The new year is here and if you have not yet completed the social media strategy for your business, now is the ideal time to do so. I understand that it can be overwhelming at first, but you’ll truly profit by having one in the long haul.
Obviously, some things will be added or modified as the year goes on which means your strategy needs to adapt to changes. Social media itself is probably not going to continue as before for the next 12 months either. Be that as it may, having a definite strategy for your social media right this moment can truly enable you to recognize what needs to accomplish moving forward and choose how you will accomplish it.
To help you get started with your social media strategy, here are some important subjects that often get asked, alongside a few answers:
What is a social media strategy? Do I really need it?
To put it plainly, a social media strategy resembles a business plan, but exclusively made for your social media activities. Upon getting started, it’s unlikely that you have a solid idea and you will probably just post whatever goes into your mind that day. You may spend countless hours mindlessly scrolling the timeline, giving the occasional “like” here and there. You may even schedule a couple of posts about your services or products and add a few links back to your site.
Being active on social media is already a big thing, but we all know that it can be a huge drain on your time. Here’s where social media strategy comes into place. Rather than aimlessly liking, posting, and retweeting, all your activities on the social media should be carefully planned out and push towards accomplishing your main goals.
How to create a solid strategy for social media?
A social media strategy can be as brief or as detailed as you prefer. However, the more time you spend in your strategy, the more you will get out of it in the long run. There’s no right or wrong way of composing a social media strategy, so do whatever you feel is the most profitable to you and your company.
What does it include?
The objectives: The primary task you need to do is decide on your objectives and goals. These should normally fit with your overall marketing plan so that your efforts on social media will help accomplish your comprehensive marketing goals.
The review: After that, you must evaluate your current online presence. Consider questions like
“How many followers do we have?”
“How often do we share quality content?”
“What type of content are we currently posting?”
It can also be profitable to observe your key competitors and ask yourself the same inquiries. This is a decent method to perceive the strong points—as well as the weak points—of your competitors so that you’ll know what to do and what to avoid.
The research: Take a look at your business accounts and consider which social media platforms you need to focus on. Before deciding anything, you should be clear on who your target audience is and the key demographics of different social media platforms. You can also examine which channels your competitors are performing well on.
Also, remember that it’s important to focus more on quality, and not just quantity. While there are so many channels to choose from, you may not be able to provide all of them the attention needed, so it may be better for you to prioritize the most important ones. Additionally, it is also important to have your username consistent across all your channels. This way, your audience can easily find you on various social media platforms.
The posting details: Consider how frequently you should post on each social media channels and what that content ought to be. Your strategy should also contain essential hashtags that can attract more target audience. Don’t just put in random ones as it can draw in spam accounts that may have a negative effect on your brand.
The evaluation: One significant thing to consider is how you’ll measure your progress to see if all your efforts are paying off. In any case, it’s also crucial not to focus on your number of followers and get too caught up in metrics. Despite the fact that you do need to grow your follower count so as to hold a voice, it is more necessary to ensure that your social media efforts truly help to gain brand awareness.
When to start planning a social media strategy?
It can be beneficial to begin the year with a fresh start and a definite plan of action. If you have been delaying the chance to create a social media strategy for your business, NOW is the right time to start. It does not have to be lengthy and complicated—it just needs to give more direction and centre towards all your future social media activities.
Boosting Your Sales Through Social Media Marketing
Social media is truly disrupting the world of marketing. After all, there are more than 3.8 billion people all over the world who use the internet and that number is still rapidly increasing over time. Of those people, over 2.4 billion of them are active on various social media platforms.
That’s the reason why your brand needs to be on social media as well. However, before you mindlessly hop on different platforms hoping to sell your products and services, take a step back and consider creating a solid strategy first. Listed below are some of the things you need to do before working on your first campaign:
I. General Marketing Strategy
Setting a general marketing strategy can definitely help promote your marketing efforts, which in turn can help you gain a return on investment. Here are some of the most useful marketing techniques that you should consider using:
· Email Marketing
· Content Marketing
· Affiliate setup or Influencer Marketing
· SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Marketing
II. Digital Marketing Plan
A solid digital marketing plan is needed, which must cover all of the things correlated with your online presence, such as your website, online advertising, email list, and many more. You should distinguish what you want from your campaign. Think about the answers to these questions:
· Web Traffic: Who do you want to attract?
· Conversions: What conversion rate do you anticipate?
· Engagement: How do you want to connect with your potential clients?
· Brand improvement: How do you like to position your label or the image of your brand?
III. Utilizing Social Media to Increase Sales
· Find out how clients see your brand
· Reach out to new potential customers
· Learn how the brand is situated among existing clients
Also, here are some of the useful metrics that can enable marketers to evaluate their social media marketing efforts:
· Yield: Discover how much your clients pay for your products/services.
· Reach: How many new customers and leads would you like to include each month?
· Frequency: Check the number of customers buying your products or availing your services.
Starting Your Social Media Campaign
After doing all that work, you’re now ready to start your campaign. Here are the steps you’ll need to take:
1. Choose the platforms where you want to invest your time.
There are several social media platforms and each of them is unique.
Also, not all those platforms function equally for all types of brands. As a social media marketer, you need to learn the essence of your brand along with how people respond to various social media channels. You should determine the best social media platforms beneficial to your brand, and prioritize them in order to get a fair return on investment.
2. Design unique landing pages.
Making a good first impression is critical for any brand. All the designs and images on a website help build a positive outlook among potential clients. Generate unique and useful information for each of your platforms to achieve a better outcome from your campaigns.
By recognizing the essence of different social media platforms, you must produce unique landing pages that can help establish a positive impression, which can then lead to conversion.
3. Regularly engage.
Social media advertising is entirely diverse from other forms of advertising. Your audience needs to be constantly served with fresh content to keep your brand active on social media. One way of attaining this is by seeking out and sharing popular images, videos, and relevant news to post to your channels. You must also diversify the content to stimulate interest.
Lastly, it should always be your goal to position your company as an interactive brand among your potential clients in order to gain more deals. May these tips help you in achieving a strong social media strategy for the new year!
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