How To Create A Social Media Strategy That Works
Social media is a critical part of any business’s marketing plan. And it’s important to build a social media strategy that plans out what your business wants to achieve, guides your actions, and informs you as to whether or not your strategy is working. So let’s talk about how to build a social media marketing plan that works.
1. Choose social media goals that align with your business.
The goals you set need to be concise and should avoid anything too unrealistic or difficult to measure. The best way to set up a goal is to create a SMART goal:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound
For each social media platform you use in your marketing plan, you’ll need to set specific goals for that platform. For instance, you may decide to increase community engagement by lowering your response rate on Twitter by 1 hour, but on Instagram you may have an entirely different goal.
Here are a few possible goals:
Increase brand awareness
Build brand trust
Increase community engagement
Generate leads and sales
Grow audience
Drive traffic to site
Your social media strategy goals will also depend on the platform you’re using since each platform has different metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators). And make sure you’re choosing to track meaningful metrics like engagement versus vanity metrics such as followers or likes.
2. Learn about your audience.
Different social media platforms draw in different audiences. If your primary audience is professionals, LinkedIn will be a better platform versus TikTok. Because of these platform differences, it’s important to understand your audience. One way to do that is to create audience personas for your ideal customer(s).
But always remember your customers are real people with real wants and problems they need to solve. So the more data you gather on your audience and customers, the better you’ll be able to understand those needs and problems – then use your social media strategy to fulfill those needs and solve their problems.
3. Research your market competition.
Market competition research is important to see what your competitors are doing well – but to also find areas of opportunity to exploit. For example, maybe your main competitor has a large presence on Facebook, but isn’t active on Instagram. Or by reading competitor customer feedback, you may discover complaints about certain products, features, or processes. You can then use this to lean into what your business does well in those areas.
4. Decide which social media platforms to use and set up your profiles.
You will need to define a strategy for each platform. For instance, Snapchat and Instagram may be for customer tutorials, while Twitter is for customer service and support.
As you set up your business profiles, fill out all fields, use keywords your audience will use to search for your product or service, and use consistent branding colors, logos, and themes.
5. Find inspiration from other brands’ social media strategies.
Follow other brands on social media platforms to find inspiration for posting. There are some outstanding social media campaigns – even amongst your competition – that can help improve your brand ideas. And whenever in doubt, ask your followers what they’d like to see.
6. Create a social media content calendar with interesting content.
A social media content calendar is the plan you create to share your content. It will include the days and times you’ll post, links you want to share, images and videos you’ve created, and copy for each post.
You’ll also need to create a content mix that supports your business and social media goals. You can use an 80/20 mix (80% to inform and educate, 20% to promote) or a 1/3 mix (1/3 inform/educate, 1/3 promote, 1/3 interact). Whatever mix you choose and content you create, make sure it is relevant and engaging.
As you generate content, also make sure it aligns with the platform itself. So if you’ve designated Twitter for customer support, it won’t make sense to use Twitter to share content videos.
7. Track your social media performance and adjust your strategy.
Evaluate your tracking metrics on each platform and adjust your plan accordingly. Focus on the most important metrics and KPIs for your goals like clicks, engagement, reach, hashtag performance, organic and paid likes, etc. – and then adjust your strategy as needed.
For example, you may have noticed your reels get high engagement on Instagram, but the engagement on Facebook is low. So you then decide to switch to static images instead to see if engagement on Facebook improves.
Your social media strategy is an ever evolving document.
It will always need to be evaluated and adjusted as you review platform metrics and whenever your business goes through changes. At Art in Facto, let us help you create a winning social media strategy and use our expertise to make smart and efficient adjustments to your plan.
Contact us for a consultation.
