How To Successfully Create A Social Media Marketing Plan
Creating a digital marketing strategy for your business can feel like an overwhelming process, especially since there are so many strategies and techniques being used today. Social media marketing is a great place to start, considering social networking is one of the top online activities in the United States. In fact, the average American spends up to 2 hours per day on social media. You can easily put your brand in front of potential customers by dedicating some time to these networks every day.
Creating a strong social media presence for your business, starts with staying true to your brand and figuring out what you are looking to achieve. Whether you are looking to spread awareness of your services, want to improve customer relationships and brand reputation, or want to generate more leads and traffic to your website, social media can be used for all these options and more. Social media is an excellent free tool that allows you to engage with your followers and show off your products or services to the digital world! Before expecting to generate a large following, learn more on how to successfully create a social media marketing plan that allows you to turn followers into customers!
1. Research Your Target Audience
It’s important to take the time to research your target audience and see which platforms they use the most. If you make assumptions before researching, you are likely to miss out on useful information to help your social media strategy. Start with researching who is already buying your products and where they spend their time on social media. This will help give you insight into what platforms to use and what type of content you should be putting out there to attract the right audience.
2. Research What Your Competitors Are Doing
Once you have solidified which platforms you are going to begin with, you should start to take a look at your competitor’s pages. By researching what your competitors are doing you can get useful information on what is working for them. It’s not about copying their content but just seeing how their content is working and how you can produce similar yet unique content for your brand.
3. Engage Your Audience
Now it’s time to start posting content. Find a voice that suits your company and focus on what you think your customers will respond to. Try to stray away from only posting blogs. Focus on more relevant content that holds value to your audience. It’s important to also come up with a theme for your content. You don’t want your social platforms to have content that is all over the place. By sticking with a theme people will be able to get more familiar with your brand. Visual content is extremely important for marketers to reach the right audience. You’ll need to produce content that pops out and catches people’s eyes so that they will stop and read what you have to say.
What Is The 80/20 Rule In Social Media?
When looking to engage with your followers on social media, it is important that you stick to the 80/20 rule. When following this model, 80% of your content should be fun or informative while 20% should be related to sales or products. Creating content that is fun and informative is great for keeping followers engaged, but it is important to make sure some of those posts are related to your products or services, so you can ensure our followers will lead to sales. It’s also important to reply to comments and engage with your audience. By doing so, you are humanizing your brand which will bring even more engagement to your page.
4. Measure Results
You can measure your results by identifying the goals of your social media campaign. Ask yourself these questions, and see what you are looking to achieve out of your social media strategy. Without having a goal in mind, it will be nearly impossible to measure any type of result. A majority of social media platforms offer analytics tools but are not offered in real-time and are not always the most accurate. It is best to use a 3rd party tool and be sure to set aside some time to review the data you’ve captured. Once you can see what is working for you and what is not, you can adjust your social media strategy.
How To Turn Social Media Followers Into Customers
Respond To Comments
Humanize Your Brand
Keep Up With Trends
Offer Giveaways Or Promos
Create Consitent Content
Create A Mix Of Social Media Posts
Frequently Asked Questions About Social Media & Social Media Marketing Strategies
As a new business just opening up, creating a strong social media presence may be challenging as you first open your brand to the digital world. It is first important to identify your strategy and what you are looking to achieve with social media. Some may be looking for new leads, building customer relationships or many other reasons, so building your strategy and identifying your brand’s voice must be done first. Later, start to follow and engage with related businesses in your area, or in similar industries. See how they are operating their social media, and what is working for them. Understand your audience and who you are looking to target based on your products or services. Creating valuable content and not going overboard at first, is a great way to gain some traction and build a strong social media presence. Learn more helpful tips here for increasing social engagement as a new business.
Posting on social media can be different for each business and the type of industry you are in. It can also depend on the results you are looking to get and the feedback you receive from followers. For most businesses, posting 2-3 times a week is a great way to get your products and services out there, without being too annoying. Many accounts may come off spammy, or irritating when they post too often on someone’s feed. This will actually do more harm to your business and social media accounts than good, because many followers will unfollow you if you post too much. Keeping on a simple and regular schedule of three times a week and under, will allow users to feel informed, but not overly annoyed by your posts on their feed. This schedule will be just enough to remind followers of your business, and increase their chances of contacting you!
If you are looking to gain social media followers organically, there are a few ways you can do so. First, take a look at your competitors and see what works for them. Seeing when they post may help you determine when a good time to post for your industry is. Using hashtags related to your industry and products or services is a great way to gain more followers organically. Based on hashtag research, you can identify what hashtags work for your posts, and attract the eyes of potential new followers. Another option is to create contests, giveaways, and promos to spread the word about your business out there to friends and family, and their friends and family. Working with influencers or PR companies, or considering social media ads are other ways to help get your brand out there and gain more followers organically. Creating posts with influencers, or by creating your own social media ads, such as Facebook or Instagram, allows your business to get in front of new eyes.
If your current social media marketing strategy isn’t working, or you’re looking to expand and target new potential customers. It’s important to first find the right target audience you are looking to attract. If you are looking for a younger crowd or an older or business related crowd, choosing the right social media platforms will make a huge difference. The right social platform and the time you schedule for posts will be different on the age group you are targeting. Once you determine the right platform, the right time to post, and then later the type of content (video, TikTok, reel, photo) you are going to post, you will be able to completely customize your social media strategy down to the exact type of followers you want. Expanding your social media strategy across various types of platforms, including TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, will allow you to see what works best for your business, and which platforms generate more traffic and leads.
Create Effective Social Media Strategies With Boston Web Marketing
If you’re looking for professionals to assist in your social media marketing strategy, contact Boston Web Marketing! We help our clients produce unique content across various social media platforms for their specific brands. We measure their results and continuously adjust strategies based on the data we find. For questions about our effective social media marketing services, or to get started, fill out our contact form!