How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy?

Social media strategy is a roadmap or an outline that covers the goals and the way they would be accomplished. It entails everything from the social media platforms that would be used, what to post, the content guidelines, how to engage with the audience, the trackers that would be used, and everyone’s roles and responsibilities to achieve the goal.

If we say that social media marketing is gaining momentum, that should not come as a surprise to anyone. The reach and the impact that social media can have on the audience are immense. But the point is how to use social media to your befitting advantage. You can also take up free online course and receive social media marketing certificates that will help in your career advancement.

The questions that need to be asked are:

Are you using social media the right way?

Are you missing something?

Are you getting the desired results?

Is there something that you can do better?

Is there something new that can be explored?

The answer to all these questions will come with a well-planned out social media marketing strategy.

Everyone needs to be very smart when it comes to planning social media profiles. There is a huge competition out there, and the need is to make sure that you stand out among all the other social media profiles.

Now we have got the answers to the what and why so let’s now move on to the how.

Step 1: Set your goals

Now, before you make an actual move towards building a social media profile, the first thing that needs to be done is to set the goals. Without a basic understanding of what is the aim, there is not much that can be done. Laying out clear goals and targets should be the first step while considering where you aim to reach and its motive.

You need to find the answer to the question:

Why am I doing this?
Am I aiming to increase the traffic on my page or looking to increase brand awareness or engagement?
Am I looking to create a loyal following or generate new leads?
When you know what your destination is, then choosing the right path becomes easier.

Step 2: Select the target audience

When you have the answer to why you are doing this, let’s proceed to the next step:

Who are you looking to target?

Who is the audience that I am catering to that will give me the desired results?

Without a proper sense of audience, all the efforts would be futile.

Define the demographics of the audience- age, gender, income, occupations, interests, etc.
If the brand has a social media presence from before, then analyze who the previous audience is.
Then move on to discover your target audience, which can be done through tools available online.
Check the competitor’s target audience.
Check surveys and statistics that would help in identifying your target audience.

Consider yourself to be an education provider; then your target audience would be a younger generation. A lifestyle brand would aim for an audience that loves to travel, goes out, loves fashion, and is fun-loving.

After identifying the target audience, now is the time to choose all different social media platforms to enter. Every social media website has a different kind of audience.

While Gen X and Y mostly use Facebook, you would find Gen Z more on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. If the product targets females, then Pinterest is a good option.

Youtube caters to every type of audience and is a suitable medium for video ads. Linkedin can be sought out for an audience that is well educated and mature.

This decision can be made easily by knowing your target audience. Also, while selecting a social media site, make sure that you take the unique features of each platform also in consideration.

After zeroing in the social media sites, then work on getting familiar with them and their policies.

Each social media site has certain specifics that are required to be fulfilled when it comes to building the profile.

In the case of Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, you may need a cover banner, while for Instagram, it is not necessary. Make sure that you have filled every required field while using the keywords that will help in improving the ranking. Highlight the brand logos and use high-quality images while adhering to the specific image dimension that every platform supports.

Step 5: Plan the posting strategy

Again answer these questions:

What kind of content can I create?

What kind of content does my target audience like?

What kind of content would go with my product?

What is my audience looking for, and how can it be addressed?

In all of this, don’t miss to keep tabs on your competition. Strive to make an identity for yourself. Aim to tell a story through the page that reflects upon the brand. Focus on what you want to communicate and how, through posts, video, live videos, polls, etc.

Always consider what things are in trend and have a better engagement to garner more reach and engagement. While doing all of this, make sure to avoid losing the brand’s voice by setting a tone for the page.

Develop a timeline on how regularly the posts will come and what all would be posted. Different social media platforms have different engagement at different times of the day; make sure you consider them while planning your posts.

Step 6: Time to implement and layout the plan how to do it

Now, this brings us to the implementation stage.

Maintain a social media calendar that would tell when and what is supposed to be put out while making sure the roles within the team are clearly defined, and the tasks are laid out.

Use social media management tools to ease the work and analyze your needs by carefully researching the tool. For this, you can also take up a social media management course that will help you learn how to manage your social accounts, show you how to use these social media management tools, and more.

Engagement with the audience is necessary for good results. This can be achieved by conducting polls or live videos or simply replying to a direct message or comment under the post. Aim to build relations with the audience. Moment posts are an excellent way to get traffic.

Start using analytics tools offered mainly by the social media sites themselves to understand the response and work on how to improve it. Analyze what is the best time to post and what kind of post is getting the most engagement. Making a posting strategy should not mean that you stop; it means that you learn and improve.

Social media is a ground for trial and error. Study the metrics very closely and develop a benchmark; this would help you set your future goals. Analyze the metrics regularly at shorter periods because time is of importance here. Your content might be trending one second, but the next minute maybe not. Keep on experimenting.

