Gone are the times when social media was just another networking opportunity brands could use to create a buzz. Social media has come a long way from being a silo where interns could learn new skills to a powerful platform that can boost a business’s bottom line.
Today social media marketing works in tandem with other business strategies to generate publicity and create awareness. Social media is a great place to start your marketing campaign from scratch.
Follow these seven steps to create a killer SMM strategy that resonates with your target audience:
1. Establish Goals
Any marketing strategy starts with goal setting.
Analyzing the goals you want to achieve helps you come up with an attainable social media strategy. The goals keep you on the right track and allow you to gauge your ROI.
Align your marketing goals with your business objectives. To make sure they are, look into the following four areas:
- The networks on which you are currently active
- How many of your networks are driving value
- Check if all your networks are optimized to communicate your company culture
- Identify your competitors and analyze their promotional activities
Keep your goals specific, scalable, realistic, and most importantly time-bound.
2. Audit Your Existing Social Medial Connect
Before implementing your SMM strategy, evaluate your existing online reach.
Create a spreadsheet where you can document the following details:
- list the social networks you're actively using for brand promotions
- Identify social networking platforms where you can showcase your brand
- do all your profiles reflect your brand’s logo and vision? Make sure all the contact details are correct.
- what is the target audience and what are their pain points
- identify the preferred networking channels of your target audience
Any marketing campaign aims to understand the needs and preferences of the end-user. The above pointers will help you learn more about your target audience and enable you to focus on effective channels.
Once your social media audit is complete, formulate a mission statement for each of your social accounts. The mission statement guides actions and helps classify consumers based on their preferences for each platform. Studying the patterns they exhibit when engaging with technology gives you a clear picture of how each platform works with your target audience.
3. Build Your Online Identity From Ground Up
Once you are done with the auditing, choose the platforms where you want to promote your brand.
If your brand doesn't have a social presence yet, set-up business accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google Plus. Every social network caters to a different audience and should be treated accordingly.
Focus on platforms that resonate with the objectives of your brand and add value to your business. Carefully pick platforms based on what they are best at.
You can study the demographic representation of each social networking site to know which is the most appropriate to engage your target audience.
4. Connect With Industry Experts And Influencers To Increase Followers
The most important reason to be active on any networking platform is to connect with existing and prospective customers. But this also means that your competitors are not too far. Use the wealth of information available on social networking sites to improvise your marketing strategy while drawing inspiration from your competitors.
When you use social media to listen to your customers, to know what appeals to them, and to understand their pain points, you can devise a marketing plan that projects you as a unique player.
Know what your target audience is busy pinning, posting, and tweeting and realign your tactics to reach out.
Finally, capitalize on industry experts. Follow them, connect with them, retweet them, comment on their posts, and use them to influence your audience. Building relationships with influencers can offer long-term value for your brand.
5. Create an Engaging Editorial Calendar
Use your mission statement to create engaging and informative content that connects with your target audience. Spruce it up with images, infographics, blogs, ebooks, and videos and post it on different platforms.
Make your content fresh, relevant, unique, informative, and engaging. List the topics you want to share with your target audience and be regular with your posts.
Schedule your content in advance and be prompt with your communication.
Network it in all right places and don’t forget to use a conversational approach.
Create event pages, integrate with hashtags, and stream videos but be sure to zero in on the needs and desires of your target audience.
6. Trace The Reach Of Your Social Media Campaigns
You can use Google analytics to analyze the success of your marketing endeavors.
Most marketers capitalize on social media management tools to gauge their productivity and scale their efforts. Analyzing data and tracking the results will help you take corrective action and your online business will continue to grow.
You can stick to your approach but be flexible with your methods if you want to generate leads using social media marketing. Evaluate your previous plans and realign your techniques to optimize effective channels.
7. Build On Your Strengths (From Good To Great)
Go creative to keep the followers you have earned. Capitalize on innovative social media campaigns that compel your audience to engage.
Use Facebook adverts to retarget your visitors. Use trending hashtags to connect with new prospects. Retweet the latest updates from your influencers and double down on channels that are driving qualified leads.
Use Buzzsumo to identify trending stories and recreate them to intrigue your audience.
Optimize what is working for you and shut down what’s not.
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* Adapted lead image: 
