Social media marketing strategy

 Successful social media marketing requires good planning. You need an effective and original marketing strategy to achieve your desired marketing goals. However, one-off planning and strategy development are far from over. The continuous maintenance of your account and the regular interaction with customers and fans are the alpha and omega of your successful campaign.

Social media marketing strategy

In this, you will learn in simple steps how to create your own successful social media marketing strategy.

• Set SMART goals for your social media

A convincing social marketing strategy starts with setting goals and targets. This is the only way you can measure the success of your campaign and recognize how social media contributes to the performance of your company at all marketing touchpoints.

Each goal should be based on the SMART parameters, i.e. specific, measurable, realizable, relevant, and timed. Make sure your social media goals align with the goals of your overall marketing strategy. This makes it easier for you to prove the value of your work and to convince superiors - also of investing in social media.

Leads, web referrals (referral traffic refers to visits to your website via links that are on another website), or the conversion rate are generally meaningful indicators. Vanity metrics such as followers, shares, retweets, or likes are only suitable to a limited extent. While they are easy to track, their exact value to the company is seldom proven. Just think of the bought followers, who drive the likes up vigorously, but bring absolutely nothing to the company, except to bask in the glow of thousands of fans.

• Develop your audience personas

To create compelling content, companies need to know what their ideal customer looks like and what content they comment on, like, and share on social media. This knowledge is essential to convert followers into customers. With the development of personas, you are able to define potential fans, followers, and customers as real people with desires and needs. This makes it easier for you to work out what content you want to offer these personas. Social media analytics provide additional valuable information. For example, you can determine whether your target group lives in the city or in the rural regions and with which memories they interact.

• Researching Your Competitors Your competition

is most likely also active on social media. With the help of competition analysis, you not only determine how your competition presents itself on social media, but also develop a feeling for the needs of fans and followers. Perhaps the main competitor is very active on Facebook but neglects Twitter or Instagram. In this way, you can concentrate on the networks in which your audience is currently barely served. If you also keep an eye on the accounts of competitors and relevant keywords via social listening tools, you can use this information strategically to evaluate and adapt your social media marketing strategy.

• Perform a social media audit

A social media audit shows the usefulness of your social media accounts. This usually evaluates what works and what doesn't, or how the target group connects with your company via social networks. Ask yourself the following:

• What works? What does not work?

• Who connects with you on social media?

• Which social media pages does your target group use?

If the utility value is not clear, you should readjust or consider whether the corresponding account is worthwhile for the strategy at all. The following questions will help you make a decision:

• Is my target group active in the respective network?

• If so, do you use this platform?

• Can I use the account to contribute to key business goals?

At this point, look for fake accounts that use your company name or product names. These could seriously damage your brand.

Social media marketing strategy

• Creating and Planning Your Content Creating

inspirational content that is relevant and interesting for the target audience is essential. The important thing is consistency. This is the only way for fans and followers to develop an understanding of what they can expect from the respective brand and why they should ultimately click on “Follow”. The content itself should be varied. For example, you can specify that:

1. 50 percent of your content drives traffic back to your blog

2. 25 percent of the content is created from other sources

3. 20 percent of the content supports corporate goals (sales, generating leads, and so on)

4. 5 percent of the content is about HR and your corporate culture

A social media content calendar or editorial plan supports the planning. With it, you can plan all activities precisely - from sharing pictures and links to blog posts and videos.

• Testing, Evaluating, and Adjusting

It is unlikely that a social media strategy will sit right away. Therefore, use the first results, generate data, and the feedback from followers and fans in order to regularly check and adopt the measures.