The daily active social media population is 42 per cent of the entire globe’s population- which amounts to 3.2 billion people. This is the reason that dropping Social Media marketing strategy has become impossible. Social media has moved way past the stage where it was an option to explore and has become a mandatory medium to maintain a presence in the online world. It is a certain and powerful tool for businesses globally and across industries.
The way businesses leverage social platforms has been rapidly evolving. This dynamic state indicates that you need to continuously upgrade your social media marketing strategy to stay ahead of the competition.
The way users consume information, make buying decisions, interact with people, and socialize, has completely transformed how businesses approach them.
If you are a business owner or social media marketer looking to expand your reach or create a buzz around your products or services, you have social media platforms at your disposal, waiting to be leveraged.
Seventy-three per cent of marketers believe that a social media marketing strategy is very effective or somewhat effective for their business.
However, with the multitude of social media platforms available for businesses, it can be hard to manage your brand presence across all. To help you with this, here is a list of the top social media marketing tools.

Content Curation Tools

Hootsuite
Most companies use at least three social media accounts and find it difficult to manage content and reach across them. Hootsuite is a social media marketing tool that can help you efficiently create and manage presence across social channels.
The key features include:

Schedule hundreds of posts across platforms at once.
Secure all login information for various social channels.
Organize and save all shareable content in the cloud for access from anywhere.

Buffer
Buffer is one of the most popular and recognized social media marketing tools for scheduling content. With Buffer, you can schedule any content format across any platform. Moreover, you can choose to automate posts, such as for every day or every weekend, and so on.
A key feature of Buffer is its follow-up tool to evaluate how your posts are doing across channels, analyzing which were the most effective and why.

Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a one-stop-shop social media marketing tool for managers to get more control over their efforts. The tool features multi-level access, making it easy for managers to delegate tasks to team members and oversee them.
Sprout Social also comes with post scheduling capabilities, an in-depth analytics platform, and a social listening tool. All of these features help optimize content and gain a deeper understanding of your demographic audience and their interests.
SocialOomph
SocialOomph might look more basic than the other apps on this list, but look close enough and you see its rich functionality for social media marketers.
The tool makes it easy to upload multiple posts at once and schedule when each goes out. You also have complete control over when and where the content goes live. SocialOomph also allows intuitive follower analysis features and tools for improving audience engagement.
For all these critical features, this tool is a keeper!

Graphics Creation Tools

Canva
Promptly add this to the list of much-needed tools for social media marketers. Canva helps you create stunning graphics for your social media campaigns. Use Canva to jazz up the images to get more traction from your social efforts.
You don’t need to have expertise in graphic designing to work with Canva. You can readily use templates and graphics out-of-the-box. If you are looking for a little more than a drag and drop editor, use Canva for Work which has premium collaboration tools and costs only USD 12.95 a month.
Animoto
Videos are huge for social media marketing these days. Animoto allows you to create professional-quality videos on social media. It’s a great tool to create engaging and compelling videos that go viral on the social.
Use storyboard templates and drag and drop designs that help you create videos within minutes. For marketers who want to get creative, Animoto offers a blank canvas so you can go ahead and create videos from scratch.

Content Ideation Tools

BuzzSumo
Creativity forms the core of any social media marketing strategy. If you are stuck on ideas, use BuzzSumo. The tool lets you discover new and popular content making rounds on social media. Type in a topic or a selection of keywords and view all trending posts in those categories.
BuzzSumo also gives you a list of influencers who share relevant content. You can use these to ideate your next social media marketing campaign and connect with top influencers in your domain.
Tagboard
Tagboard is a listening tool for social media content. Plug in a term or topic or hashtag and monitor how people are talking about it on social. Tagboard provides an advanced way of discovering how people are discussing a certain topic, your brand, or something that concerns your business.
You can use these insights to come up with ideas and engaging content as trends develop and surface.

Analytics Tools

CrowdBooster
CrowdBooster provides real-time data you can access and use quickly. Create reports using your Key Performance Indicators and export insights using graphs and tables. This information helps you adapt social media marketing toward your audience effectively, and work on engagement and content improvements with in-depth, real-time analytics.
Analisa.io
Growth hack your marketing campaigns on Instagram using Analisa.io.
You can use this tool to snoop on your competitors, monitor campaign performance, tweak profile engagement, and connect with influencers. Use the basic free research tool for all these features.
Or, you can go for the premium subscription that costs USD 59.35 a month and gives you better and more tools for connecting with influencers and researching markets. This tool is a must for marketers looking to overhaul their Instagram strategy.

Although vast, this list of Social Media tools for businesses is not exhaustive. For you to align some of these tools to your digital marketing strategy, you need to first identify the pain points and bottlenecks you need to resolve using an appropriate tool.
Once the requirement is clear, test a number of tools to see which one fits best to your existing system and solves the required purpose. No tool can be deemed best as it varies with the type of business and it’s requirements.
If you are interested in taking up Digital Marketing as a career, read about the job roles you can pursue in this domain here. Take the first step towards your digital marketing career with PG program in Strategic Digital Marketing.

Conclusion

With this, you are all set to take the big leap. Take steps in the right direction, and everything will fall into place. Don’t let the strategy deviate from the goals and focus on building a voice for the brand. Engage, learn and improve- this should be the mantra. Make the right choices, and if you want to experiment more and widen your horizon, you can also check out the Digital Marketing course offered by Great Learning.