Using an effective social media marketing strategy is the key to a successful social media presence. If you have been observing the e-commerce growth on social media platforms just like the rest of the world in the past couple of years, you already know that today, every business and brand uses these platforms for many business goals. Whether it is to reach a wider demographic of customers or to increase their revenues, digital marketing has come a long way in terms of a growing business. So, in 2022, put your social media presence into use and step up your business to a brand new level of success. And if you are looking for a complete guide, you’ve come to the right place.
In this writing, you’re going to find a comprehensive guide on understanding SMMSs and how to implement them specifically for your business and audience. The guide includes:
- The definition of social media marketing strategies
- The reasons to have a social media marketing strategy
- Real examples of brands with successful SMMSs
- Types of social media marketing strategies
- A detailed guide on creating your own SMMS
- Reaching your maximum business growth with Socialays AI-based social media assistant
So, keep on reading and learn how to plan your social media marketing strategy for 2022.
First Things First: What is a social media marketing plan/strategy?
According to Gary Anderson from Digitalmarketing.org, “Social media marketing is the process of creating tailored content for each social media platform to drive engagement and promote your business.” And through this high-quality and customized content, you’re able to reach people and get close to them.
● What is the difference between an SMM plan and a strategy?
When it comes to digital marketing, many business owners and new starters get lost among the most used terminology, and it’s perfectly normal considering how much different information there is out there. However, to reach the perfect result, one should be able to see the difference between certain expressions to choose the right one and follow it. Before you start to get your social media marketing goal, you first need to formulate the terms straight.
This way, you leave no room for confusion both for yourself and your team. The Center for Management & Organization Effectiveness CMOE describes a plan as a fixed map while a strategy is an adjustable blueprint of your goals. Most of the time, a social media marketing plan is a piece of a social media marketing strategy and can be altered over the course of the marketing process.
● What is the purpose of a social media strategy?
The main point of having and implementing a social media strategy is to make the most of social media platforms, improve your engagement rate with your customers and reach your intended business goals through it.
● How can you get the best of it for your business?
Social media is becoming the new medium for digital marketing fast. Now, brands and businesses aim to reach potential customers mainly on popular platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok and lead them into their websites later. They achieve it through multiple options like content strategy and optimizing their accounts according to the platform they are on.
There are certain parameters to pay attention to when you’re creating your social media marketing strategies. First of all, it’s always a good idea to have clear goals in your roadmap and know why you want to bolster your social media presence. Then you should research brands with successful SMMSs and take them as examples.
The final step is to combine all the data with the strengths of your brand.
Reaching Business Goals through Social Media Marketing
With a well-thought social media marketing strategy and consistency, you can expand your customer profile and increase your revenue. But it’s also important to decide which business goals you want to achieve through them and the reason for it is to be able to evaluate the outcome.
You need to decide what you aim for by using social media platforms and create a strategy through these goals. As a business owner, you may have a lot of goals on your agenda and that’s totally okay. The important thing with having multiple choices is to prioritize them and move on one by one. That way, you can keep track of your business growth and progress in general. So, what can these goals be and how can you realize them with a well-planned social media strategy?
1. Growing Sales
Social media platforms now act as marketplaces and your accounts on these platforms are your counters. The first thing to sell anything, you need to draw people in to look around and get them to know you. And with social media accounts, you can do exactly that! The data from SUMO Heavy Industries shows that 42.27% of people purchased a product or service because they saw it on social media before. Even though the participant number is 1000 people, the survey is a clear indication that being visible online definitely helps grow sales.
2. Expanding Customer Profiles
With the help of social media platforms, now you can reach a wide range of customers from all over the world with a single send button. With enough follower numbers, you are now able to grow your business and brand and open up new markets.
3. Understanding Your Target Audience Better
The more you know about your target audience, the better marketing choices you’re going to make for them. It’s quite simple in theory however; it may be confusing in practice with all the options you have. Should you go for a content strategy or make a bunch of short videos on TikTok with the latest songs? To clear up this complication, all you need to do is to find out where your audience spends most of their time and lead your effort there.
