy will be the key. Why? Because with restricted movement, social distancing more consumers now are active online. A report from Data Report shows how the use of social media has increased by 51% during this pandemic.
Alt-text: The use of social media across the world during the COVID 19 pandemic.
To survive this change, your business must have a different approach to maintain its customer base.
How to improve social media marketing strategy for business?
The biggest impact of social media on marketing strategy is that it gives the power to reach the targeted audience and stay engaged with them. Increased website traffic, brand awareness, brand loyalty, higher sales, etc. are some of the other impacts of social media on the marketing strategy of a brand. You can leverage these benefits and achieve your business goals with the following social media marketing strategy.
- Layout your objectives:
Having a solid plan is crucial if you want to jumpstart your social media strategy. Your marketing goal will be the driving force for your social media marketing strategy. Your goals should be such that it is realistic and complements the business goals. Achieving one million followers on Facebook within four months is not achievable. So this is where some limitations need to be set and attempt to succeed on the same platform that your target market spends time.
- Understand your audience:
Different people use different social media so all the platforms are not alike. You need to be on the same social network as your target audience. To find your ideal customers it is necessary to know what your audience cares about. The basic foundation for any successful organic social media marketing strategy is to recognize the audience. It is essential to define their concerns, problems, and questions along with your target demography and their social media platform.
Alt-text: Dashboard showing demographics of Socialbakers audience.
- Building a winning plan:
You must know how to build a social media marketing strategy correctly. Take time to add relevant details to your profile bios and ensure that it is complete. It is worth taking the time to make a list of upcoming festivals and special days, creating a content theme, and developing marketing campaigns. Make sure that your content aligns with your target audience and your business goals.
- Social Media tools:
Try to automate your work using social media tools like scheduling and content calendar. While you can manually post all your contents on different social media platforms but it may not lead to the best results. Most of the social media platforms are using some form of algorithm to strain the results they show to the users. So it means that if your post is up at a different time than your target audience is online then they might not even be able to see your post. To make things easy you can use social media scheduling tools and set up a content calendar with different times too.
Alt-text: Scheduling calendar showing the planned posts for social bakers Instagram account.
- Create Suitable content:
Content is the emotional attachment of your brand that connects to its audience. Do not forget the importance of visual content. Videos and images are more likely to be shared on social media than other types of content. To know more about the content strategy for social media marketing you can read our previously written blog.
- Optimize content and post frequency:
Each user has a different time of the day to use social media, and to connect with them you must know what type of content grabs their interest. Each platform has its timing and recommended posts per day. So treat each social media network uniquely and consider its features and functionalities. You can start by practicing this Social Media Marketing Strategy and beat the Instagram algorithm to increase the visibility of your brand.
- Engage with the audience:
People come to social media to interact and socialize with others. Successful companies not only broadcast but also engage with their audience. Find ways to promote your social media channel online and offline so that your customers can find to follow you. You can also create custom hashtags to easily search for the posts and respond to all the mentions.
- Paid promotion:
Most of the social media platforms allow you to target your ads demographically and making it visible only to your target audience through paid ads. Such promotions help your business reach to relevant people who are not connected directly. Such ads can be used for brand promotion, brand recognition, and even selling of products.
- Social Media Analytics:
No matter how much you plan your social media marketing; there is no guarantee that everything will work as expected. However, the key to a successful social campaign is to understand your audience and learn what generates traffic. Keep a constant eye on the metrics and pay attention to the followers, insights, views, likes, impressions, comments, shares, etc. You can make use of analytical tools to track your success.
Bottom Line
We hope to have answered the question of how to create a social media marketing strategy through this blog.
Social media marketing strategy is a crucial part of your business marketing plan, and implementing unconventional methods to interact with customers is what will improve your reach. Brands across the globe are slowly becoming more preoccupied with gaining customers on their social networking platforms. By following the strategies outlined above you will not only compete with other brands but will also create content that withstands the test of time. The positive effect of social media marketing is tremendous that if you fail to implement a well-planned strategy, you will miss out on an incredible marketing opportunity.
