Social media is now ubiquitous. It is used as a medium by many marketers to reach their ideal customers. People use social media daily as a source of news, entertainment, communication and more. Not only can marketers reach their target audience but also influence their buying behaviors. Marketers can use compelling educational content or aesthetically pleasing images to attract their customers. The power of social media lies in the fact that businesses can reach a wide range of like-minded audiences interested in buying their products or services.
To make use of the vast opportunities that social media offers, marketers need to build a strong social media marketing strategy. This article will discuss how you can create a social media marketing strategy to help your business grow.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing focuses on promoting your brand and its products or services on various social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. The content should be customized as per the channels you use and the type of target audience you want to reach.
Why Do You Need Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing can be beneficial to your business in the following ways:
- It can help you reach your target audience and communicate with them frequently
- Wide range of audiences means that many people will be exposed to your brand. This can boost brand awareness for your business.
- You can increase your sales or boost conversions by promoting your products or services on social media.
- Building trust and credibility for your brand.
- Social listening can help you understand your audience’s opinion on your products. IT can also determine what your audiences’ interests and preferences are.
- It is a great tool for lead generation. You can send more traffic to your websites through your posts.
- Staying informed about what your competitors are doing on social media and how they are influencing customers.
- Build powerful and sustainable relationships with your customers.
Key Social Media Statistics for 2020
Here are some key social media statistics you should be aware of:
How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy?
Determine Your Goals
The first step is to set your goals. This lays a foundation for where you want your marketing strategy to go. Goals help you give a direction and after setting them you can effectively plan your marketing strategy. Without this you would not know what to measure and calculate the success of your strategy.
When setting goals make sure to keep your goals realistic and measurable. Set goals that are SMART:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Some of these goals can include driving a certain number of traffic to your website, selling a product or increasing brand awareness by gaining more followers. These goals should be easy to measure and show the results once you implement your strategy.
Create Buyer Persona
Buyer persona is a fictional representation of your target customer. It helps you determine what type of customer would be interested in buying what you offer. This gives you an opportunity to assess the demographics and psychographics of your target audience. Carry out an in-depth research about your audiences. Look at their hobbies, interests, pain-points, buying patterns and more to help you understand them.
This buyer persona will help you target specific audiences on social media. You would know who your target audience is and how to appeal to them. Based on this knowledge you can create content that your audience finds interesting.
Choose Your Social Media Platform
Social media has a number of platforms. Which platform you should choose depends on the type of business you run and where you can find the majority of your target audience. Your buyer personas can give you an insight into the interests of your customers and you can choose a platform where you can find them. For example, if you have a B2B company then you might benefit more by using LinkedIn, as you can find many business professionals there. But if you have an interior designing business you might use Instagram to post attractive images to showcase your work.
Put some thought into choosing your social media platform. If you overlook a platform that has a significant number of your target audience, you might miss out on them. The best way to research your audience before selecting one or more platforms.
Create Compelling Content
Create content that engages your audience. The content you post should also be relevant to the type of products or services you offer. Your audiences are exposed to a vast number of posts daily. To get their attention you need to post content that drives their curiosity and provides them with the information they are looking for.
One way to assure that your post is not ignored is to use enticing captions and images. This is to draw the user’s attention to your post. Make sure that what you put in the caption is what your users will find once they click on your content to view it. Videos are a powerful tool to capture the attention of your users. Share your blogs articles on your social media platforms to drive more traffic to your website. Create content that drives engagement and keeps your users interested in your brand.
Schedule Your Posts
Set a time for each post. Some social media platforms like Facebook can allow you to schedule your posts. You can also use platforms like Hootsuite or HubSpot that allow you to schedule posts on various social media platforms. This is a good way to manage your social media posting so that you don’t forget to post. It also helps you maintain continuity and be consistent.
Leverage Social Media listening
Social listening is the process to observe social media channels for the mentions of products, competitors, topics and more that are related to your business or industry. You can take a look at what your competitors are doing on their social media platforms. It also is important for audience research as you can monitor what your audience is engaging with and how they are responding. This can also help you get feedback from your audience.
Measure Your Results
It is important to measure your social media marketing efforts. You need to find out if it is impacting your revenue, especially if you are paying for ads or promoting your content. While measuring these results don’t just look at vanity metrics like number of likes or followers. Look at metrics that show you the impact of your social media efforts on your sales or conversions. For example, if you are running social media ads then you need to look at the sales that happened through these channels. If you are running an inbound marketing campaign, you can look at how many users were sent to your website from your social media channel. This can help you determine if your social media marketing strategy is actually effective.
A social media marketing strategy can work well with the rest of your marketing efforts. If you are just starting out with your social media strategy, then these steps will help you get started in the right direction. One important aspect is to know your audience well. There are many ways how you can successfully use social media to appeal to your potential customers. With social media you can frequently communicate with your audience and build a long-term relationship with them.
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