A social media marketing strategy is a summary of everything you plan to do and hope to achieve on social media. It lets you know if you are succeeding or failing in your actions.
The more specific your goals are, the more likely you are to achieve them. Keep it concise. Don’t make your goals impossible or unmeasurable.
This post provides a 9 step guide to creating a successful social media strategy.
What is a social media marketing strategy?
A social media strategy is a document that explains your social media goals, the methods you will use to reach them, and the metrics you will use to measure your progress.
Your social media marketing strategy should also list all of your existing and planned social media accounts along with goals specific to each platform you’re active on. This will help you keep track of your progress and ensure that you’re using each platform effectively. The goals you set for your email marketing campaign should be in line with your overall digital marketing strategy.
At last, a decent social media plan should lay out the jobs and duties for every member of your team, as well as establish how often you will give updates.
How to create a social media marketing strategy in 12 steps
Set S.M.A.R.T. goals
To create a winning social media strategy, establish clear objectives and goals. If you don’t set goals, you can’t measure how successful you are and what your return on investment is.
Your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
We’ve got you covered if you’re looking for examples of smart social media goals.
Track meaningful metrics
Vanity metrics are metrics that are easy to track, but their real value is hard to prove. You should instead focus on things that will result in engagement, like click-through and conversion rates.
Here are 19 essential social media metrics to help you stay inspired.
You might want to set different goals for different social media networks, or have different uses for each one.
If you want to see how effective LinkedIn is in driving traffic to your website, you would measure the click-throughs. If you want to use Instagram for brand awareness, you could track the number of views your Instagram Stories get. If you spend money on advertising on Facebook, a common marker of success is how many people click on your ad.
Your social media goals should be in line with your overall marketing goals. It is easier to demonstrate the value of your work and convince your boss to approve it if it is well-organized.
To create a social media marketing plan, start by writing down at least three goals for social media.
2. Learn everything you can about your audience
To connect with your fans, followers, and customers on social media, treat them as individuals with specific wants and needs. By doing this, you will be able to better target and engage with them.
When it comes to your ideal customer, you should know things like:
- Age
- Location
- Average income
- Typical job title or industry
- Interests
- etc.
This text provides a guide and template for creating audience/buyer personas.
Analytics from social media can provide a lot of information about who your followers are, where they live, and how they interact with your brand on social media. You can use these insights to improve your strategy and focus your marketing more on your target audience.
Most of the people who Jugnoo’s customers refer to the service are young adults between the ages of 18 and 34. Two thirds of those young adults use Android devices. They used the information they gathered to target their ads more efficiently, resulting in a 40% lower cost per referral.
3. Get to know your competition
It is likely that your competitors are already using social media, thus you can take inspiration from their strategies.
Conduct a competitive analysis
A competitive analysis is a way to learn about who your competition is, and what they are doing well or not so well. You will be able to understand what is common in your industry, which will allow you to set your own social media goals.
It will also help you spot opportunities.
Your competitor might be dominant on Facebook, but if they haven’t put much effort into Twitter or Instagram, you might have an opportunity to catch up to them on those platforms. If you want to expand your reach on social media, you should focus on platforms where your audience is underserved. This way, you can attract more fans without taking them away from a dominant player.
Use social media listening
Social listening is a way of monitoring your competitor’s activity online.
Check out what your competition is up to on social media by searching for their company name, account handles, and relevant keywords. Look at what other people are saying about the things that interest you. How much engagement do campaigns that use influencer marketing earn?
If you want to be up-to-date on what is happening with specific keywords, hashtags and accounts, use Hootsuite Streams.
If you keep track of your competitors and industry leaders, you may notice how they are using social media differently. You may come across new, exciting trends. You might come across social media content or a marketing campaign that is extremely successful, or one that completely fails.
The intel in this text can be used to improve and guide your social media marketing plan.
Think about the social media platforms you’re using and how well they’re working for you. If you’re not using social media, now is a good time to start. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What’s working, and what’s not?
- Who is engaging with you?
- What are your most valuable partnerships?
- Which networks does your target audience use?
- How does your social media presence compare to the competition?
After you have gathered that data, you can start to mull over ways to make improvements.
After auditing your social accounts, you should have a clear understanding of what each one is used for. If you are unsure about the purpose of an account, you should question whether or not it is worth keeping.
To help you decide, ask yourself the following questions:
- Is my audience here?
- If so, how are they using this platform?
- Can I use this account to help achieve my goals?
Pose these probing questions to maintain a concentrated social media campaign.
5. Set up accounts and improve profiles
Decide which networks to use
As you decide which social networks to use, you will also need to figure out how you want to use each one.
” Angela Purcaro, social media manager for Benefit Cosmetics, told eMarketer that they focus on Snapchat and Instagram Stories for their makeup tutorials. Twitter is better for customer service than other platforms.
