Social media campaigns give you a simple way to attract the target audience, engage with your prospects, and generate precious leads. The likes of Facebook and Instagram gather billions of users on a daily basis, so it would be foolish not to take advantage of this opportunity to expand the fan base relatively quickly.
Jake Gardner, a social media marketer at the best dissertation service, says social platforms give brands a number of other advantages:
Raise brand awareness
Promote new products or services
Drive website traffic
Boost brand loyalty
Maximize return on marketing investments
But the sheer availability of social networks doesn’t make the process simple and effortless. On the contrary, you need to design a comprehensive plan of activities in order to win over the audience. Our goal is to help you with that, so keep reading to learn five easy steps to create a social media marketing strategy.
1. Analyze the Audience and Competitors
Before you engage in social media activities, you need to prepare well and thoroughly analyze the current state of affairs.
First of all, make sure to learn everything there is to know about the target audience – their age, location, average income, education, interests, and personal values. Doing so, you will understand how to create content that matches the expectations of your average follower.
Secondly, you have to investigate the biggest niche rivals and determine what they are doing online. It will give you enough materials to figure out how to distinguish your brand and how to outperform the crowd of competitors. Once you’re done with this task, you can move on to the next chapter.
2. Set the Goals
You don’t enter the social media game without precisely determined objectives. The general rule of thumb is to keep the goals SMART:
Specific: Strive for concrete objectives instead of generic plans.
Measurable: Make them easy to measure and quantify.
Attainable: Keep it realistic and within your reach.
Relevant: Focus on goals that can really improve your business.
Time-bound: You can’t expect instant results, but you do need to set a realistic timeframe.
For example, custom writing agencies such as Essay Have use the SMART system like this:
Specific: Use social networks to grow the number of prospects.
Measurable: Generate up to 100 new leads a month.
Attainable: The figure can go up or down in order to make it realistic.
Relevant: The goal is highly practical business-wise.
Time-bound: The plan works on a monthly basis.
3. Choose the Right Channels
No one stops you from creating accounts on every social network out there, but do you really have to do it? Think about it for a moment and you’ll realize that the answer is “No.”
A much better solution is to concentrate on the right channels of communication and activate on platforms where your customers usually spend most of their time. For instance, product-oriented companies should definitely use Facebook and image- and video-sharing networks like Instagram.
On the other side, B2B organizations should focus on LinkedIn because that’s where most of the decision-makers hang out. It depends on the preferences of your target group, but don’t waste time and resources administering content on every single platform.
4. Make a Content Calendar
The next thing you want to do is create a content calendar and follow the realization of social media marketing activities. This step is critical because people and organizations publish millions of posts every day, so you have to be consistent and keep reminding the audience that you are active online.
Don’t forget to include social media features such as events, custom essays, product releases, holidays, seasonal announcements, etc. This will make your account more versatile and help you to attract new followers.
If you can’t keep track of all activities, we recommend you to use a tool like Google Calendar. The platform will help you to schedule posts and send you reminders on forthcoming activities, so you won’t ever forget important dates or events.
5. Create Amazing Content
Many marketers will say that the last step of the social media strategy is also the most important. This opinion is completely legit as fans follow your account because they want to consume top-level content. You need to indulge them by publishing amazing posts that are informative, funny, educational, emotional, or entertaining.
Of course, you cannot afford to be too promotional or pushy. Instead, keep your marketing discrete and publish 80% of entertaining posts while saving only 20% for promotional brand-related announcements.
Conclusion
Social networks can give you instant exposure to almost a third of the global population, but you have to take the job seriously and make sure to present your brand in the best way possible. How you do it depends mostly on the type of business and your professional creativity, but there are some rules that apply to all situations.
In this post, we discussed five easy steps to create a social media marketing strategy. You will face many other challenges while launching your social media campaigns, but the tips we mentioned above are the simplest way to begin and give a boost to your online promotion. Good luck!
About the Author:
Kristin Goad is a editor at topresume and Rushmyessay. Her favorite topics are productivity and inspiration, but she also enjoys writing about marketing. Currently, she is working as a content marketer at ultius reviews and 99papers review.
