Social media marketing has become one of the essential parts of almost every digital marketing plan. Yet you need to know how to leverage the power of social media. When used strategically (rather than tactically), social networking can do wonders for businesses.
Developing a winning strategy is a difficult task, though. This complex process involves setting social media marketing goals, picking the right social media platforms, increasing brand awareness, keeping an audience engaged, optimizing the results, and more.
Read on to learn how to build an effective social media strategy.
Define Your Target Market
Researching and identifying your target audience is one of the first steps you need to take before getting started. Thankfully, there are a number of analytics tools that can make it easier for you to define your target market. Social media demographics can also come in handy when creating audience personas.
This can help you examine the needs, expectations and online behaviors of your customers and audience. Once you’ve identified your social media audience, you will be able to choose the right social media channels and go from there.
Focus on Traffic
Today, there are a lot of influencers who buy likes and people paying for likes. How do social networking sites deal with them? Instagram, for example, is experimenting with eliminating likes from posts. In addition to getting rid of fake ord fraud followers, this is supposed to encourage both social media users and businesses to create content that that doesn’t only grab attention but also drive action.
Therefore, you should think of traffic rather than bothering with vanity metrics and public likes. That’s not to say you should avoid influencer marketing. Pay more attention to action-oriented results like saves, clicks, and shares.
Keep an Eye on Your Competitors
Take the time to check what other brands and businesses are doing on social media. Pay particular attention to your competitors. This is where competitor analysis tools come in. They help brands spy on their competition in one way or another. Some companies use these online tools to review of social presence of their industry rivals, while others take advantage of them to track competitors’ social media strategies.
Additionally, you should try to find out which social channels your competitors use. Observe what they are posting on social media sites. Instead of copycatting or stealing plans of your competitors, you should make use of their ideas to adapt your campaign and create a winning marketing strategy.
Include Social Media Videos in Your Marketing Strategy
A growing number of brands use video content in their social media marketing strategies. If you don’t use video marketing yet, it is high time to start creating videos for social media. This will make your marketing strategies more engaging and successful as well.
Many social media marketers prefer creating live videos because they show raw, real-time footage. This plays a big role in humanizing a brand. You are advised to start with tutorials, testimonials, frequently asked questions, and “about us” videos.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, you find these tips and ideas useful. While many businesses build social media strategies on their own, your best bet is to ask experts for help. There is a large number of social media marketing agencies these days.
You should have a good idea of which social media platforms you’re going to use for your business and choose an agency accordingly. For instance, if you are looking to grow your business through Instagram and Facebook, check out www.freshcrowd.com. Happy planning!