How To Build A Successful Social Media Marketing Strategy

Updated 27 December 2022

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Social media marketing is a business strategy that makes use of social media platforms to communicate and engage with potential and current customers. This type of marketing helps many companies and brands enhance their online presence, generate leads and share content relevant to their marketing goals. Learning about social media marketing may help you develop effective plans that lead to increased profits. In this article, we discuss how to create a successful social media marketing strategy and explore why it is important for a brand to do so.

What Is A Social Media Marketing Strategy?

A social media marketing strategy is a plan that a company prepares to boost brand awareness, amplify engagement, improve sales, strengthen customer retention and loyalty and ultimately, promote growth. While making this marketing strategy, it may be critical for the company to understand its audience, from prospects to present customers. The strategy also involves figuring out what type of content to post alongside tracking metrics to get insights into the company's social media campaigns. Many companies hire a social media manager or a marketing director to develop a strategy for team members to carry out.

Key Benefits Of Having A Social Media Marketing Strategy

Having a marketing strategy for social media may help companies build their brands and multiply demand, so here are the top five benefits of having one such strategy:

Reach millions of people to promote your products or services
Target advertising by location, age, gender and interests
Measure the performance of various social media campaigns
Prepare different messages for different platforms
Receive opinions, feedback and reviews quickly and efficiently

How To Build A Rewarding Social Media Marketing Strategy?

To get the most out of your social media plans, you may consider understanding your own goals, different social media platforms, its users and adjust your strategy accordingly. Here are some steps to consider when developing a successful marketing strategy for social media:

1. Create marketing goals

Effective social media strategies essentially involve determining the goals that a company's marketing teams want to achieve. These goals may include improving brand awareness, boosting sales of products or services and building a repeat customer base. You may set up SMART goals, which means they are specific, measurable, actionable, relevant and time-based.

2. Learn about your audience

To learn about your audience, you may hold a meeting with the company's marketing team. This team may help you learn about the target audience and with this information, you may develop personas that represent the people within your audience. To create buyer personas for your audience, you may start with accumulating demographic data, like gender, age and location. Next, you may use customer research to enumerate details like the person's primary interests, problems and needs.

This research and data may help you create a social media strategy that aligns with the goals of the company. For example, your goal is to increase traffic on the company's website by getting a certain number of clicks on a social media advertising campaign. Carrying out user research on the advertisements or testing two different advertisements may allow you to develop a successful campaign by choosing a certain ad copy, pictures or messages.

3. Choose the right platform

Choosing the right social media platform may depend on what social website your buyers use the most. Having a strong understanding of each platform, its features and possibilities may help you plan a strategy effectively. Keeping in mind your audience and designing objectives accordingly may allow you to create a successful social media strategy for your business.

Depending on the social media platform, your content may also vary. For example, if your audience spends most of its time on a photo-sharing social website, you may create a strategy that makes the most of visual media, like photos and graphics. The personas of your target audience you are trying to reach also play a pivotal role in achieving your social media objectives for each stage of the customer lifecycle.

4. Create content for social media

Good social media marketing focuses on content that starts conversations and interactions. For that, you may consider getting creative with your content. Actionable and relevant content may help a brand strengthen its social engagement. By focusing on your audience, the content you create for them may resonate with the audience and create value for them. To maximise the value of your content, save money and efficiently develop content that you think would work the best, you may employ the four R's of content marketing. These may include:

Reorganise: Reorganising your content means creating smaller pieces of content out of a bigger piece. For example, if you have an elaborate infographic with a lot of information in it, you may take out multiple graphics or visuals and use them as standalone visuals.
Rewrite: Using already written content may help you avoid putting in the extra effort of writing new content. Browse through the content library and see if you can find some relevant articles from where you can get some great takeaways.
Redesign: Redesigning your content with entertaining and attractive visuals and graphics that align with present trends may help you attract the attention of your audience. You may consider updating an existing property to turn it into a more relevant piece of information for your audience.
Retire: Many times, it is challenging to repurpose your content simply because the information is no longer relevant. In this case, you may remove the content and ensure that you share content that finds relevance among your target audience, so consider posting updated and exciting content as it has great chances of the audience engaging with it.

5. Check your competition

After preliminary audience research comes competitor research. You may consider spending time on understanding how your major competitors are using social media. Review the social media platforms they use most often, analyse the types of content they post and determine their publishing frequency.

Completing this review can help you understand how other companies in the industry are leveraging social media. This review allows you to identify areas where your audience may notice you. For example, you might come across competitors in your industry who are not posting frequently on a particular social media site. You may be able to use this observation to your advantage and attract a larger share of your target audience on this platform.

6. Create a content calendar

Make a list of content you plan to publish on your company's social media sites. Your content can include everything from product updates and sales announcements to current events and behind-the-scenes images of your company. Add the material to a calendar that may guide you to develop a regular posting schedule.

You may use your audience and competitor research to effectively design a content calendar. This guide may help you create content that your audience finds interesting. Many strong social media marketing examples often involve publishing a wide range of content, including images, links, announcements and contests.

7. Engage with your audience

Apart from posting content regularly, engaging with your audience remains important. You may monitor the reactions of your posts and how people are engaging with your content. You may set aside time to respond to comments, answer questions and engage with your audience on a daily basis.

If your social media strategy garners comments and concerns that apply to other teams, consider developing a workflow to respond effectively to your audience. You may involve different teams in the social media marketing process. For example, you might partner with customer service or sales teams to reply to questions about your products' features or pricing.

8. Track social media metrics

Once you have prepared content calendars and engagement plans, you may consider tracking your social media metrics at the end of each month. This exercise may help you confirm if you are achieving the goals you initially set. You can access analytics for your account, audience and posts on each social media platform you use.

Add the data to a spreadsheet or your company's standard report format so you may compare results from month to month. Your social media marketing goals determine which metrics matter most to your company. For example, if you want to generate sales, the revenue attributed to your company's social media account is likely to be the most important metric.