Now you have set up your social media channels, it is now time to put together a plan. Follow these 7 steps to get you on your way.
1. Identify Target Markets
Find out who your ideal consumer is and how they become familiar with your brand before making a purchase from you. As a result, customers are seeking for a "experience," therefore describe the one you're providing. Why do customers engage with your brand in the way they do? Put yourself in the shoes of your potential consumer. When people are looking for a product or service in your niche, what do they look for? Before making a purchase, what is the last question on their mind? Answering customer questions and offering helpful material are great ways to establish credibility for your company.
2. Define a goal
What are your goals for using social media? You can't tell if your strategy was a success or a failure without having a clear aim in mind. The following are examples of common objectives:
Build Community – Your goal is to increase the number of people who know and trust your brand. Number of likes, engagement, queries posted, and shares can all be used to gauge this.
Increase Brand Awareness - To boost brand awareness, businesses use social media to their greatest advantage. Because the average individual spends close to two hours plus a day on social media, building brand awareness is essential for businesses of all sizes.. Follower count, impressions, mentions and shares, as well as new followers, are all ways to gauge success.
Boost Engagement - Engagement is the second most essential indicator for companies to gauge their success on social media. Achieving higher levels of engagement helps to establish your brand's reputation online. Engagement is especially critical on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, where posts with higher engagement are prioritised and appear higher in feeds than posts with lower engagement. The aforementioned measures are also used to gauge engagement.
3. Choose the Right Social Networks
Trying to reach everyone on every social network without considering the demographics of each network will likely not yield the results you desire. Research which social networks your target audience uses before selecting which platforms are worth your time and effort. Network demographics and platform reciprocity are the two most important things to focus on.
For instance, Facebook has around 1.86 billion monthly active users. Facebook users are primarily young adults. 79% of online adults use Facebook, according to a Pew Research poll conducted in November 2016. The age distribution is as follows: 88 percent are between the ages of 18 and 29, 84 percent are between the ages of 30 and 49, and 72 percent are between the ages of 50 and 64. (62 percent ). In terms of gender, 83% of online women use Facebook, compared to 75% of online men (75 percent ).
Every day, Facebook users view more than one hundred million hours of video. Since the introduction of Facebook Live, video views have increased by 700%, with viewers spending three times as much time viewing live video as they do watching recorded video.
Twitter has a monthly active user base of 319 million people. Twitter is used by 24% of online adult men and 25% of online adult women, respectively, according to the Pew Research Center. The mobile device accounts for 80% of all Twitter activity.
According to Statista, 22.5% of American Twitter users are aged 25 to 34. 35-44 year olds make up 19.5% of the population, followed by 45-54 year olds with 17.9%.
Although Twitter has overtaken LinkedIn as the most popular B2B social network, LinkedIn has 106 million unique monthly visitors. There are over 200 nations represented on the network, and it is available in 24 different languages. Pew found that 31% of online adult men and 27% of online adult women use the network.
There are two new members joining the network every second. One million LinkedIn users have posted long-form material, and 160,000 long-form items are published weekly on the platform.
4. Research your Content Topics
It's time to arrange your content for the social networks you've chosen to focus on. You must generate content that is specific, relevant, and one-of-a-kind, and not just about your company.
Your efforts should be focused on developing content that will engage your target audience and help you establish yourself as an industry 'thought leader' or 'expert,' depending on your field. People will come to respect and trust you as a result, and they will turn to you for help when they need it.
5. Plan Your Content Calendar
It is now time for you to start developing content based on your findings. Choose subjects based on the intended audience and target market. When writing about industry-related topics, strive to be as specific as possible.
Each post should take the format:
Introduction: to begin, present a unique and intriguing fact or statistic.
Body: divide the information into manageable parts for the reader's attention span.
Conclusion: give a concise summary of the material covered.
Call to action: for example, download a free guide or fill out a contact form
Once you've decided on the type of content you want to produce, you'll need to develop a content strategy. Included in the columns might be Month, Publish Date, Title/Descriptions, Due Date, Type of Content (blog post, video, infographic, etc. ), Target Audience, Distribution Channels and Keywords.
Once you've decided what you'll write about, when you'll write it, and where you'll post it, you can begin creating the social media material that will accompany it.
6. Build Trust with your Audience by Engaging Consistently
Publishing material on social media is only a small part of what it's all about. As a thought leader and a valuable resource in your field, you must participate in discussions. You're more likely to build trust with your audience if you're transparent and use social media for customer service. As a result, they're one step closer to making a purchase from your company.
Prior to a potential consumer making a purchase from your company, it usually takes nine "touches." As a result, consider how you may use social media to expedite the process and convert a visitor into a paying client.
7. Measure your Progress and Make Adjustments as Needed
The final step in your social media strategy is to evaluate your progress. Your business needs to know if your efforts are paying off. Conversion, reach, and engagement are the three components to consider.
Conversions
Conversions help you determine whether you’re driving sales from social media. If you’re not, you’ll need to make adjustments.
Reach
The quantity of people your material has influenced is referred to as your reach. This indicator aids you in determining how well your social media content resonates with your target market. Here are some ways you can assess reach:
LinkedIn connections
Followers on Twitter
Followers on Instagram
Likes on your Facebook page
Website visitors
Engagement
Finally, engagement analytics will show you how many people are connecting with you on the internet. Some metrics to consider tracking include:
Clicks on social media posts
Retweets and mentions
Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn shares
Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn comments
Finally
Creating a social media strategy can help your business grow by increasing engagement and building trust with your target audience.