Social Media Marketing Strategy Guide

How to create a cohesive social media marketing strategy guide plan and implement it to drive business results?

Before we get into the entire concept and understand from a constructive social media marketing strategy guide, let’s first get acquainted with the definition of social media marketing.

Social media marketing is a part of digital marketing – used for driving customers, audience engagement and sales through social media channels. SMM or social media marketing makes use of social networking platforms as a source of marketing. It is based on the concept of producing shareable content to drive brand recognition, traffic and broaden user reach through social media.

Social Media Marketing Strategy Guide: The Definition

This social media marketing strategy guide will help you towards the entire process of using social media marketing to boost business growth and drive sales. Using social media to acquire conversions, clicks, and shares without having a concrete strategy – is similar to throwing darts in the dark.

Social Media Marketing Strategy Guide: Why your business needs one?

Read on the statistics and you’ll understand the need for a social media strategy for your business:

1. 95% Adults – aged between 18 – 34 – are prone to using social networking sites to follow brands. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
2. 22% global population is on Facebook. (Source: Statista)
3. More than 50 million businesses have designated Business Page in Facebook. (Source: HootSuite)
4. 59% users in the USA find social media a valuable source of getting the best customer service and experience. (Source: SlideShare)

Why Your Business Needs a Social Media Marketing Strategy?

• Boost brand awareness – Having a social media presence helps businesses to connect with their target audience – who can be converted into potential long-term customers. When you connect with your users via social media channels, you gain their trust and loyalty. This leads to the building of brand awareness and value.
• Drive customer insights for valuable strategy development – Social media channels are a storehouse of valuable customer data, given the increased number of users and activity level on these platforms. When you have a social media strategy aligned with your business, you gain access to this valuable data and resources to make better and lucrative business decisions and strategies to drive growth.
• Increased lead generation – Social media is an irreplaceable source of generating leads and retaining potential customers. When businesses interact and engage with their customers via social media on a regular basis, they offer prompt and quality customer service. And customer service/experience is what today’s consumers give a lot of priority.
• Competitor watchdog – A social media marketing strategy guide when utilized in the most constructive manner – helps businesses to monitor their competitor performance, activity level and strategies via social media. Social media marketing strategy guides businesses to stay ahead of their competitions.
• Drive organic traffic and boost search ranking – Another important benefit of social media strategy for businesses is that it helps in generating organic traffic to business websites.

Step – by – Step Social Media Marketing Strategy Guide

The first step to creating a social media marketing strategy and plan for your business is to ask the following question:

1. What are your business goals through social media marketing?
2. Who do you want to reach via social media channels?
3. What type of content will you create for social media?
4. Will you use the content to promote your brand or others?

Create SMART objectives and goals

S – Specific

M – Measurable

A – Attainable

R – Relevant

T – Time-bound

Step one to social media marketing strategy guide involves creating SMART goals and objectives. They should be aligned with your overall marketing strategy and business mission statement. The objectives and goals should also be intact with your customer/audience needs and problems in mind. The best way to approach this step is to create buyer personas and test the objectives accordingly – The person should be inclusive of location, customer interests, demographics, age, problems, and other.

Define your target audience/buyer persona

As mentioned above, it is important to know who your customer is, if you want to drive sales or boost business growth. Define your customer key demographics – including gender, age, hobbies, interests, income, occupation – as the key components. Analyze their problems, issues and how your business can solve the same. Define at least 2 – 3 buyer personas and specific problems and formulate your strategy around them.

Social media audit

The next step to social media marketing strategy guide involves the process of social media auditing for your business. Before you go ahead creating a plan for your business social media marketing, determine the current business use on social media platforms and find out the performance level.

Setup social media accounts and update as and when required

The next step towards creating social media marketing strategy guide is to set up your accounts in various social media networking sites. But before you go about creating a profile, make sure to determine which social media platform will help in attaining your set goals. If you’re confused or unsure about which platform to choose, then do a test-run or an experimental process. Create accounts and start sharing posts and content. Analyze the performance and report on the performance of engagement rate in each channel. The one that delivers your goals, is the one you should focus on.

Work on your blog

Content is one of the most important elements of social media marketing strategy guide. It is crucial to creating quality, original, engaging, informative and fresh content on a scheduled basis. The best way to distribute your content on social media, and generate organic traffic to your site is by starting to blog on your business website.

Experiment, evaluate and optimize your social media marketing strategies and execution plans

The final and concurrent step is to make the necessary evaluation and adjustments to your strategies. Use various analytical and reporting tools – like – HootSuite, Moz, and Google Analytics to determine your social media marketing performance and response rate from your audience. Track clicks, likes, shares, page visits, etc using these tools. Do ‘checks and balance’ of positive and negative aspects and move on to the development of performing results to drive the best outcomes.