Do you need help getting started with your social media marketing strategy?
Do you know what to include?
Goals and objectives guide your social media strategy to help you successfully connect with your customers.
In this article Iβll shareΒ what you need to include in your social media marketing strategy so it works from day one.
β Thanks to Social Media Examiner for this great article
#1: Identify Business Goals
Every piece of your social media strategy serves the goals you set. You simply canβt move forward without knowing what youβre working toward.
Look closely at your companyβs overall needsΒ and decide how you want toΒ use social media to contribute to reaching them.
Youβll undoubtedly come up with several personalized goals, but there are a few that all companies should include in their strategyβincreasing brand awareness, retaining customers and reducing marketing costs are relevant to everyone.
I suggest youΒ choose two primary goals and two secondary goals to focus on. Having too many goals distracts you and youβll end up achieving none.
#2: Set Marketing Objectives
Goals arenβt terribly useful if you donβtΒ have specific parameters that define when each is achieved. For example, if one of your primary goals is generating leads and sales, how many leads and sales do you have to generate before you consider that goal a success?
Marketing objectives define how you get from Point A (an unfulfilled goal) to Point B (a successfully fulfilled goal). You can determine your objectives with the S-M-A-R-T approach:Β Make your objectives specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
Using our previous example, if your goal is to generate leads and sales, a specific marketing objective may be to increase leads by 50%. In order to measure your progress,Β choose which analytics and tracking tools you need to have in place.
Setting yourself up for failure is never a good idea. If you set an objective of increasing sales by 1,000%, itβs doubtful youβll meet it.Β Choose objectives you can achieve, given the resources you have.
Youβve taken the time toΒ refine your goals so theyβre relevant to your company, so extend that same consideration to your objectives. If you want to get support from your C-level executives,Β ensure your objectives are relevant to the companyβs overall vision.
Attaching a timeframe to your efforts is imperative. When do you intend to achieve your goal(s)? Next month? By the end of this year?
Your objective of increasing leads by 50% may be specific, measurable, achievable and relevant, but if you donβt set a deadline for achieving the goal, your efforts, resources and attention may be pulled in other directions.
#3: Identify Ideal Customers
If a business is suffering from low engagement on their social profiles, itβs usually because they donβtΒ have an accurate ideal customer profile.
Buyer personasΒ help you define and target the right people, in the right places, at the right times with the right messages.
When youΒ know your target audienceβs age, occupation, income, interests, pains, problems, obstacles, habits, likes, dislikes, motivations and objections, then itβs easier and cheaper to target them on social or any other media.
The more specific you are, the more conversions youβre going to get out of every channel you use to promote your business.
#4: Research Competition
When it comes to social media marketing,Β researching your competitionΒ not only keeps you apprised of their activity, it gives you an idea of whatβs working so you can integrate those successful tactics into your own efforts.
Start by compiling a list of at least 3-5 main competitors.Β Search which social networks theyβre using and analyze their content strategy. Look at their number of fans or followers, posting frequency and time of day.
AlsoΒ pay attention to the type of content theyβre posting and its contextΒ (humorous, promotional, etc.) and how theyβre responding to their fans.
The most important activity to look at is engagement. Even though page admins are the only ones who can calculate engagement rate on a particular update, you can get a good idea of what theyβre seeing.
For example, letβs say youβre looking at a competitorβs last 20-30 Facebook updates. Take the total number of engagement activities for those posts and divide it by the pageβs total number of fans. (Engagement activity includes likes, comments, shares, etc.)
You can use that formula on all of your competitorsβ social profiles (e.g., on Twitter you can calculate retweets and favorites).
Keep in mind that the calculation is meant to give you a general picture of how the competition is doing so you canΒ compare how you stack upΒ against each other.
#5: Choose Channels and Tactics
Many businesses create accounts on every popular social network without researching which platform will bring the most return. You canΒ avoid wasting your time in the wrong placeΒ by using the information from your buyer personas toΒ determine which platform is best for you.
If your prospects or customers tell you they spend 40% of their online time onΒ Facebookand 20% onΒ Twitter, youΒ know which primary and secondary social networks you should focus on.
When your customers are using a specific network, thatβs where you need to beβnot everywhere else.
YourΒ tacticsΒ for each social channel rely on your goals and objectives, as well as the best practices of each platform.
For example, if your goal is increasing leads and your primary social network is Facebook, some effective tactics areΒ investing in Facebook advertisingΒ or promotion campaigns to draw more attention to your lead magnets.
#6: Create a Content Strategy
Content and social mediaΒ have a symbiotic relationship: Without great content social media is meaningless and without social media nobody will know about your content. Use them together to reach and convert your prospects.
There are three main components to anyΒ successful social media content strategy: type of content, time of posting and frequency of posting.
TheΒ type of content you should post on each social networkΒ relies on form and context. Form is how you present that informationβtext only, images, links, video, etc.
Context fits with your company voice and platform trends. Should your content be funny, serious, highly detailed and educational or something else?
There are many studies that give you a specific time when you should post on social media. However, I suggest using those studies as guidelines rather than hard rules. Remember, your audience is unique, so you need toΒ test and figure out the best time for yourself.
Posting frequency is as important as the content you share. You donβt want to annoy your fans or followers, do you?
Finding the perfect frequencyΒ is crucial because it could mean more engagement for your content or more unlikes and unfollows.Β Use Facebook Insights to see when your fans are online and engaging with your content.
#7: Allocate Budget and Resources
To budget for social media marketing,Β look at the tactics youβve chosen to achieve your business goals and objectives.
Make a comprehensive list of the tools you needΒ (e.g., social media monitoring, email marketing and CRM), services youβll outsource (e.g., graphic design or video production) and anyΒ advertisingΒ youβll purchase. Next to each,Β include the annual projected costΒ so you can have a high-level view of what youβre investing in and how it affects your marketing budget.
Many businesses establish their budget first, and then select which tactics fit that budget. I take the opposite approach. IΒ establish a strategy first, and thenΒ determine the budget that fits that strategy.
If your strategy execution fees exceed your budget estimate,Β prioritize your tactics according to their ROI timeframe.Β The tactics with the fastest ROIΒ (e.g., advertising and social referral) take priority because they generate instant profit you can later invest into long-term tactics (fan acquisition, quality content creation or long-term engagement).
#8: Assign Roles
Knowing whoβs responsible for what increases productivity and avoids confusion and overlapping efforts. Things may be a bit messy in the beginning, but with time team members will know their roles and what daily tasks theyβre responsible for.
When everyone knows his or her role, itβs time toΒ start planning the execution process. You can either plan daily or weekly. I donβt advise putting a monthly plan together because lots of things will come up and you may end up wasting time adapting to the new changes.
You can use tools likeΒ BasecampΒ orΒ ActiveCollabΒ to manage your team and assign tasks to each member. These tools save you tons of time and help you stay organized.
Your Turn
Your social media marketing strategy isnβt written in stone. As you move forward, you may discover that some tactics are not working as well as you thought they would. Always try toΒ adapt quickly and introduce the new changes to your overall strategy.
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