Creating a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media was often seen as the wild child of the marketing department—the place where interns started their careers and brands could say random things with little to no repercussions. But times have changed, and the industry has matured. Yes, social media is still a wonderful place for brands to have a little fun, but it also has a real and measurable impact on a business’ bottom line. Thus, social media can no longer social media marketing plan template live in a silo; it must be work in tandem with the rest of your business strategy. A smart social media marketing campaign can answer each of these questions. Prove your team’s worth by tackling them head on. To get you started, we pulled together a few common business obstacles and social objectives that can help brands overcome them. The world is online. A brand’s website, therefore, is one of its most important marketing tools. Low website traffic can mean fewer customers and lower profits. To combat this challenge, your social team should focus its goals on creating links directly to the website (whether they’re from your own social posts or influencers’). Link to useful content, subpages and company images to position your website and your brand as a resource rather than just another cog in the corporate wheel. This traffic should increase leads and, in the long run, revenues. According to The Chartered Institute of Marketing, it costs 4 to 10 times more to acquire social media marketing world a customer than to retain one. To keep your customers around, use social as a tool to support, communicate and engage. A good social relationship with your customers should translate into a better perception and offline relationship with your brand. By developing a strong social bond, customers will be more likely to stick with your brand time and time again.

How to Create a Social Media Strategy

The key to social media success for your small business is to have a detailed content plan that drives your marketing efforts. You must first define your target audience before you can begin engaging with them. Segment your customers into individual groups called buyer personas and understand who they are, how they think and what they want from your brand. Include age, interests, gender and lifestyle, and ensure all content you create specifically caters to those groups. In one or two sentences, summarize why you are utilizing social media as a marketing tool. Be concise and clear, but stay high-level. Then outline specific goals you’d like to achieve in the first quarter. Review these goals monthly and track your performance. Do not adjust the goals after they’re set. If you find you are not social media marketing tips hitting them, understand your failings and re-evaluate the goals for the next quarter. It is vital that your social media content reflects your brand’s unique voice and culture. Always keep this in mind when creating content. You want to differentiate yourself from other brands in your market. Figure out who you are as a business and show your audience through social media. Give your brand a personality. Once completed, create content categories that will help display your personality to your audience. Include categories such as insights, culture, news, and events. Try to make categories that you can use as an ongoing series. The less you have to think about what content needs to be created in a given month the better. It frees up more time for strategic thinking. Lastly, create best practices social media marketing tools for your graphics and tone of voice. Everything you publish should accurately reflect your brand standards. You can make certain exceptions, but the majority of your content should follow these rules. For example, will you speak in the third or first person? Is your copy AP style or MLA? If you post a URL, will it be shortened with bit.ly or kept as is? This is especially important for businesses that utilize a content team with multiple people creating posts.

Engage Your Audience and Schedule Posting Frequency

If you have existing social media pages, research what groups are engaged with your brand now. If they fit your outlined demographic, then you’re already ahead. If not, list who they are and think about ways you can shift the audience. You also need to describe how often you plan on posting and when. Post consistently without overdoing it. Lastly, detail the days of the week and times of the day you’re going to post so that you can reach your audience when they’re most active on the platform. The days of the week will vary by industry; most people will be engaged during the evening. Social has long lived marketing social media within the marketing department, but that doesn’t mean it can’t (and shouldn’t) have a hand in nearly every business function, from human resources to research and development. To create a fully integrated social media marketing campaign, you’ll need to involve and integrate multiple departments, especially if your goals have a direct impact on them. Work with all your teams to determine how you can best support their goals and what key performance indicators are important to them (we’ve outlined some ideas on both below). Social selling is a term that has grown in popularity since the rise of social marketing. By searching benefits of social media marketing for sales opportunities and then engaging in a helpful and authentic manner, social media can be a great way to prime the sales funnel and find new leads. For example, someone started a LinkedIn chat, asking about social media tools. Sarah Nagel, Sprout’s Community Manager, jumped in to provide insight and offer a recommendation.