It’s no secret that successful social media marketing is a powerful tool you can use to market your brand, engage with customers, and drive sales. But to succeed with social media marketing, you have to create a clear, actionable strategy that aligns with your business goals and target market.
At the heart of what is the best way a company can be successful with social media marketing is content. After all, there’s a reason “content is king” has been a common saying for years.
However, as easy as that answer is for achieving successful social media marketing, it’s not so simple to plan, implement, and achieve.
Not Just Content… Quality Content
Finding how to connect with your audience in the most engaging, unique ways is your greatest challenge with content. A common place to start when brainstorming ideas keeping up with, or even staying ahead of, trending and relevant industry information.
Another place is customer service. Along with customer product reviews on your website, customer feedback to your customer service to team is also invaluable because you’re tapping into the insight of people who are both current customers and potential repeat ones.
Then there’s the interaction of your social media manager or even the whole team with your audience. Taking the time to engage and connect with them is a small business practice that should be part of any social media marketing strategy.
Define Your Goals and Then Keep Them in Mind
Your social media marketing goals should determine your campaigns and your content. Some companies use social media to simply drive engagement or website traffic. Others want to generate leads and increase their following. Still others want to open another revenue stream.
No matter your goals, build out your campaign with only thing in mind: hitting that goal, if not blowing past it.
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Figure Out Your Target Market
If you don’t know who your audience is, you won’t know how to create solutions (i.e., products and services) for them. Nor will you be able to successfully market to them.
To determine your audience, market research is a must, including both your current customers and potential new ones. What are their needs, wants, interests, values, behaviors, etc.? Who uses social media and which platforms do they use?
reread section –> Analyze the Market, Including the Competition
Many businesses make the mistake of creating content based on what they want to share with their customers. But that’s not a recipe for success because what they think the customer wants is not always the same as the customer actually wants.
That’s market research and customer data analysis are crucial. They help you gain insights into your audience, which you can use to create the content they crave.
But there’s more. Market research helps you understand how much in demand your products are and how your competitors leveraging social media. Do they rely on influencer marketing one platform and paid ads on another? Identify strategies that are working for them and tailor them to your company’s needs.
You can take it even further, though. Study any hole they may have in their marketing, especially a product to similar to yours, and then use that to fill in the missing marketing.
Using Social Media Platforms
As with anything in your business, to create a prosperous marketing strategy with social media, you must plan it out with consideration. It’s not simply about creating various accounts on as many social media channels as you can to expand your social media presence.
As for how many channels you should be on, you want to choose the ones that allow for the best social media management and audience engagement. Some advise that you choose no more than four, while others might say as many as you can without losing your efficiency or reducing your ROI.
Small business owners who have a small audience might not need or even have the resources for more than one or two accounts. If your business is medium to large, three to five is ideal for your target market. Huge enterprises or conglomerates might easily have the resources to have as many as ten social media accounts.
So doing your research is essential in choosing the most relevant ones for your business.
Which Social Media Platforms Are Best for Your Business?
Before you begin crafting your social media strategy, don’t assume anything about where your audience spends its time, as it’s easy to assume that a particular age group or demographic is only on a particular social media channel.
For example, it’s popular to think Gen Z is only on Instagram or TikTok, yet data shows that almost 25% of Facebook users are 18-24. It’s also common to think baby boomers are either not on social or only on Facebook; however, Pinterest is another top social network for the 65 and over crowd.
For a successful social media marketing approach, using multiple social channels to reach different audiences can help meet your business goals.
Social media giant Facebook is still the world’s most-used social media platform, with more than 2.9 billion active users every month and home to over 200 million businesses.
There are several positives to using Facebook for small businesses, including the ability to reach all age groups, genders, and interests. Plus, you can offer your customer a full shopping experience while running campaigns, tracking data, and more.
As for Instagram, you can get very specific about your industry or niche. Most users are 40 or younger, but don’t just assume they’re your target without doing your due diligence.
It’s a great platform, especially if your brand has a very visual appeal, because the platform is visual, which can drive viral engagement. Plus, you can offer in-app shopping, which customers love for convenience.
If your brand is more on the storytelling side, or if it’s more suited to sharing updates and news than visuals, then Twitter‘s a great place for marketing. It’s conversation-driven nature makes it great for creating dialogues with your audience, a place where people go to get news and breaking announcements in real time.
TikTok
When it comes to TikTok, many businesses immediately think in extremes: it’s either “perfect for my brand” or “not at all the right fit”. But you’ll be going yourself a disservice if you ignore TikTok without at least researching it.
Why? Comparably speaking, a large budget is not necessary to create high-quality content, so it’s a more even playing field. If your brand is creative, or you have excellent creative talent that go outside the box, then this is a platform to leverage. Plus, it’s where viral goes when it wants to go viral.