For instance, on LinkedIn, they use long-form content to attract business leads, and on Twitter, they focus on building relationships The social media team at Hootsuite uses different formats for different purposes on different networks. For example, they use long-form content on LinkedIn to attract business leads, and on Twitter they focus on building relationships. The company uses Instagram to post high-quality educational infographics, product announcements, and Stories. They also use it to cover live events or quick social media updates.
It can be helpful to write out a mission statement for each social media network you are active on. A mission statement can help you focus on why you are using that particular social media platform and what you hope to accomplish through your activity on the site. A reminder to keep you focused on your goal.
You may want to question whether it is worthwhile to pursue a social media channel if you cannot develop a clear mission statement for it.
While it is possible for large businesses to have a presence on every social media platform, it is not always realistic for small businesses. This is okay because small businesses can still be successful by being present on a few platforms that make the most sense for their business. Focus on the social media platforms that will have the biggest impact on your business and make sure your marketing team has the manpower to create content for those networks.
Set up your profiles
After deciding which networks to focus on, it is time to create profiles on those networks. You can improve existing action items so that they better align with your strategy.
- Make sure you fill out all profile fields
- Include keywords people would use to search for your business
- Use consistent branding (logos, images, etc.) across networks so your profiles are easily recognizable
A tip for improving your social media posts is to use images that are high quality and follow the recommended dimensions for each network. Our cheat sheet with social media image sizes is always up to date so you can reference it quickly.
6. Build a newsroom with Twitter lists
This post credits Business 2 Community for the “newsroom” idea. This is the process I follow when finding and sharing content for Buffer.
We’ve created a Twitter list that includes all of our Buffer employees. I visit the list of websites my teammates visit daily to see what they have found interesting online. We share many of the same passions, interests, and values. This is an extremely helpful source of new stories that can be used on a daily basis.
The best part is that you don’t need to convince anyone to create new content or add any new tasks to their workday. It uses something they’re already doing – sharing to Twitter – to its advantage.
7. Can’t find a good image to share from a blogpost? Screengrab one!
We believe that visual content is very powerful when it is shared on social media. Our experience Shows that tweets that have images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images.
We try to share images with our social media updates as often as possible.
We create an image for a blog post if it does not have one to share. What we’ve found works best is
- blockquotes
- ordered lists
- short paragraphs
- portions of infographics
Screengrab shortcuts:
To take a screenshot on a Mac, press COMMAND + SHIFT + 4.
The print screen key can be used to take a screenshot of the entire screen on a PC.
8. Fill in all the blanks on your profile
You probably want a social media profile that is easy to find. To apply for the position, make sure that you have all of the required information. If you want to connect with people in California, it would be helpful to have your location listed on your profile. If someone has your email address, they may try to find you on social media.
Fill out everything you can (or feel comfortable with).
In the Settings tab on Twitter, you can find your profile information. (Or you can click here.)
One profile setting you might want to connect is Facebook to Twitter, which could help with suggestions and connections. You do not have to allow your tweets to be automatically posted to your Facebook page in order to connect to Facebook. At the last step of the authorization process, choose “Not Now” when asked for permission to post to Facebook.
9. Optimize your top three blog pages with social media CTAs
Noah Kagan made a great observation in a recent article about list building and blog optimization:
80% of blog traffic comes from a small number of pages.
Is this true of your blog?
Looking at your analytics will tell you which of your posts have been most successful. In Google Analytics, your top pages can be found by going to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. You can gain a better understanding of your blog’s success by seeing which posts have driven the most traffic over a six-month period.
10. Use hashtags whenever it makes sense to do so
Some people view hashtags as being overbearing, some think they’re great, and some people are in between or indifferent.
If you want more people to see your posts, you should use hashtags.
Users search for keywords and phrases. They follow hashtags. Hashtags are used to organize posts and help users find content that is relevant to them. When a user clicks on a hashtag, they are taken to a page that shows all of the other posts that have used that same hashtag.
By using a hashtag in a post, you increase the chances that your content will be seen by people who don’t just follow you.
11. Link to a landing page in a social update
This quick win comes courtesy of Pamela Vaughan at Hubspot:
If you’re wondering why you’re not generating much traffic or leads from your social presence, it might be because you’re not being strategic about it. Try sending more traffic to landing pages!
A landing page is a page that is designed to generate leads. It is targeted and optimized to get the best results. They likely convert better than a blogpost would. In addition to all the other content you share, it is beneficial to also include these pages in your social media marketing mix.
You can create a landing page on Unbounce, or you can create one yourself using WordPress pages.
12. Cross-promote your content between your profiles
You probably have social media profiles for your company and for yourself. This provides a good opportunity to share the same content with different groups of people.
This can look a couple of different ways.
- Get more clicks: Share content from your company profile on your personal profile.
- Get more followers: Update your bio and About section to include references to your other accounts.
Over to you
Making small changes to your social media profiles can lead to big results. There are usually no shortcuts to better social media marketing, but there are some quick wins that can help improve your strategy.
Which social media marketing quick wins have you found? Which of the above tips have you tried already? Which might you try today?
Which ideas from the text resonated with you? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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