Creating an effective social media marketing strategy is a sine qua non for every social media marketing professional in order to have an effective social media campaign. Social media marketing should be merged with your traditional marketing plan.
Nevertheless, a separate marketing plan should always be in place to document content strategies and guidelines. It should also define short-term and long-term goals. Also, it should define how to specifically measure all social media efforts you are putting in.
Below discussion will help you know how to create an effective social media marketing strategy:
Create Short-term & Long-term Goals
Many companies want to “dive” into social media because “it’s what everyone else is doing”. And because of that “me too” attitude many companies end up “drowning” in social media and no one notices them. First of all, create specific goals by asking yourself the following question:
“What does your business want to get out of social media?”
Some examples:
- Advertise events
- Develop online buzz for a new product
- Create online awareness to increase sales
- Increase user engagement to build online relationships
- Grow website traffic
- Obtain feedback from online users to improve customer service
Short-term goals are goals that you want to achieve in 30-60 days. Whereas, long-term goals are goals you want to achieve within 6 months to a year.
Creating short-term and long-term goals help you determine what type of content you should create in order to meet those goals.
Make Sure Everyone is On Board
When creating a social media marketing strategy bring everyone on board. From CEO, the marketing & advertising team and all upper and middle management should involve in the decision-making process that will result in a mutually agreed company’s social media marketing strategy. As people can provide valuable inputs in making an effective social media marketing strategy.
This strategy will set clear guidelines and road maps for the social media director, consultant, or team that is responsible for utilizing and monitoring all social media networks in your company.
Once the social media strategy is finalized, all company employees and the clients or vendors of your company should be made aware of all social media campaigns and encouraged to participate and solicit participation from others outside of the company.
Choose Platforms Wisely & Keep it Simple
There are hundreds of social media networks. Your business does not have to participate in all of them. I will explain separately how to choose the social media platform for your business which will be beneficial for you. You only want to pick the ones that will be the most effective for your business.
The more social networks you are participating in, the more work you have to do. Create separate content for each specific network. Content should be created based on the type of social network you choose to participate in.
Because you should not publish the same content everywhere or your audience will be bored soon and will leave you in no time. For example, if you are participating in YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, you could advertise on your website why consumers should check out each one.
- “Visit our YouTube channel to view our how-to-do-it-yourself videos!”
- “Check out our Instagram page to view current photos of our current projects and staff members!”
- “Visit our Facebook Fanpage page for special coupons, offers, and contests!”
- “Check out our Pinterest Page for the new and amazing products we have brought on our catalog for you!”
Always keep in mind that people will not visit all of your social media sites if you are advertising the same information on all of them. Give them specific reasons to visit all your social media networks through your content.
Create Influential Content
Posting simple status updates is not enough to get people to “like” or “follow” your business. You must create content that will influence online users to follow your business. Create and post content that keeps them “coming back for more”. Your social media networks should do more than just advertise your business and sell your products.
Remember the 70/30 rule. 70% of the information on your post that users will find useful and engage with should be valuable. For instance, time-saving tips, money-saving tips, how-to-do-it yourself tips, and/or free samples or workshops. 30% of your posts should be dedicated to advertising your website and business products or services.
If you just bombard visitors with your “selling posts”; this can actually push them away from your page. If people feel that what all you are doing is selling to them, they may not return.
My personal experience is that people come back to your business page on social channels to find something new and exciting, not just to see the products you sell. I built a fan following of over 700,000 people in just 24 months. My strategy was to keep people engaged. So, I organized contests, shared pictures worth sharing, gave timely responses to the people’s questions and feedbacks. And most important always valued our customers. It is customers that make or breaks your business.
Measure Your Social Media Efforts
Once you begin posting content, you then want to monitor and measure your content efforts. There are many free online tools to help you do this.
Read my previous post for better decision making on using the measurement tools for your social media efforts.
Google Analytics is probably one of the most popular and most used tools for measuring not only social media traffic but also website traffic.
However, social networks like Facebook have their own analytics. So you can view your Fan page analytics every time you log in as an admin. Learn which your most viewed posts are. And which posts are getting more comments and being shared with others.
This way you get an idea about the people’s interests. And you will develop and create content keeping that in mind next time.
Last but not least, social media trends change quickly and businesses need to be aware of the latest trends. Also, keep an eye on your competitors’ social media efforts.
An effective social media marketing strategy can help businesses document all of their social media efforts: short-term and long-term goals, content strategies, content guidelines as well as how they will measure their social media efforts.
If you need expert advice on creating an effective social media marketing strategy for your company, do get in touch with us.
