There are many benefits to creating and utilizing a social media marketing strategy for your business. These benefits include increasing your business's visibility, boosting interactions with potential customers, building lasting relationships, and using competitive insights to gain advantages. Although growing your business through social media marketing can seem like a daunting task, this article was written to help guide you through the steps of creating a successful social media marketing strategy. Doing so will allow you to grow your business and achieve a larger following.
Before we dig into the steps of creating a social media marketing strategy, let's establish what exactly it is. According to Hubspot, social media marketing is defined as “ The process of creating content for social media platforms to promote your products and/or services, build community with your target audience, and drive traffic to your business.” In other words, it's the act of growing your business through the process of creating and promoting quality content for social media consumption.
Below we will walk through the 5 easy steps to create a social media marketing strategy that will work for your business.
1. Get to Know Your Audience
In order to create a successful social media marketing strategy, you must first get to know your audience. HootSuite suggests utilizing social media analytics to get a more clear view of who your audience is. There are many different companies that offer social media analytic services. Most of the services require a paid membership. However, they often provide helpful insights that can be used during this research-heavy stage. Regardless of which company you choose, Social media analytics will allow you to gain more information about your target markets such as demographic insights, geographical locations, topics that have generated higher engagement levels, and a list of the top used hashtags. All of this information can be compiled and sorted through in order to identify who your target market is.
2. Determine Which Social Platforms to Utilize
Once you have this newfound understanding of your target market, you will need to determine which social media platform(s) your business will utilize. Currently, the most popular social media platforms globally are Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Clubhouse. Using the insights you’ve gained previously will make determining which social media platform(s) is/are a good fit for your business. And if your business is targeting a younger audience ages 18 to 24, you might want to consider Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. On the flip side, if your target audience is much older, you might look at utilizing Facebook and/or Pinterest.
3. Create Quality Content
Creating quality content is extremely important when referring to social media marketing. According to an article published by Semrush, the best way to generate positive results is to create targeted and relevant content for your social media audience on each platform your business utilizes. Taking into consideration who your audience is and what they respond to, you can begin to create targeted content that will help increase engagement on your post. Creating quality content that satisfies your target audience will allow your business to maintain a high level of follower engagement which often leads to a positive brand image and overall business-related growth.
4. Create a Posting Schedule
Once your business can consistently create content that satisfies your following, a schedule will need to be created. Having a schedule helps ensure content is being made available to your audience regularly. There is no “right” answer when it comes to how often your business should post on social media. It all comes down to finding the intersection between the time it takes to create quality content and how often your audience requires it. Utilizing social media metrics will provide insights into how each post is performing. These metrics also show the best time of day to post content to obtain the highest amount of viewership/engagement. By taking into consideration all of this data, your business can use it to create a content schedule that works for all parties.
For more information about creating a posting schedule on social media, check out my colleague Jordan’s post here.
5. Review and Refine
The final step of creating a successful social media marketing strategy is to review your results and use the finding to refine your game plan. Social media marketing is utilized differently for each business. This is due to each business being vastly different from one another. Regardless of what type of strategy is being employed, it is crucial to review how well it is performing. Reviewing the performance of your social media marketing strategy will allow your business to identify areas of concern and make adjustments. Doing this step ensures your business's social media marketing strategy will adapt over time and remain effective.
There you have it. We have completed our walk-through of the 5 steps to creating a social media marketing strategy for your small business. First, we identified that you must start by getting to know your audience. From there, you can determine what social media platform is right for you. Next, you must create high-quality content that moves your target audience. Once the content has been created, you must then create a posting schedule that will satisfy the needs of your customers. Lastly, your business must review the performance of its social media marketing strategy and make adjustments to improve the system. Armed with this new knowledge, I hope you can create and maintain a successful social media marketing strategy for your business.
Resources
Baker, Kristen. “Social Media Marketing: The Ultimate Guide.” HubSpot Blog, 17 Mar. 2022, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-marketing
Banz, Tuiana. “4 Ways to Get Data-Driven Results from Social Media Marketing.” Semrush Blog, https://www.semrush.com/blog/4-data-driven-ways-to-get-more-out-of-social-media-marketing/
Newberry, Christina. “How to Use Social Media for Small Business: 12 Simple Tips.” Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard, 4 Dec. 2021, https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-tips-for-small-business-owners/
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