4. Coming up with New Products or Services
You may be thinking about putting a new product or adding a new service on the table but are unsure how to decide it or what your present and potential customers may want or expect from your brand. Normally, companies conduct surveys to find out and you can always do it. Another way you can guarantee the success of a new product/service is simply by asking your customers.
Polls are great at this point as Instagram provides its users to use them and it increases engagement rates and makes your followers that their thoughts are valid and noticed. It helps both business and customer services so it’s a win-win situation for your business!
5. Getting Feedback on Your Current Product or Services
Communicating with your customers on social media and asking their opinions is a great way to observe what the general feeling is about your current product and services.
How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy?
Just like you wouldn’t try to sell shoes in a restaurant, there are rules on marketing on different social media platforms. Some of them are written while some of them are implicit ones but just as effective. You can follow different strategies and carry out separate plans based on the platform you’re on.
Types of SMM Strategies
As mentioned above, creating a social media marketing strategy for each platform specifically gets you the ultimate benefit from these platforms both with your customers and your brand in general. So, always consider what you can do with different platforms to connect with your customers better and faster.
• Facebook Marketing Strategy
As the most used social media platform in the world, Facebook, now known as Meta, is highly interested in digital marketing. So much so that the platform even provides detailed info on how to make your business more visible on Facebook on its own website.
• Knowledge is Power and so is Creativity!
No matter how much fast people consume everything, one thing stays the same for the majority of people. That is the fact that people love learning new things especially if it’s about something they’re interested in. Whether it’s cooking vegan recipes or introducing easier ways to design homes, people love short videos or instructions filled with knowledge and fun. So, creating this kind of content will certainly draw them into your accounts and make them come back again.
Consistency on Posting
Posting high-quality content indeed helps increase engagement rates and your brand awareness in general. However, if you do it once in a blue moon, it won’t have the same effect and soon enough your follower numbers will go down. That’s why businesses and brands should follow a certain schedule to post content on social media platforms. This will help your followers know when you post and they will expect to see something fun and informative, whatever context you choose to create. You can also research the exact hours your target audience is online to reach the maximum effect.
High-quality Content vs Changing Trends
There comes a time when content creators and marketing teams feel like they have to choose between two roads while posting on social media accounts. To think and create high-quality content all the time or try to keep up with the latest trends even if it means rushing for the sake of posting. The answer changes depending on a couple of factors. The first one is your customer profile. Those who follow you and why they follow you lead you to a certain place where you can decide how to choose when posting content.
If your target audience includes younger people, then creating TikTok videos with trendy topics will grab attention and help get higher in the rankings. And if the majority of your followers are from older generations and you know that they like to read more informative content, then pursuing refined content strategy will be best for business.
Create a Successful Strategy with These 8 Easy Steps
You have gotten familiar with basic terminology and learned that different social media platforms work best with different kinds of social media presence. Now, it’s time to create your own social media marketing strategy through 8 simple and effective steps. These steps are designed to guide you in many lines of business and therefore can be modified and changed. And that’s one reason why they are effective is that essentially, all successful digital marketing strategies focus on key points, and with little adjustments, they bring the brand and business on top. The important thing is to understand and form this strategy way. Pay attention to little details that make your business special.
Step 1: Create a Positive Persona with Your Social Media Account
Your company and brand’s social media account is the face of your product and services. It’s a great chance to rebrand yourself and reach a wide range of customer profiles through these platforms. Now, the world is connected to each other like it has never been before. This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage for you. By creating a positive persona with your social media account, you can become a go-to page for people who want some quiet time online knowing they will get a positive outcome from it.
Combining this joyfulness with your products is also a great marketing strategy to gain public attention and support. You can encourage your customers and followers to use your product and share their journey with it. This is both a great ad for the brand and attracts new potential customers.
Step 2: Let Your Followers Know You and Get Familiar with Them
One of the biggest reason for you to use social media is to connect with your customers directly. Normally, brands and companies do this by conducting surveys through e-mail or phone, etc. However, the best data comes from the customers themselves. When you create an active social media account and make yourself known on the platform, your followers and people who are interested in your brand also come in and share their opinions. And you can always see an increase in interaction rates and inquire about your customers’ values and wishes.
