Social media marketing is imperative to a business’s success, with over three billion users worldwide, it has become a platform to truly engage with consumers.
Studies show that 69% of users have already made a purchase from a brand because of something they saw on social media.
So, have you got your social media strategy in place yet? Here are our six easy steps to help you get the best from your social media marketing.
Table of Contents
Set goals and objectives
Within your marketing strategy, you need to decide what you would like to achieve from your social media marketing. Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Or are you looking at social media as more of a sales tool, to generate leads and enquires through these channels.
Once you’ve established your goals, conduct an audit of your current social media presence to see what’s working and what you could improve on. Can you tie in success on this social channel in line with the business’ objectives? It could be worth investing more time into one particular channel, rather than working on all of them at the same time.
Ensure your bios/about sections on each social media platform are completed with backlinks to your website. If you’re wanting to completely reassess your platforms, it could be worthwhile deleting any irrelevant or out of date content.
How do you want to communicate with your audience?
What are you looking to portray to your audience? Are you an expert within your industry? For example, a consumer interested in a leading recycling company with 50 years’ experience, may be looking for advice based on the fact that you are an expert in your field.
However, you could simply use your social media for brand awareness and to entertain your audience. Some brands such as Innocent and Greggs are well known for their laid back/comical approach on social media which leads to a better customer relationship.
Research your audience
In order to connect with the right audience, you need to understand how they consume information and content. Identify your target audience and create a persona for your ideal consumer:
- What’s their job title?
- What’s their age?
- What are their preferred methods of communication?
- Which social media platforms do they use?
- What are their interests?
Ascertain which social media channels your target audience use the most – as well as using your own personas, audiences are now categorised by their age. 76% of boomers (55-75 age range) rank Facebook as their favourite social media platform, however, only 11% of generation z (5-24 age range) prefer Facebook and are more likely to use Instagram and YouTube.
Despite once being the leading platforms, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are no longer at the forefront of the social world. Have you looked into alternative social media sites? TikTok is now one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the world, with over 500 million users.
Explore the untapped potential of other social media platforms which might benefit your company better than your traditional channels.
Look into your competition
What are your competitors doing on social media? How can you do it differently? Take a look at their social media presence, make a note of which channels they’re on and whether they’re driving engagement; this is also a good way to find inspiration for content.
Take a look at what types of content they’re posting (links to blogs, video etc.) and how regularly, follow the pages/groups that they follow; these will ultimately be relevant for your industry and give you an idea of what your audience are interested in.
Create a content calendar
In order to guide your social marketing strategy, a content calendar will help you plan your content. Focus on seasonality and where your industry peaks. For instance, a gifting company’s focus will be the lead up to Christmas and any other celebration days, such as Mother’s Day.
Creating a content plan will keep you organised and save you valuable time, it allows you plan in advance month by month, or even week by week if you have a lot of interesting content that you would like to share with your audience.
A scheduled content plan also enables you to post consistently; regularly showing up in your audience’s feed is the key to engaging them on social.
Evaluate your strategy
After six months, evaluate your social strategy to see if it’s working for you. Check your social metrics, has your engagement increased? Using social management websites such as HubSpot or Hootsuite can track your post and track how many clicks to your website you received on each.
Identify which of your post topics has done well, which means you can use this knowledge to write similar content in the future.
If you’re struggling with your digital strategy, get in touch with us at Modo25 – we are a global, supported inhousing and marketing technology provider who put our clients and our team first, send us an email to team@modo25.com
