5 Steps to a Killer Social Media Strategy

Gone are the days of marketers trying to convince business owners to adopt social media practices. Now, it’s a no-brainer. Business owners, marketers, and SEOs can finally agree: Social media should be a key tactic in your business plan that ignites your other marketing efforts.

But it’s not enough to just have a Facebook page or tweet every now and then. You can’t set it and forget it. It takes time, planning, strategy, research — and money, too.

Before you even begin, you must know your target audience. This will drive every action in your social strategy. You should know your ideal customer’s demographics, social media habits, preferred platforms, likes, dislikes, pain points, and more. Consider this step zero.

1. Determine your KPIs and metrics for success.

Set a SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely) goal for your social marketing efforts. Keep in mind that social media is not a direct sales method.

Let’s imagine you own a small car dealership. A good example of a goal to set for your social marketing strategy would be to gain 100 new likes on Facebook by the end of the month, thereby increasing brand awareness. A bad example of a goal to set for your social media efforts would be to sell more cars.

Yes, over time, after building your brand, audience, and nurturing your relationships, you may end up selling more cars. However, social media is not the right vehicle (excuse the pun) for sales.

As you plan your strategy, decide on the metrics you will use to measure your success, and make sure they are right for your platform. For example, some helpful metrics may be: number of likes/followers, reach, brand mentions, or engagements.

2. Build influence and a following.

If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one around, does it make a sound? It’s debatable, but there’s one thing that’s for certain: If you have no social media followers, and you post amazing content to your social networks, no one will see it. It doesn’t matter how great your content is.

Do some digging and discover who is influential on social media in your industry. That is, who are the members of your target audience paying attention to? Reach out to them and start building a relationship. Sharing their content will often lead to them sharing yours as well, which can boost your credibility.

Be social, and participate in groups and forums. Share your knowledge to position yourself as an industry leader.

3. Create irresistible content.

Social media is a beautiful convergence of content marketing and community. At its core, social media is simply a content-sharing medium. So, it pays big time to have great content to boot.

Social media can work hand in hand with your content marketing strategy through distributing fresh posts from your blog, or you can even designate social media as the hub for your content marketing.

Research and implement some of the best practices for content on social media. Headlines containing numbers perform 36% better than other formats. Visual content — especially videos — has a stronger showing than text-only, as well. It also helps to pay attention and reflect on your own social media habits in your personal life. For example, I’ve noticed that I cannot resist an infographic or a good listicle.

4. Enlist the help of some great tools.

You don’t have to do it all alone! Invest in some tools to help your social media workflow. Some of my favorites are:

• Buffer for scheduling posts across multiple networks
• Crowdfire for building and maintaining your audience
• Canva for creating attention-grabbing visuals
• Giphy for finding a GIF for any moment
• Buzzsumo for finding influencers
• Piktochart for creating infographics

5. Set a budget.

Determine how much you can spend on social media and where you’ll opt in for paid promotions.

Organic growth is usually the best way to go since it tends to lead to long-term relationships, but it can be tricky because social media platforms’ algorithms depend on a ton of different factors. However, paid promotions bypass these obstacles and get your content seen. This method can provide a great short-term boost.

If you cannot afford to hire someone to run your social media accounts, one great thing you can do is set aside about $50 a month for a Clarity call with a social media marketing expert. These experts can help with everything from developing a daily social media plan to guiding you through how to set up your first Facebook ad.

Interested in learning more about social media marketing? Click here to schedule a free 15-minute consultation.