Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy in 8 Steps - ARTICLE GATE

Social media marketing strategy is no longer an option, it is essential to the success of social media. 

The word “strategy” may sound a bit complicated, but in reality, there is some kind of strategy that is involved in all our online activities, even if we are not aware of it. What a formal social media marketing strategy will do is put everything in the right order with the ultimate goal of getting better results.

This strategic approach is not uncommon to digital marketing, in fact it is good practice to have an overall digital marketing strategy beyond social media.

What is a social media marketing strategy?

A social media marketing strategy is nothing more than a clearly defined plan that promotes your personal brand or business, with milestones and goals for how to use social media networks to your advantage.

A strategy will tell you which social networks to use, how to use them, what to expect as a return from each network, and how to measure progress.

Why do you need a social media strategy?

A few years ago, when social media mobility began, it was easy to get into social media. All you had to do was create a Facebook page and a twitter account and start following people by sharing your personal or business posts. The more people you follow, the more followers you get and the more visible your updates will be.

Things are different today. It's not just that there are more social networks that matters (think Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn), but the competition is huge and it takes a lot more effort to get attention.

Facebook changed its algorithm to reduce a post's organic interest (in other words, fewer people following your updates), twitter is heading in the same direction, and Pinterest is oversaturated, which makes it harder to get good results.

So it's time to stop for a moment and think about your social media strategy as a whole. Determine what your social media goals are and the best ways to achieve them, without wasting time on the wallet and overposting, tweeting, and pinging.

How to create a social media marketing strategy?

1. Set your social media goals

The first step in creating a social media marketing strategy is about setting your goals. A successful social media marketing campaign has a number of benefits to your brand or business, which are basically your social media goals. The most common targets are:

To get more followers for your business pages – Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest allow you to create social media pages for your business and naturally one of your goals will be to get more people to follow your pages.

To get more visitors to your website – Most businesses use social networks as a way to drive more visitors to their website. In theory, there are millions of users on social media, and you want some (in most cases, a very small fraction) of them to visit your website.

To increase sales – Social networks can be used as a sales channel. You can increase your sales by selling directly on the social network or on your website.

To increase brand awareness – This is perhaps one of the most efficient ways to use social networks. You can increase brand awareness by positioning your brand in front of your target audience through organic means or advertising.

To boost your SEO – While there are no direct SEO benefits from social media, there are many indirect benefits that can positively impact SEO. As a simple example, pages shared via social media networks are more visible to Google and other search engines, and this has a positive impact on your overall SEO. Social media is not intended to replace SEO, and SEO is not dependent on social media. For an in-depth analysis, read Social Media or SEO .

2. Relate social media goals to business goals

The second step is to link social media goals with business goals. Assuming you don't just use social media to connect with friends or read all kinds of news, you should link your goals to business goals.

For example, you can set a social media goal to attract more visitors from Facebook and a business goal to convert those visitors into newsletter subscribers. If you have your Google Analytics set up correctly, you can also see the number of visits and conversion rates and track your progress over time.

If you want to go one step further, you can calculate how much it will cost you to get a new newsletter subscription from Facebook and determine if it is profitable for your business. Of course, you can use not only newsletter subscriptions, but also other criteria such as making sales or getting leads.

3. Identify your target audience

There are millions of users on social media networks right now as you read this post, but you want to target specific audiences for business purposes. Depending on the type of your business, you might want people who live in a certain area, a certain age, and other certain demographics.

For example, if you're promoting a kindergarten in Istanbul, you only want people close to your area to see your posts or ads, not everyone else. You use targeting to do this, a feature that narrows your audience but will make it more targeted.For example, if you use facebook ads to promote your business or products, you can choose specific places to see your ads and people who meet certain criteria.

4. Set a priority order

How can you better reach your target audience through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or any other social network? Should you work on all networks at once, or is it better to concentrate on just a few?

To answer the last question first, it all depends on time and budget.

 Social media marketing and management is a time-consuming process. Trying to work across all networks at once will take a lot of time (if you plan to do it yourself) or budget (if you plan to outsource this to a digital marketing agency).

A better approach is to start with a few networks that are more likely to be successful for your business first, and then move on to the rest if time and budget allows. It's better to put more effort into those who can work better, rather than trying to do a little bit of everything.

There are many studies that show the characteristics of each network. The chart below is taken from marketingcharts.com marketing charts and is a nice chart showing the usage rates of social media platforms for brand tracking.

5. Take a look at your main competitors

As you try to define all the parts of your social media strategy, take a break and examine what your competitors are doing. Facebook pages, twitter, instagram accounts etc. visit and try to understand how often they post, how many followers they have (and if that number grows over time), what type of content they post and how they generally use social media. Maybe you'll get an idea or two and learn something about your competitors that you didn't know before.

6. You need interesting content

Users on social media networks are looking for one thing: interesting content. Whether it's an image, text or a video, users want to see interesting content on their timeline. This means that you should forget about excessive promotional posts, instead you need to think about what type of content your target audience would like to see before they get bored.

For example, if you sell sneakers, you don't always post how good your shoes are, but you should try to make your posts more interesting. How about posting running tips or tips on how shoes can affect your sports performance or how to run longer?

Posts that do more than just make a single sale are the kind of posts that will get someone to follow your page and build trust in your brand.

7. It's not just about content though

Yes, you need lots of good content, but content alone will not bring you followers or sales. As I said at the beginning, organic reach is declining (especially with Facebook), so you need more than good content to gain exposure and engagement.

To circumvent this situation, you can either manage your account and increase your followers (and I'm not talking about buying followers, I'm talking about doing this the right way – and there is a viable way) or you can use each network's advertising platforms.

For example, you can use Facebook ads to get more likes for your business page or promoted accounts to get more twitter followers.

From experience, this part of exploring other ways to promote and manage a social media account is a common element missing in social media marketing strategies.

8. You need to create a plan

A social media strategy wouldn't be complete without a plan. A well thought-out plan should include all of the above, but also specific details, KPIs, and goals for each network.

You should include the following in your plan:

• Which networks should be used
• Goals for each network (both social and business)
• How results are measured (for example, reports from Google Analytics ) and which KPIs are important.
• A detailed description of your target audience (location, demographics, interests)
• A content marketing plan that includes exactly what content will be posted and when (specific date and time)
• Budget available for account management outsourcing
• Budget available on advertising platforms
• Role of each person (in case of a team). For example, in a typical scenario you would need a content producer, a content publisher, an account manager, and a social media manager responsible for monitoring a company's campaigns and overall social media presence. In large companies these are under the supervision of a digital marketing manager.
• Monitoring and control – A plan also needs to have a monitoring and control system. It doesn't have to be complicated, but how often progress needs to be monitored and what happens if initial goals are not met.

Conclusion

You cannot neglect social media for any reason. Every type of business, online, local or multinational, has something to gain from social media.

If you don't approach the whole process as a "real" project, you will likely be disappointed and believe that social media is not working as advertised.

In my experience and as many studies have shown, social media has become a great communication and sales channel that deserves your attention, both in terms of time and budget. A carefully designed social media marketing strategy is necessary for many reasons, but most importantly it will help everyone in your company understand why you are planning for social networking and what to expect from it.