With marketers flocking social media channels, bombarding customers with all sorts of offers, blogs, videos, memes, bait strategies and the kind, it’s inevitable for consumers to shut things out of their lives that are not adding any value.
And why not! Consumers today are in control of everything from what they choose to see, what they like and what they buy.
Having said that, it’s important for your business to have a well-crafted social media marketing strategy, with pre-defined goals you can measure its success with.
1. Select your business-specific social media goal
Without knowing what you are trying to achieve, you are flying on a social media plane without a pilot. It will take your brand down with it and will result in irreversible damage to your online presence.
Most common social media goals include:
• Increasing brand awareness
• Generating website traffic
• Driving sales
• Growing fan base
Once you have decided your social media goal, make sure you have set up key metrics to measure how well you are achieving them.
2. Understand your social media audience and select your platforms accordingly
From the time they are most active, to their activities while they are online to their demographics and interests, you need to know your audience like the back of your hand.
Once you understand your audience, you are more likely to know which social media platforms they like to hang in, what is the best time to post to get the most engagement and which kind of content will resonate the most with them.
You don’t want to waste your time posting multiple times a day on a channel where your target audience is not even active.
3. Take a look at what your competitors are doing
This will help you avoid reinventing the wheel. A sneak peek into your competitors’ social media pages will help you see what works and what doesn’t. So before you don your creativity hat, you should already know which kind of content your audience would like and can create even better content on similar lines.
4. Decide on the best content to produce
Before you decide what content to show to your audience, make sure you have a realistic plan in place and the capabilities to consistently produce such content. For example, while video is the new hot thing, it’s not everyone’s ballgame. If you can’t do it right, it’s better not to do it at all.
Consider images, blogs, and contests instead until you gain a new capability. Balance what you can produce to what your audience resonates the most with.
5. Set up a content calendar
A content calendar will not only help you become organised and consistent with your posting, but will also help you pre-define what goes out at what time and at which social media channel.
You don’t want to be posting the same content everywhere at a time that is convenient for you and then hope that your audience would like and share it.
6. Use the right hashtags
Hashtags help your audience find you on social media as well as in Google search results. Also, each social media channel has a different way of using hashtags. Make sure you are using the best combination of well-trending hashtags, specific to a channel in everything you post.
7. Not everything has to be about you
Make sure you are not bombarding your audience only with promotional stuff. Remember social media marketing has to be social first for it to be effective. Have a mix of informative and entertaining posts, with a small amount of promotional material added once in a while.
Wrapping up
Remember, before you begin to post your accounts should be set up correctly too. Also, while good content will sell your channel eventually, you need to promote it offline as well as do some level of cross-promotion on the website and other social media channels with your partners. Keep engaging with your audience and don’t forget to measure the results against the goals you have set up.
Good Luck!