How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy
The Key factor of any social media marketing is to build a strategy.
Without any strategy you could post on social media just for sake of it, but without knowing your goals, without knowing your target audience and without knowing what your audience want to see it will be very tough to achieve your goals.
Here it is -
The five important questions any social media marketer should ask to themselves before creating social media marketing strategy.
1. Why do you want to be on social media ?
2. Who is your target audience ?
3. What are you going to share ?
4. Where are you going to share ?
5. When are you going to share ?
Here's another way of making strategy.
You can make strategy for each social media platforms.
For example:-
Social media marketing strategy for Instagram
Social media marketing strategy for Facebook
And so on,
Now let's start with your strategy.
1. Why do you want to be on social media?
Every business have different objectives to be on social media. Some people use it for promoting their products, some use it for brand awareness and some use it to serve their customers.
In general, their are many reasons to be on social media like,
- To increase brand awareness
- To build community for their business
- To increase brand engagement
- To grow their business revenue
- To boost their product / sales
- To showcase their services
This are some reasons why you want to be on social media. Once you find this you can move to the next steps.
2. Who is your target audience?
The next step is to find your right target audience, understanding your audience can easily provide you the answer of what, where and when are you going to share.
For example:- A salon brand like ( Tony&Guy ) knows that its target audience like to watch different haircuts & makeup tutorials, so they provide content like that on its social media profiles.
There are also many factors to note like,
. Who are they? (e.g. job title, gender, age, salary, etc)
. What are they interested to watch? (e.g. entertainment, educational content, information on new products, etc)
. When they consume that content? (e.g. on weekends or on daily commutes)
. Where they usually hang out? (e.g. instagram, facebook or any other platforms)
. Which format they want to consume that content? (e.g. in the form of posts or videos)
These are some of the things you should know to reach your target audience.
3. What are you going to share?
When you see this question, you might be thinking about the type of content you share.
For example- do you want to share videos or images ?
But wait for a second ?
We're here to talk about your social media marketing strategy, so let's take a step back and think on a different level, instead of what type of content you share, "Theme" would be a better word.
If you see some famous brands profiles on instagram , you might notice that the brands have more than one main theme. Having a handful of themes is perfectly fine as its gives you the space to share wide-range of content to keep your audience engaged.
This is where a good analyzing of your target audience will be helpful. Look at your marketing image and consider the following questions:
- What objective and challenges do they have?
- How can you help them solve them?
For a fitness apparel and accessories brand like (Being strong), a goal of its target audience might be to stay up-to-date with the latest fitness gears. In that case, it can share its latest products on its social media profiles.
4. Where are you going to share?
The next step is to decide where are you going to share your content. In other way, which social media platform does your brand wants to be on. Before we go further remember that your brand does't wants to be on every social media platforms. Which social media platform your target audience mostly active on, what makes them visit that platform. For example:- Youngsters are more likely to spent their time on Instagram to see what their friends are doing and whether their favorite brands have new products.
Another small thing to consider is, what is your brands "X factor"?
Are you great at photography or videos?
Certain platforms lend itself well to certain type of content.
For example:- Photos are great on Instagram, long-form videos on YouTube. But this is a small points because social media platforms are upgrading themselves to show every kind of content nowadays.
5. When are you going to share?
The last step of your strategy is find out when you want to share your content.
Pause and Breathe.
Let's take a step back and look at this from a different level.
Before you decide which time of the day and days of the week you want to post, just remember the behavior of your target audience. When they use social media to find the type of content that you share.
For example:- Traveler who loves to travel might be active on social media during the weekends or during their work break when they are planning for their next trip.
In last' it really depends on your audience, So for this step just focus on the behavior of your target audience.
Conclusion
And here it is - Your social media marketing strategy !
Let's revise it quickly, the five important questions to consider before making any social media marketing strategy.
1. Why do you want to be on social media.
2. Who is your target audience.
3. What are you going to share.
4. Where are you going to share.
5. When are you going to share.
It's really helpful to have a social media marketing strategy so that you aren't just posting content just for sake of it, it will help you to achieve your social media and business goals.