Step 3: Don’t Be Afraid to Get Closer to Potential Customers
As business owner, you may wonder how close you can get with your followers and if it’ll help your business. Well, you never know until you try, or in other words, you can know once you try. People on social media are looking for real connections. When they feel that your brand cares about them, they feel validated and feel closer to your brand. Always put some time and effort to reply to messages and comments and let other followers see this. Once you put it into your daily schedule, it will help increase your interaction rates.
Step 4: Highlight Your Strengths in Your Content
Competition is indeed getting solid with countless brands getting into social media marketing each day. But, this shouldn’t discourage you as with each difficulty also new opportunities come along. In the past, there aren’t as many companies as there are today and that’s why they didn’t have to try to find what makes them different from any other brand out there. Today, you have a chance to discover that and show it to your customers as well. Whether it’s the process or the material you use, you should be knowledgeable of your product to promote them. And feel free to try new things in the meantime!
Step 5: Pick Your Platform and Invest in It
At the beginning, choosing platforms and focusing on them is a great way to create high-quality content. Because every platform provides different product or service, adapting the environment will rank you higher with algorithms. So, try to spend time on these platforms and note how you can promote your brand with each of them. On Instagram, you should probably be more visual-focused and post attention-grabbing pictures. While on LinkedIn, your content should be more career-focused and the opportunities that come by working with you.
Step 6: Benefit from Past Experience and Data
With any strategy, researching is an inseparable part of determining the perfect marketing map. While creating yours, you can get inspired by other brands’ stories and strategies in addition to your own stats. This provides you necessary insights on how to carry out plans and whether they are suitable for the target market. The data you get from competitors can be an instructive example for deciding which social media platforms to focus on. When it comes to social media marketing strategies, advance researching can save you from wasting both your time and money. So make sure to go over the top-tier competitors in your industry and use their past experiences to create the perfect content for your brand.
Step 7: Pay Attention to Content Strategy and Check It with Your Team Regularly
When it comes to content strategy, it often gives the impression of posting something on all your accounts at a specific time. At the same time, then wait for your follower numbers to grow. However, in the reality, it really doesn’t work like that. At the core of a successful content strategy lies the combination of understanding your target audience and determining your goals. In addition, explore creative ways to connect with followers through experience. That’s why it’s essential to evaluate your SMM strategies with your team at regular intervals and reroute when necessary.
Step 8: Keep Track of Your Account’s Improvement
Keeping a record of your accounts’ development should not be limited to low engagement rates or monthly active users. You should keep track of all things that go well to see what’s working and what’s not to get better. S.M.A.R.T goals are great guides on this matter that you can use when you don’t know about your SMMSs. Shortly S.M.A.R.T, the method means to determine business goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. Working with these 5 steps in mind, you can get creative and grow your online business.
How does AI work in Social Media Marketing? Discover your Maximum Business Potential with Socialays
AI-based social media tools are getting popular with the fact that user-generated content works well on every social media platform. Create content that is specifically made for your target audience with their preferences in mind. The content should also live up to your expectation. Socialays AI-based social media assistant focuses on your customers and their opinions and reaction that they leave on your social media accounts to help you determine what they expect from your brand and products. Moreover, you can use 7 more features to enjoy more customized content creating the experience. Try and experience the comfort of an AI-based social media assistant of your own!
In Closing
For businesses and brands that want to grow their audience, having social media accounts is crucial. The reason for it is that people using social media is getting higher every day. As every business owner can clearly see, there is a big potential for new customers and audiences online. With a solid social media marketing strategy, you can reach different demographics and increase your revenues.
To create a specific and successful social media marketing strategy, you first need to understand the difference between a plan and a strategy and pay attention to the steps while creating a road map. Once you bring the fundamental requirements and the strengths of your brand, you can have a special and high-quality SMMS to start digital marketing.
