The key ingredient for the success of social media marketing recipe is strategy. If you don’t follow a good strategy, you might be posting the content for the sake of posting it. It won’t add any value. Nowadays, almost every business, whether big or small, is present on social media. Undoubtedly, content is the king, but it is not enough!  A business shall focus on the strategies as well. The more specific your strategies and plan will be, the more effective and beneficial your presence will be. 

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing refers to optimal utilisation of different social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc to speak the brand awareness and promote one’s business. So, basically

  • Increase in awareness
  • Building and Engaging communities
  • Selling of products and services to masses
  • Provide rich and relatable content to audience
  • Interact with potential customers and target audience
  • Tracking performance of the business on a daily, weekly or monthly basis
  • Advertising products and services

If you are still not convinced with why one should focus on social media strategies, don’t worry we are here to explain. Scroll to know it better!

Why say hi to social media strategies?

Having a social media strategy will be rewarding for the business. It will help you come one step closer to attaining your business goals. Building a brand on social media without strategies can be unproductive. The reasons for following social media strategies are simple, for building a strong presence, to save time, effectively covering the target audience, leave room for creativity and creating better content, and most importantly, having a competitive edge and keeping ahead of competitors.

Have you all heard about the 5 Ws? If not, don’t worry we got your back!

What are the 5 W’s in Social Media Marketing?

You must have heard of the 5 W’s in general which are Who, Why, When, What and Where. There are 5 W’s in marketing that one should keep in mind. They are:

  • WHO is your target audience? Who are you trying to reach out to?
  • WHAT is your purpose of starting any activity? WHAT made you open a page on social media?
  • WHEN will you be sharing the content? When will you interact with the audience on social media through your content?
  • WHERE will you share and promote your business? Where are you planning to open your brand’s page?
  • WHY are you doing it? Why do you want to be on social media?

Before preparing for social media promotion and marketing strategies, make sure you are able to answer all these questions and have good clarity around it.  Now, let us look at some tips on how one can create a social media strategy.

How to create social media marketing strategies?

Set Social Media Marketing Goals That Align With Your Business

Let us start with a simple question. 

What do you want from social media?

Social Media Strategy helps in planning business goals. Don’t be too unrealistic. Set goals that are attainable and align with your business. 

Use the S.M.A.R.T technique which is

S – Specific

M – Measurable

A – Achievable 

R – Relevant 

T – Time-bounded

This technique helps you in bounding your business goals and getting a clear direction on how to do certain things. When on social media, one should track the progress whether it be on the terms of followers, likes, views, traffic generated, or any other factor. Tracking the progress will help you nurture growth and know your strengths or weaknesses. According to the 2021 Sprout Social Index, the most common goals of the business that wants to enter the realm of social media are to increase brand awareness (58%) and increase community engagement (41%).  Other goals can be to generate sales and leads, grow the community or know your brand’s target audience

Know Your Brand’s Target Audience

Marketing without knowing your target audience is like shooting arrows in the dark. Understand your audience. If you know your audience, you will be able to curate content for them and will understand their consumer psychology. Nowadays there are various tools present that can help you with researching your audience.

Remember! Different platforms have different kinds of audiences. For instance, Instagram has more of Gen Zs whereas Facebook attracts more millennials.

Social media analytics also provide you with information regarding the audience’s age, location, gender, etc. One can use it for their benefits and growth. These insights allow you to refine your strategy and better target your audience.

Know about your competition

Everyone’s presence is there on social media, including your competition. You can constantly look for their content and evaluate it with your own. One can conduct competitive analysis as it allows you to get a good knowledge of who all your competition is and what they are doing. It will help you spot opportunities and you will understand what to expect from the industry and how the competitors are tackling it. Maybe your competitor might focus most on Instagram and out on less efforts comparatively on Facebook and Twitter or other platforms. Therefore you can use such information to your benefit. 

Do a Social Media Audit

A social media audit is a process of reviewing a business’s metrics to assess growth, opportunities, and challenges and make the changes and shifts accordingly to stay in the game. You can ask yourselves and your brand the following questions to audit your social media game:

  • What’s working for you?
  • Who is engaging with you? Audience?
  • Networks where you have a good hold over the audience?
  • How is your page in comparison with the competitors?
  • What stands out for your page?

After answering these questions, look for ways to improve and note your strengths as well. 

Look for imposter accounts. Fake accounts! This might cause harm.

Keep Up With Your Social Media Game

Be clever with your content. Curate relatable content so as to attract a larger audience. Content is the King! If you want to build an empire, let the king rule.

Here are some ideas related to content strategy. Feel free to use any of them.

Content-Based Theme

One can follow a theme weekly or on a daily basis. Then there are giveaway alerts which are quite trendy and help you reach your audience quickly! Live sessions, Reels, collaborations, there are ‘n’ number of things you can do with your social media page. All you need to put in is effort!

Story and time-sensitive themes

People love stories. They love relatable stories even more. Stores can be a good component in your content curation. You can cover already successful people as well. Stories that add value! For example, consider how you can use Stories to cover an event or take your followers on a journey without them having to leave the comfort of the ‘gram. Posts that show off your human side. Don’t be afraid to remind followers of the humans behind your posts.

Conclusion

Everyone is posting on social media platforms. Some get attention and some do not. There are things that one needs to keep in mind before beginning their social media game. If you want an edge over others, follow the social media strategy. It is not easy, but it is not impossible either!