How to Design a Social Media Strategy for a Business?
Without any doubt, social media play a huge role in our lives today. With so many people using various social media channels, these channels gradually transformed into the new storefront.
Now, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms are the main places where users discover new brands and products. According to the stats, as for 2019, more than 80% of users discover products that are interesting to them on social media and this number keeps growing. Also, studies found that 19% of users who come across an interesting product buy it straight off the social tag, 47% buy it online later, and 13% purchase it in a physical store at a later date.
These and other stats clearly indicate the importance of social media for modern businesses. The fact that most consumers use these platforms to discover new brands and products is changing e-commerce significantly, which forces businesses to engage in social media marketing more than ever.
Designing a Winning Social Media Strategy in 6 Steps
- Define Your Objectives
First and foremost, every effective social media strategy should have specific goals. The more specific the goals are, the easier it will be to assess the success of your campaigns.
For some businesses, the ultimate goal may be to grow their brand awareness, while others may seek better engagement or conversions. Whatever your objectives are, it is vital to determine them at the initial stage to know which way you should be heading with your strategy.
To set the right objectives, follow the S.M.A.R.T. formula:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
That’s what each of your goals should be!
- Know Your Audience
The key to success on social media is to create content that appeals to your audience, the one your potential customers find engaging and valuable. To do this, you have to learn everything you can about your audience.
To get started, create your perfect buyer persona. Then collect current data from your social media. With the help of social media analytics, you can easily learn who are your followers, where are they from, how old they are, etc.
- Conduct an Audit
To come up with a social media strategy that works for your business, you should first analyze and assess your current efforts. To do this, conduct a thorough social media audit. At this stage, you should answer the following questions:
- Who is currently following you?
- Do your followers fall under your buyer personas?
- How active you are on social media?
- How much engagement do you get?
- How do your efforts compare to what your competitors do?
The only goal of asking those questions is to determine what is currently working for you, what doesn’t work at all, and figure out what you can do to improve your strategy.
- Create Flawless Content
The content you deliver through social media is what lays at the heart of your marketing strategy. If you want to attract more followers and convert them into actual customers, each publication should be engaging, valuable, and eye-catching.
First of all, you need to develop a content plan that works for you. Keep in mind that your publications should be consistent, so be sure to define the right time for daily publications based on your audience’s behaviors.
Then, you can move to create written and visual content. Obviously, the higher the quality of the content, the more chances of winning over new customers. To create excellent written content, you will need some professional help. If you don’t yet have an in-house expert writer, try this out, it is a specialized writing service where you can hire writers with tons of experience to help you complement your content strategy. The same applies to visual content – to do it well, you will need to hire a professional.
- Polish Existing Accounts and Create New Ones
Now, when you already know your goals, audience, see the strong and weak sides of your past social media efforts, and have a content plan ready, you can move on to set up new profiles (if necessary) and improving existing ones.
Depending on the defined goals, you may choose different platforms that fit your marketing strategy most. As a rule, businesses stick to Instagram and Facebook, as these are the most popular channels today.
When you define which platforms you should be using, adjust your profiles or create new ones. Here are a few tips to follow:
- Create business accounts wherever possible. Such accounts normally offer better analytics and more handy tools.
- Fill out all account fields to make it look complete.
- Use relevant keywords and tags to help prospects find you with ease.
- Be consistent in everything you do! From accounts’ colors and main images to the timing of publications, descriptions, and general info – to create a solid brand image, you have to show consistency in everything.
These tips will help you establish good- and professional-looking accounts.
- Track Success, Analyze Your Results and Improve Your Strategy
Although following previous steps you can create a social media strategy that works for you, the work doesn’t stop there! To ensure the best results, you should always keep measuring and evaluating results, and further improve your strategy.
The Bottom Line
To sum up everything that had been discussed in this article, let’s recall some of the key points. So, in a nutshell, a social media marketing strategy consists of a summary of all activities a business plans to run on social media and a set of goals it hopes to achieve through these actions.
A good social media strategy should be accountable, measurable, and tailored to the unique needs and objectives of a particular business.
In this article, we’ve provided you with a step-by-step guide that will help you create a winning social media strategy with ease. Follow these tips to plan your own scope of actions that will help you run effective campaigns that convert to sales via social media channels.
Author’s Bio: This post was written by Sandra Larson. Sandra is an expert in the field of SMM with many years of experience. She claims that implementing successful social media strategies today is important as never. In this article, Sandra shares a practical guide for designing a winning social media strategy for a business.
