These steps will be covered in detail, so that you can apply them to your own business.
1. 1. Research your buyer personas.
The first step to creating a social media marketing strategy is to determine who your buyer personas and audience are so you can target their needs and interests appropriately. This is done by thinking about who you are trying to reach, why they are there, and how you would categorize them. For example, if your company sells trendy leggings and joggers, you might classify your target audience as millennials who like to wear stylish athletic apparel regularly — a style known as athleisure.
Consider your buyer personas, audience and target market to find out what content is most likely to attract your desired customers and followers. Also learn how to create engaging content that will keep your followers engaged.
2. 2. Determine the social platforms that you will market on.
It’s important to decide which social media platforms you will share your content on as a social media marketer. There is no right or wrong way to choose which social media channels your business should use. It all depends on your target audience and their habits.
3. Make engaging and unique content.
There are billions of social media users worldwide, so it’s likely that at least some your followers or people viewing your profile have seen content from your competitors or other businesses in the same industry. That’s why you must have engaging social media content that stands out and provides viewers with a reason to click that “Follow” button and interact with your brand.
You can get inspired by the content that your competitors share and think of ways you can promote your products. Make sure you take advantage of all the features available on the platform. You can also create live videos on Facebook, for example, to share information about product launches or hold giveaways.
Finally, you can use your existing customers and promoters as content generators. This can be done by sharing their content, or encouraging them use a hashtag to share photos with your products (similarly to Frye’s Instagram hashtag).
4. Create a schedule to organize your posts.
A social media management tool is one of the best ways to make sure your content is shared exactly as you planned. These tools let you create captions, schedule posts, and prepare photos and videos in advance. They also automatically share your content on schedule and monitor all post interactions and engagement for you. Social media management tools save time and let you focus on other tasks.
There are many options for solving the problem. Here are some examples.
1) HubSpot
HubSpot offers a social media tool — as part of the marketing software — to help you publish and monitor your content and create real connections with your followers. To understand how different platforms, content types, and publishing times perform, you can plan and publish your content ahead of time. You can also compare detailed reports on engagement for each post.
2) Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social media marketing and management solution designed to help your team organize and plan content creation, manage campaigns, understand engagement, and review content reports and analysis.
3) Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management platform for finding, scheduling, managing, and reporting on your content. You can easily schedule posts on all channels at once, and you can measure your ROI through comprehensive content analysis.
How often should you post to social media?
You might now be curious as to how often content should be posted on social media.
You should only share quality content on social media. This means that you have a reason for posting the content. This will help you strike the right balance with your posting frequency. If you post too infrequently, you’re bound to be forgotten by your followers. Your followers will become annoyed if you post too often. These situations can lead to decreased engagement and loss of followers.
This can be avoided by reviewing a variety of resources and studies that explain the frequency of social media posts per industry and platform. Each business is unique, so you need to find the best approach for your audience. Then, you can begin experimenting with more or fewer posts, as well as other factors such as the time of day you’re posting on social, to determine what provides the highest level of engagement.
5. 5. Analyze your impact.
It is crucial to ensure your social media marketing efforts help you achieve your goals. You will need to track all your posts on every channel. This can be done by reviewing and managing social media metrics.
Metrics for Social Media
Social media metrics are data related to the success of your posts and your impact on your audience and customers on various platforms. These metrics can include data on your engagement, likes and follows as well as all interactions on each platform.
Here are 10 metrics that you should be tracking:
- EngagementThis includes comments, likes and replies to your social media posts. There are also specific types of engagement depending on the platform, such as “Get Saved”Posts on Instagram and “Pin itPinterest “Posts
- ReachYour reach is the number of people who have seen any content that is associated with your profile or page.
- FollowersThis number is how many people have clicked the “Follow” button on your profile and are now seeing your content in their feeds.
- ImpressionsThis number is how many times a post or page from your profile has been seen. It does not matter if your audience clicks on it. This is what often happens when people scroll through their newsfeed but don’t click on anything.
- Video viewsThis is how many views each video gets on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or any other social media channel that supports video.
- Visits to profiles:Your number of profile views is the number of people who have opened and used your social media pages.
- MentionsThis number is the amount of times your profile was mentioned in posts by audience members.
- Tags:This is where your audience adds your company name or hashtag to another post.
- RepostsThis happens when a member your audience posts a part of your content to their profile.
- SharesThese are posts that your audience and followers take from your profile, and then share with their networks.
You can influence all of these metrics, increase your social following, and improve overall engagement on your profile by using the same tactics you would to generate leads and boost conversions. Talking to your followers is a great way to interact more often. You can tag them in content, respond to their questions and encourage them to use your hashtags.
