Steps to Social Media Marketing Success
Social media is a vital marketing channel for businesses of all sizes. The common question a few years ago, “why should our business use social media?”, is now being replaced with, “how can our business grow with social media marketing?”.
As a social media marketer, this makes me very excited. What doesn’t make me excited is how many businesses are still trying to market on social media without a documentedstrategy. In this post, you will learn the seven steps your business must take to create an effective social media marketing strategy.
Step 1: Set social media marketing goals that align to business objectives
Set S.M.A.R.T. goals
Each of your goals should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Step 2: Audit Your Current Social Presence
- Which networks are you currently active on
- Are your networks optimized (photo and cover images, bio, URL, etc.)
- Which networks are currently bringing you the most value
- How do your profiles compare to your competitors’ profiles
- What’s working, and what’s not?
- Who is connecting with you on social?
- Which networks does your target audience use?
- How does your social media presence compare to that of your competitors?
Step 3: Document Who Your Ideal Customer Is
Create audience personas
Even the best marketers will fail if they are marketing to the wrong audience. Knowing who your audience—and ideal customer—is and what they want to see on social is key to creating content that they will like, comment on, and share. It’s also critical if you want to turn social media followers into customers for your business. Answer the following questions to help you come up with a highly focused buyer persona:
- Age
- Location
- Job Title
- Income
- Pain Points (that your business can solve)
- Most Used Social Network
Step 4: Create and Curate Engaging Content
Let’s now discuss the fun part, posting to social media. You know who your ideal customer is and you used that information to create your social media mission statement. Armed with this information it should be easy for you to begin creating and curating content. So, what exactly is considered content?
Create a social media content calendar
Sharing great content is essential, of course, but it’s equally important to have a plan in place for when you’ll share content to get the maximum impact. Your social media content calendar also needs to account for the time you’ll spend interacting with the audience.
Here are a few examples of content you could create:
- Images
- Videos
- Blog Posts
- Company News
- Infographics
- White papers
- Interviews
Step 5: Identify Key Success Metrics
few metrics to consider measuring are:
- Conversion Rate
- Time Spent on Website
- Reach
- Brand Mentions
- Sentiment
- Total Shares
Step 6: Test, evaluate, and adjust your strategy
Your social media strategy is a hugely important document for your business, and you can’t assume you’ll get it exactly right on the first try. As you start to implement your plan and track your results, you may find that some strategies don’t work as well as you’d anticipated, while others are working even better than expected.
In the social sphere, things change fast. New networks emerge, while others go through significant demographic shifts. Your business will go through periods of change as well. All of this means that your social media strategy should be a living document that you look at regularly and adjust as needed. Refer to it often to keep you on track, but don’t be afraid to make changes so that it better reflects new goals, tools, or plans.