The Fundamentals in Creating a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media marketing involves using social media platforms to connect with your target audience online. Brands can utilise social media to build brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate sales, and further engage with new and existing customers.

How do you create an excellent social media strategy? Here is what you need to know:

Set the right goals

It is vital that your objectives are put into place to ultimately see the results that you desire. Developing a killer social media strategy means you know exactly what you want to achieve before you start. Consider what your business goals are and use them to develop a social media marketing strategy that deliver the right outcomes.

Your goals could include:

• Improving loyalty with your current customers through online engagement.
• Driving more traffic to your website.
• Reaching new followers and increasing brand awareness; and
• Delivering excellent customer experiences with updates and news.

Pick the right social media platforms

Ensuring that you choose the right social media platforms makes a great difference. There is no point in investing your time into advertising on platforms that your target audiences are not using. Make sure you let numbers be your guide. Each platform has a specific user demographic and benefits it offers as a marketing channel. Look at what each platform offers and who their main audience is, then match this up with yours.

Establish your KPIs

Developing an evidence based social marketing strategy will assist your brand in tackling its goals with a sense of purpose, while also giving you a benchmark to measure your success. It is important to track your social media metrics, including:

• How many users are clicking through to your website from social media.
• User engagement.
• Reach and impressions.

Mentions of your brand on social media.

Monitor your competition

There will always be similar brands out there targeting the same users, meaning you need to know what your competitors are posting to stand out. Make sure you keep an eye on the competition by:

• Following them on social media.
• Setting up social listening on your social media management platform.
• Browse the Ad Library to view the current ads they are running, and;
• Search their brand name and hashtags.

Post and regularly engage with your audience

To stay on top of people’s minds it is important to regularly post updates on your social media pages. If you fail to do so you will see a decrease in your reach and your followers will less likely see your content in the future. Ensure that you are constantly interacting with your followers by responding to all comments and messages.

Review and optimise

Ensure that you are constantly reviewing your performance to identify who your target audience is, when to post and which posts work well. By monitoring your performance metrics, you will be able to be reactive and achieve the most out of your campaigns in the short term, alongside ensuring your social media outcomes are in line with your wider business objectives in the long term.