YouTube
You probably know that YouTube is the most popular video-sharing social network in the world. But have you taken advantage of its effectiveness for marketing your products and services?
From YouTube you can drive website traffic and build brand awareness with your engaging video content. And then there’s this: YouTube is an overlooked resource for improving website SEO because many businesses, including your competition, don’t take into account that Google searches often list YouTube videos in its results.
Finally, don’t sleep on Pinterest. It started as a creative catalog platform, but it’s evolved into a powerful visual search engine. It’s always been a place to find and save new creative ideas, but not it’s now just as popular in shopping and purchasing decisions.
Users love Pinterest because of its visual appeal. Used correctly, Pinterest can help elevate the image and reputation of your brand. Plus, because of its creative nature, it could be a great place for you to connect with any new target audience.
Successful Social Media Marketing Needs a Content Guide
Developing a content guide helps you develop and consistently maintain the unique brand voice that makes you stand out. For example, your Instagram content might showcase the more playful side of your brand, while emails might convey more authority or salesmanship.
But it’s not all about content. Consider the need for visuals and, if so, all of their original content, or is it outsourced? What format will your posts follow for each platform? How often will you post, and how to make allowances for last-minute changes?
Without a content guide, even something as simple as a social media calendar, your marketing won’t have a solid direction, which can come across to your customers. This can dilute any brand’s power or recognition.
Using Tools to Successfully Implement Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
Social media management tools allow you to take full advantage of your marketing because you can automate aspects of your campaigns, which allows you time to tweak, modify, and perfect your current strategy.
Successful social media marketing depends on staying up to date on trends and best practices, and software tools can help with a variety of tasks that can help make your business more efficient while still achieving your marketing and revenue goals.
You may want to use a tool to help create social media posts (including content), implement strategies to meet your social media goals, and manage your online brand reputation. Other tools help track prospects through all stages of a sales funnel and help you schedule and manage your social media advertising campaigns.
For a company that does business internationally, a tool that helps with translation into or from other languages is a must-have. You may also want to use tools to identify popular influencers in your industry, research your competitors, and offer detailed analytics about campaign performance.
Other tools can help identify your target audience, come up with a strategy to refine your brand recognition and appeal, and make your business shine, while others are perfect for social media management.
One of the most useful things is a calendar app, especially if publishes content automatically. Of course, tools that check grammar and spelling, proofread, and edit content are crucial to keeping up your online reputation. On the visual side, you should consider an app or program to help create and edit photos, videos, graphics, illustrations, GIFs, and more.
Create a Schedule for Uploading Posts
Since content is king, you’ll definitely want to have a posting calendar to help maintain consistency and regularity. It’s the perfect partner to your content guide for keeping the outstanding quality of your content, as it helps you track when you’re posting and whether to maintain a given regularity of posting or if you need to tweak accordingly (e.g., posting more times per day or week, or testing to see if different times of the day work better for your audience).
Posting whenever it strikes you instead of a carefully thought-out strategy is not effective, which is why data tracking and analysis is crucial to your marketing efforts.
For example, if your target audience is mostly 35 and older, posting in the mornings and evenings may be more effective for a successful social media marketing strategy. However, for a younger audience, posting during the day may be more beneficial.
Start Publishing Your Quality Content
Now it’s time to get your content out there. You’ll want to upload content regularly, making sure to pay attention to any patterns where engagement is high or low. This could include types of content, time of day, and more.
A common refrain in marketing is that you shouldn’t overpublish (i.e., publish too often). This is usually due to concerns of spamming, which can lead to your provider setting restrictions on your activity. However, there is no set rule for this; how often you post content should be based on your business needs as well as on what your audience is saying. Don’t underestimate the psychology of your audience trusting that you’re reliable in your posting because it helps your customers see you as a dependable, trustworthy business.
If maintaining a steady current of fresh content is putting a strain on your current teams, consider bring on more more writers, editors, designers, photographers, and more; hiring freelancers instead of full-timers is often a good way to keep to a budget if necessary.
Once your content is live, keep an eye on its performance. Track and analyze the important metrics: comments, likes, shares, replies, retweets, etc. Not only that, closely monitoring performance can help you fix an issue or take steps to avoid one.
For example, what if someone claims you’ve used their content without asking permission or informing them? You’ll want to resolve the problem quickly, either by removing the post or giving them the proper credit, whatever solution the owner will agree to according to successful social media marketing. Of course, you’ll want to take down posts deemed offensive or insensitive (another benefit of a content guide, as planning in advance reduces the chances that your content will inflame audiences).
Create Valuable Content That Engages and Connects with Your Target Audience
No matter what the content is, it has to resonate with your audience. This will compel them engage with you or even share with their network, both of which aid in building your social media following.
