It has never been easier to connect with the rest of the world virtually, all you need do is simply tap on your phone or tablet to download social media apps onto your device. The only thing separating you, a business owner, from your consumers, is a screen. There are many options to choose from with a plethora of social media platforms available. Each platform is unique and comes with its own set of features, which are suited for specific purposes. It requires careful consideration of your requirements and goals before creating a social media platform for your brand. Most specifically, you need to be clear on the kind of audience you want to reach.
Which social media platform to choose for your brand?
- Set goals that make sense for your business
Social media strategy planning starts with your goals. Perhaps you want to build a community or a more dedicated following, or maybe you want your social accounts to drive more revenue this year. Either way, your goals will define your content strategy and how much time and energy you’ll need to dedicate to your campaigns. What really matters is that you set realistic social media platform goals.
You may begin by tackling smaller objectives that allow you to scale your social efforts in a way that’s both reasonable and affordable.
Below are some sample goals that businesses of all shapes and sizes can pursue:
Increase brand awareness: This means getting your name out there. To create authentic and lasting brand awareness, avoid solely publishing promotional messages. Instead, focus on content that emphasises your personality and company values first.
Generate leads and sales: Whether online or in-store, followers aren’t going to make social purchases by accident.
Grow your brand’s audience: Bringing new followers into the fold means finding ways to introduce your brand to folks who haven’t heard of you before. Growing your audience also means discovering conversations around your business and industry that matter the most. Digging through your social channels is nearly impossible without monitoring or listening to specific keywords, phrases, or hashtags, so having a pulse on these conversations helps you reach your core audience much faster.
Boost community engagement: Explore ways to grab the attention of your current followers through experimenting with messaging and content. Even something as simple as asking a question can increase your engagement rate.
Drive traffic to your site: If you’re sharply focused on generating leads or traffic to your website, social media can make it happen. Whether through promotional posts or social ads, keeping an eye on conversions and URL clicks can help you better determine your ROI from social media.
Any combination of these goals can help you better understand which networks to tackle, too. When in doubt, keep your social media marketing strategy simple rather than muddying it with too many objectives that might distract you.
- Take time to research your target audience
The worst mistake a marketer can make is to make assumptions, and thanks to the sheer wealth of demographic data and social media analytics tools, you really don’t have to anymore. Much of what you need to know about your audience to influence your social media marketing strategy is already available, granted you know where to look.
Take today’s social media demographics, for example. These numbers speak directly to which networks your brand should approach and what types of content to publish. For example:
Facebook and YouTube are both prime places for ads due in part to their high-earning user bases.
The majority of Instagram and TikTok‘s users are millennials or Gen Z, signalling the need for bold, attractive content.
Women vastly outnumber men on Pinterest, which is noted to boast the highest average order value for social shoppers.
LinkedIn’s user base is well-educated, making it a hub for in-depth, industry-specific content that might be more complicated than what you see on Facebook or Twitter.
However, trying to have a presence on every social media may not be a good idea. Instead, focus on networks where your core audience is already active. Do your homework on your existing social media audience.
Although the demographic data above gives you insight into each channel, what about your own customers? Further analysis needs to be done before you can determine what your real-world social customers actually look like. That’s why many brands use a social media dashboard that provides an overview of who’s following you and how they interact with you on each channel.
- Establish your most important metrics and KPIs
No matter what you’re selling, your social strategy should be data-driven. That means focusing on the social media metrics that matter. Rather than focus on vanity metrics, brands should dig deeply into data that aligns directly with their goals.
Metrics to look out for:
- Reach: Post reach is the number of unique users who saw your post. How far is your content actually reaching users’ feeds?
- Clicks: This is the number of clicks on your content or account. Tracking clicks per campaign is an essential metric to help you understand what drives curiosity or encourages people to buy.
- Engagement: The total number of social interactions divided by the number of impressions. This sheds light on how well your audience perceives you and their willingness to interact.
- Hashtag performance: What were your most-used hashtags? Which hashtags were most associated with your brand? Having these answers can help shape the focus of your content going forward.
- Organic and paid likes: Beyond a standard Like count, these interactions are attributed to paid or organic content. Given that it is much harder for organic engagement to gain traction, many brands rely on paid ads. Knowing these differences can help you budget both your ad spend and the time you invest in different formats.
- Sentiment: This is the measurement of how users reacted to your content, brand, or hashtag. Did customers find your recent campaign offensive? What type of sentiment are people associating with your campaign hashtag? It’s always better to dig deeper and find out how people are talking about your brand.
An effective social marketing strategy is rooted in numbers. That said, those numbers need to be put into a context that circles back around to your original goals.