Social media marketing has been growing in popularity with its ability to build engaged audiences, create multiple sources of traffic and growth for online and offline businesses simply through the power of online networks.
Just like any other marketing scheme, strategy plays a huge role in helping keep your actions focused without draining too much of your resources. Here are some tips on how to pull off a social media marketing strategy that will be able to suit your preferences and needs.
Creating an Ideal Social Media Strategy
It is necessary for business owners to step back and look at the bigger picture before posting anything – this in itself goes a long way in helping you achieve the best outcome. Social media marketing if done correctly, will be able to serve a variety of purposes including building brand awareness, driving traffic and sales, providing support, connecting with customers and prospects, amassing an engaged audience and many more besides. To achieve this, it is important to understand the five essential pillars of a social media strategy.
Goals defines the outcome of your hard work. On the other hand, Target audiences revolves around your ideal customer. Content mix is content archetypes for your social media programming. Channels are the social media platform(s) that you will be choosing. Last but definitely not the least is the Process which is the infrastructure and tools that you will be setting up and executing with your strategy.
Social Media Marketing Plan: Setting Your Goal
Your goals should be the centre of everything that you post or do. This marketing strategy usually involves a lot of testing, trying things out and refinement. You can however, reduce the testing phase by setting a clear goal with your social media marketing. Driving brand awareness for instance, is a viable option as this allows you to reach more people which in turn increases the likelihood of getting your brand seen by the right individuals. The same can also be said with regards to creating demand for your products. This often involves gauging clicks to your site, as well as the products added to a shopping cart and looking at the feedback from customers. Another popular goal is to build a loyal following which you can measure by the followers you’ve gained or lost in a certain time frame, as well as (crucially) your engagement rate. Many businesses are able to find success by starting with the basics – good solid customer service as one of the main goals.
Knowing Your Target Audience
It is important to remember that social media is used by a huge number of individuals all over the world. Trying to reach all of them can be a fruitless endeavor, making it important to understand your ideal customer. It is important that you consider different factors such as: their location, age, gender, interest, career or industry, income level, relationship status, favorite sites or apps, motivation to buy, buying concerns and the likes. Having this information can help give you an overview of your ideal customer which allows you to focus your time and attention to them.
For help on any aspect of the above SkillsLabs.io, part of the 1768degrees.com family runs training and 1:1 coaching to assist.
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