From blog posts to videos, your value-driven content should inform, entertain, appeal to the senses, and more. This goes a long way in establishing you and your brand as an expert in your industry, increasing your chances of turning mere followers into engaged, buying customers.
Don’t Forget to Interact with Your Audience
To grow your brand and social media community, interact with your followers regularly if not daily.
This includes replying to comments, answering questions, curating UGC (user-generated content), responding to private messages, and more. This will help build trust and promote a better relationship with your audience.
By doing this, you create an emotional connection with your followers, which makes it easier to persuade them to become loyal consumers who buy your goods and services through successful social media marketing. It will ensure that your brand voice is consistent and unique, making your brand easier to identify and follow.
How to Use Sponsored and Paid Content
Because many social media users admit to regularly engaging with brands in addition to friends and others in their personal network, resulting in the surge of sponsored or paid content, you should incorporate this type of content into your social media efforts.
Sponsored content is just that: content you sponsor by paying an influencer, company, or publisher to create and upload to their relevant social media channels. It differs from traditional advertising in that it can be tailored to fit seamlessly with your regular content.
Although sponsored content can be mutually beneficial, as you (the advertiser) get to expand your brand reach while the other party gets paid for creating and/or sharing it, making sure it’s relevant or on-brand is important. Paid content that comes across too salesy when that’s not your brand voice can be a turnoff to your audience.
One way to find success with paid advertising is to ensure it adds to the user experience in a positive way. Another way is not to promote anything or partner with anyone who doesn’t make sense for or align with your brand. Choosing a flavor-of-the-month influencer or sharing sponsored content from a brand with a less-than-reputable presence can be devastating for your business.
That’s why it’s important to thoughtfully choose who posts your sponsored content; they should align with your company’s values and goals so the partnership and content seem natural and on brand.
Finally, any paid content should match the tone, look and feel of your regular, organic content.
Striking a balance between organic and sponsored content is key. Organic posts tend to be effective for engaging those who are already existing customers while sponsored content is regularly used to acquire new customers and expand your reach.
Promote across Your Other Social Media Platforms
Although cross-promotion is nothing new, many businesses either under-use it or don’t use it at all. But it should be an integral part of your social media marketing. When you implement this tactic, you’re better able to maximize any social media platform you’re on.
Cross-promotion means marketing your social profiles on other social media marketing channels while also marketing those same channels across your other social media profiles. For example, you could promote your daily marketing emails on social media while also making the links to your social media prominent on your website.
Using Data Analysis to Analyze, Refine, and Close Gaps in Your Social Media Marketing
Metrics give you invaluable insights into your social media marketing efforts. First and foremost, it provides valuable data about how your marketing is performing.
By regularly evaluating your metrics, you get a better understanding of your customers as well as an expanded potential target audience. When used correctly, this data helps you refine your social media marketing strategy so you can make data-driven decisions that improve results and enhance your bottom line.
No business is mistake-free, but it’s important to make sure one mistake doesn’t become two or more. In other words, learn from your social media mistakes and make things right going forward.
Analyze gaps in your social media marketing to improve your content and create more efficient, more effective techniques. That means carefully tracking how your content performs. When you find pattern in your successes, you’ll want to replicate and focus resources to scale up, whereas analyzing posts that don’t perform could reveal that you need to make slight tweaks or a complete overhaul.
For example, posts with surveys or questions tailored for your audience might generate tons of engagement and opinions, while those with graphs, illustrations, or infographics might get tons of shares.
What You Should Avoid in Social Media Marketing
Because social media is such a pervasive aspect of most people’s lives, detailed and nuanced etiquette has formed for social media generally and for each platform. Here are a few things to avoid in your social media strategy:
Among the mistakes companies frequently make, one of the most common is not prioritizing the needs of your customers. It’s about your target audience and their needs, not what you want or think they need. Too many businesses focus too much on their products or services instead of understanding customer needs.
Another issue is inconsistency in your social media efforts. You want to post and upload content regularly so your customers see you as reliable, and there for them when they’re ready to buy.
Inconsistency in your brand voice and presence is also a major issue for many brands, as posting in a tone that’s off-brand can be confusing to the customer. Even worse, it can come across as inauthentic. Projecting a different persona on a social media site than your normal one can make customers feel misled.
That’s why a social media content calendar is so important.
Need Social Media Marketing Help? Dia Creative has your back.
A smart business practice is to leverage your social media marketing as well as possible. If you want to do this, but aren’t sure how, schedule a consultation with us today.
As a multi-channel marketing agency, Dia Creative can help you develop a strategy and easily tailor your social media marketing to meet the needs and success of your business.
