Contents
INTRODUCTION
Too many companies engage in sporadic social media marketing. They are aware that they need to develop some social media marketing strategy, but they are unsure on what they should do. Some businesses just grant younger staff members access to the business’ social media accounts on the grounds that they are young and should be well-versed in social media. However, the days of “publish and hope” on social media are long gone. All firms must develop a social media marketing plan and manage their social media accounts with care and restraint.
However, businesses cannot ignore social media initiatives. 71% of consumers who have had positive social media service experiences with a business are likely to recommend it to others, according to Ambassador. However, 96% of those who talk about brands online do not follow the accounts that belong to those brands. You still need to manage certain social media accounts yourself even if you embrace influencer marketing’s miracles. Influencer marketing frequently aims to drive traffic to your social media pages. Influencer marketing should be viewed as essentially an expansion of your company’s Digital Marketing Services plan.
1. Choose Goals for Social Media Marketing That Are Relevant and Realistic
The fact that many firms using social media for marketing purposes have never taken the time to develop relevant and practical social media marketing goals is one of the biggest issues they confront. They are on social media because they must be, but they have no idea why.
Of course, your overall business planning must incorporate your social media marketing strategy. In an ideal world, you would have established strategic objectives for the development of your company. Your overarching business goals should compliment your social media marketing objectives.
Goals That Your Business Can Set for Social Media
Your objectives will be particular to your company and will support your general objectives. However, typical social media goal types you might take into account (couched in an appropriate SMART-style) include:
- Increasing brand recognition
- achieving a target greater sales volume
- Increase your ROI
- motivating shoppers to make more in-store purchases
- expand your audience
One of the biggest errors businesses make on social media is assuming that all of their followers would be beneficial to them. There is a reason why analysts downplay the importance of the statistic Follower Numbers and refer to them as vanity metrics. If a follower is not likely to be interested in the stuff you share, having them is of little use.
Review the objectives you specified. Having followers on social media who can’t support you in achieving your goals serves little purpose. Most of the time, you want your social media followers to be like your target audience.
For instance, there is no purpose in attempting to draw in a youthful social media audience of people who either rent or still live with their parents if you are selling stairlifts to homeowners who struggle to remain mobile in their homes. Targeting football players and their supporters makes little sense if you offer makeup and other beauty products.
This is especially important if you sell goods to a market that is regionally distinct. In such a situation, you won’t want to have a lot of followers from areas and nations where consumers can’t purchase your goods.
3. Identify the Appropriate Social Media Platforms for Your Audience
Some people wonder how they would have the time and energy to manage accounts on all social media platforms. You typically don’t have to. Simply choose the best social media platforms for your company. You want to learn which social networks are most popular with your target market.
In order to find out where your target audience hangs out, you might need to conduct some preliminary research. This shouldn’t be too challenging, especially if you are familiar with your clientele. You may conduct a survey of them and ask them for their favourite social media accounts if you don’t already know this.
If a sufficient number of people in other networks operate active social profiles, you might start with the network that your audience uses the most frequently before expanding to include them. However, generally speaking, you wouldn’t need to explore more than three to five social networks.
Here, social networks are being defined in a rather broad sense. Naturally, you take well-known platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter into account. If your target demographic uses YouTube and TikTok in significant numbers, you might also consider them. In some circumstances, your audience may also be a good fit for live streaming services like Twitch.
4. Recognize your online audience
The audiences on social media vary greatly. Social media is used by many types of individuals in various ways. If you want to achieve your goals, you must use the same social media platforms as your intended market. Similar to this, if you plan to use influencer marketing, you must make sure that the influencers you work with have audiences that closely resemble your target demographic.
Maybe you’re an executive in your mid-40s who utilises Facebook. You can’t simply assume that your customers will also be using Facebook, though, if you yourself don’t fit the demographic of your company. Even though there were 2.27 billion monthly active Facebook users in Q3 2018, if you are trying to attract a younger audience, Snapchat or Instagram offer a much higher chance of success. However, if your company focuses on the 25 to 34 age group, which makes up 29.7% of Facebook users and is their most popular age group, you should know that.
Obviously, having excellent content to share is necessary if you want to succeed on social media. The dissemination of excessive promotional content is one of the largest errors made by corporations. Remember that social networks were never meant to be a location where you could advertise your products; instead, they were created to be communal spaces.
You should therefore balance the information and entertainment in the social media content you provide, with a little amount of marketing content. You must also “like” and “share” the content of others.
This is likely the main factor contributing to the status of the majority of influencers. They produce the ideal content for their followers since they have a solid understanding of their audience. The same is required of you as a brand.
You should have a good notion of the kind of material that will appeal to your target audience if you have already identified your goals and discovered what works (and what doesn’t) for your competition. Making material for those who won’t ever assist you achieve your goals serves little purpose.
6. Engage with Your Audiences
Social media users don’t just use them to read, look at, or watch material. They use the internet to socialise and communicate with others. Businesses that are successful don’t merely advertise to their social audiences. They converse with them as well.
For this reason, unless you have a very wide target market and an army of staff members devoted to this effort, you shouldn’t try to cover every social network. Utilizing your resources effectively requires focusing on the social media platforms that your target market uses.
Developing unique hashtags has proven to be highly helpful for some businesses. These can promote sharing and conversation while also making it simpler for you to look for postings that mention your company.
To show that customer service is important to you, you should ideally reply to every social media mention of your company.
CONCLUSION
Without a social media strategy, your company is wasting money on unproven, ad hoc activities. Simply using social media for its own purpose is pointless. Social media marketing may be a lengthy process, so having a plan is essential if you want it to be successful. It can assist you in creating a solid organic presence and establishing a reputation for brilliance in a certain subject. You can also use it to advance your general commercial and marketing objectives.