Social media is one of the most budget-friendly marketing tools in a business’ online arsenal and one of the most effective. More than 70% of Facebook users view local business pages at least once a week. Additionally, roughly half of Facebook users say a business’s page and content influence their shopping decisions.
A smart social media strategy can increase brand awareness, foster brand loyalty, generate new customers or clients and result in direct sales. However, before a business can launch a social media account and start posting, some insight and planning are required to ensure your social media presence achieves your overall ambitions.
So, how does social media marketing work? How can you ensure your social media strategy will lead to a boost in your business? It all starts with understanding your audience, competitors, social media platforms, and everything else.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is the process of creating content, such as verbiage, images, and videos on various social media platforms. Social media can help you promote your company and products/services. As a result, it can increase traffic to your business social media profiles.
Unlike other forms of marketing, like print or television advertisements, social media marketing is always evolving. There are new platforms that are introduced and soar in popularity. Additionally, there are new features on popular platforms that are launched. As such, social media marketing requires constant monitoring of the trends on these platforms. Therefore, new technological advancements may change how content is shaped and presented to a target demographic.
Why Should You Use Social Media Marketing for Business?
Companies of all sizes should embrace a social media marketing strategy because social media is where you will find your audience.
There are more than 4.59 billion active social media users in the world today. That number is expected to reach 6 billion by 2027. In addition, with the right social media strategy plan and the right digital marketing agency, social media is one of the most cost-effective ways to organically connect with consumers. With social media, you can build genuine brand loyalty that can effortlessly spread to a whole new realm of fans. In fact, 71% of Facebook users say they have recommended a brand or company to their contacts after having a positive impression or interaction.
How Do You Create a Social Media Strategy Plan?
Are you ready to start posting on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, or any other popular social media platform? First, you need to be armed with some background information, which begins with the following steps.
Identify Your Business Goals
What do you want your social media marketing to accomplish? This may seem like a question with a simple answer, such as “increase profits,” but it goes a bit deeper.
For example, some goals could include the following:
- Small or new businesses may want to increase visibility and brand awareness.
- An established business may want to target new demographics to coincide with launching a new kind of product or service.
- A business in a popular industry may want to enhance its reviews and reputation to stand out in a crowded market.
- A business that relies on repeat clients (like a hair salon or a restaurant) may want to stay on its customers’ radar.
Every business wants to drive sales. However, how you reach that goal determines the smaller goals you establish along the way.
Consider the best ways to boost your business going forward and use those paths as your blueprint for your social media marketing strategy.
Learn Everything You Can About the People Who Will Connect to Your Business
When you create social media posts, keeping your ideal customer in mind is essential. A teenage social media user will likely use different platforms and be attracted to different posts or media types than a retiree. Therefore, it’s essential to know how your demographic uses social media and what grabs their attention.
An experienced digital marketing agency will be able to access and provide these intricate metrics on the makeup of your current and future customers. However, as a rule of thumb, you’ll want to uncover the following aspects of your target demographic:
- age
- location
- income
- job or industry
- specific interests
- buying habits
- frequency of social media use
- likes, reviews, or interactions with previous posts or content
Social media analytics is a great and in-depth way to get a clear picture of what audience your marketing efforts are reaching. C1M can help you navigate these figures to fine-tune your social media strategy plan.
Examine Your Competition
One of the best ways to gauge what social media content that users respond to is to examine your competition. What type of posts created by an outside company generated the most likes, shares, retweets, or interactions? Which posts were white noise in a busy social media newsfeed or received a bit of negative blowback from responders? Look for trends in what works and what doesn’t for your immediate competitors. Also, you can compare bigger brand names in your specific industry.
Understand the Differences Between Various Social Media Platforms
Every platform has its unique formula for stellar social media content. As such, you can’t duplicate content across all platforms. While the message may be identical, what you post on Twitter or Facebook will be different than what you post on TikTok. That is why it is important to understand the preferred formats of each platform and proceed accordingly.
Establish a Social Media Strategy with Our Expert Marketing Team
It’s impossible to monitor all the trends, metrics, and best-practice guidelines that accompany every individual social media platform. Therefore, your smartest first step in creating a social media strategy is to enlist a little assistance from an expert.
At C1M, we are constantly monitoring the social media culture to identify opportunities to create content that sparks with your audience and leads to a connection. In addition, we’re experts at crafting the best content for each platform. We aim to ensure that a user will stop scrolling and pause on the eye-grabbing and positive posts.
Regardless of your business, location, or industry, when creating a social media strategy, you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out to our team of social media marketing professionals today. Let’s find the best ways to create a strategy to achieve and excel in your long-term business goals.
