5 Key Ideas To An Infallible Social Media Strategy
Social media use has exponentially grown in the 21st century. Whether it’s a college student, business professional, marketer, or customer all have a place on social media.
To showcase the power of social media, the latest statistics by Kepios indicate that more than half of the world’s population uses social media.
As though that isn’t enough, there are over 1.3 billion Gen Zers on social media worldwide. With that, it’s no longer an option for businesses and brands to be on social media, but essential.
Social media via social media marketing helps brands achieve remarkable goals. It can drive business growth, and revenue, and boost brand awareness. Moreso, it helps improve business-customer relationships.
However, to break through the noise, you need a reliable social media strategy plan. Findings indicate that there are over 200 million businesses on Instagram alone, yet many of them exist on multiple social platforms.
This article covers key ideas that can help you develop a reliable social media strategy that will stand the test of time. Let’s take a deep dive into it!
A Social Media Strategy
A social media strategy is a plan that shows how you will utilize social media to achieve your goals. It generally details the social media sites, the posting culture, and the way you will manage your social interactions.
A social media strategy plan also serves as a guide on how and what social media trends you will leverage to stay relevant.
Your social media strategy is the master plan you will follow to engage with your audience and prospects. The plan generally highlights crucial elements such as content ideas, guidelines, and your social identity. Precisely, how you want social media users to perceive your brand.
It is essential to develop a social media strategy plan after evaluating your strengths, competition, and challenges.
You will have to brainstorm the possible challenges and solutions to overcome them. So, what are the crucial ideas for a powerful social media strategy plan?
5 Key Ideas for An Infallible Social Media Strategy
Creating a reliable social media strategy will require you to;
1. Understand your Target Audience
Have in mind that social media is home to all business types and customers. Also, different people use social media for different purposes. If you want to stand out and connect deeper with your customers and prospects, you must understand who they are.
Generally, it is difficult to ascertain who your exact customer is, but creating buyer personas can help you out. These are a representation of your ideal customer. In this case, you must know key demographics, for example, age group, gender, interests, income, and occupation.
Identifying your target audience will help you put marketing efforts where they are more likely to produce results. Moreso, it will help you run more targeted advertising campaigns.
Take an example you sell beauty products. You must know who your target customer is and the way you want them to perceive your brand.
You must plan to design your social posts in a way that convinces your target audience to choose your beauty products over others. Try to understand their problems and present your products as the best possible solution.
2. Set Realistic Goals
Why are you venturing into the social media realm? What are your short-term and long-term goals? Defining clear goals for your social media efforts is key to a successful social media strategy. Your goal may be to increase organic traffic to your website and boost brand engagement, or brand awareness.
Your goal may also be to establish your brand as an industry leader among others. Regardless of the complexity of your goals, they must be realistic. Each goal must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Setting clear goals will help you track and monitor your KPIs effectively.
3. Select the Right Social Media Platforms
Which social sites will help you reach out to your target audience effectively? Do you have the necessary skills, resources, and time to operate efficiently?
There is a wide range of social sites streaming from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn among others. But are you clear about the social sites that host most of your target audience?
Moreso, what do you want to do on these sites? Some social platforms like Instagram, and Facebook allow businesses to promote and sell. Other sites like Pinterest, LinkedIn, and GMB allow you to present your business listing and extend your outreach.
Depending on your research’s findings and your target audience, you may prioritize a few sites for example Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
4. Identify & Set KPIs
Businesses and brands require marketing KPIs to track and determine performance over a given period of time. With the fact that you plan to use social media for any objective, you must set clear KPIs that will help you gauge your marketing efforts on any social media platform.
Social media metrics like organic mentions, shares, comments, and conversions can help you evaluate your social media efforts. They can precisely show you whether you’re moving on the right track.
You can also tap into the power of social media analytics to collect vital data that can help you in your decision-making processes.
5. Create Authentic Social Profiles
Your social profiles are your brand’s identity. The way you present yourself to the target audience will either help you build a strong social media presence or affect your growth. With that, ensure your profile photos and info are complete and up-to-date.
When it comes to visuals, there must be consistency in your logo and colors with those on other platforms like websites. Ensure to use quality photos on your social platforms and for the case of content, follow a few copywriting tips for higher engagement.
You can even leverage tools like Canva and Pablo because they come with prebuilt templates that help you set proper sizes.
Key Considerations
Managing your social sites will require dedication. Apart from having clear ambitions, you must have hints about how social media works. These are a few things you must keep in mind;
1. A Posting Strategy
When do you plan to post and what? How much time are you willing to set aside for your social media activities? As you build your social media presence, start by posting interesting content; precisely that which captures attention. This could be short-form videos, memes, and images. Caption them and watch their performance.
Be certain when to share your content and how many times you will do it in a day. With time, create a mix of content with a priority on videos. Videos are associated with remarkable engagement and will surely improve brand awareness.
2. Mind your Social Voice & Tone:
It’s the language you use on social media that establishes your brand in the hearts of people. Therefore, don’t overlook the importance of developing an ideal social media tone and voice. A brand voice reflects your brand’s personality and values and a good one smoothens social communications.
3. Plan for Consistency
Yes! Don’t expect to post a few times a week and remain relevant on social media. Social media marketing requires hard work and focused attention. Depending on the social platform, decide when to post content and it’s good to follow a schedule.
If you post content every day, your target audience will expect something from you every single day. Also, when you’re used to posting once a week, precisely on the weekend, your audience will expect the same.
Consistency is very important because it will help you leave a lasting impression on your target audience. If you expect some disruptions, plan content in advance. Use scheduling tools like Buffer, Social Pilot, and Sprout Social among others. These will help you manage your social media sites better.
4. Track metrics
The only way to measure performance and gauge effort is to track metrics. Compare your current social media performance with your previous metrics. Depending on your input and outcomes, assess whether your social strategy is working or requires some changes.
Bottom Line
Social media is associated with a range of benefits. It can help a business fetch quality leads, boost conversion rates, or improve brand awareness.
Additionally, social media can drive organization success by offering a competitive advantage to a brand when done right. If you’re already on social media or new to it but want to boost its efficacy, consider developing a reliable social media strategy.
A social media strategy plan is a roadmap to achieving incredible results with the available resources. It will also serve as a guide for your social media efforts to optimize results.
This article provides several tips that you can follow to develop a strong social media strategy that will help you stand out on any social platform.
