Social media has undoubtedly revolutionized the way we live, and that’s hardly an overstatement. According to a report in January 2022, there are over 4.62 billion social media users across the world, which accounts for 58.4% of the global population. It is also interesting to note that the number of social media users has also witnessed steady growth, with 424 million new users have joined social media in the last year.
No wonder more brands are leveraging the immense potential of social media marketing through succinct strategies. Want to up your game in terms of your social media marketing strategy? Check out our tips.
a. Set custom-made goals for your business: The first question to ask yourself is, what you want out of social media. Most brands count on social media to increase brand awareness and enhance community engagement. However, it’s important to set realistic goals. Here are some goals that hold good for a large spectrum of businesses:
- Increase brand awareness
- Generate leads and sales
- Grow the audience of your brand
- Boost community engagement
- Drive traffic to your site
b. Identify your target audience: Instead of making blind assumptions, make the most of the tools that will help you quickly research your target audience. For starters, if we take social media demographics, for example, one can observe that different platforms attract different audiences.
For example, if you want to publish ads, Facebook and YouTube are the best platforms, largely attributable to their high-earning user bases. Again, if you are targeting millennials and gen Z audiences, then Instagram and YouTube are your best bets to showcase catchy content with distinct personalities. On the other hand, if you’re more into in-depth, industry-specific content, then LinkedIn is unbeatable.
However, it is also crucial to analyze your existing social media audience. A social media dashboard can prove to be highly beneficial in this regard, allowing you a close look at your followers and their interactions with you on each channel. You should also keep an eye out for other sources of valuable audience data, including your Google and email analytics, your CRM, your customer service platform, or even your best-selling products.
c. Determine your most important metrics and KPIs: Irrespective of your goals or industry, it is imperative for your social media strategy to be data-driven. Hence, you need to dive into social media metrics that make a difference, ones that directly align with your goals. Let’s take a look at the metrics in question:
- Reach: The reach of a post refers to the unique number of users who saw your post. This indicates how much of your content is reaching the feeds of users.
- Clicks: Tracking the number of clicks on your content/account in each campaign gives you an insight into what is urging people to buy.
- Engagement: This refers to the total number of social interactions divided by the number of impressions. This is a significant indicator of how your audience perceives you and how much they are willing to interact.
- Hashtag performance: You should have answers to questions like, what were your most frequently used hashtags, which hashtags were most closely associated with your brand, and so on. These will go a long way in shaping the priorities of your content in the long run.
d. Create and curate engaging social content: Your content can make or mar your social media strategy. To reap the benefits of social media marketing, you should have a clear idea of what to publish based on your goals, audience, and brand identity. Several video editors available these days are of huge help in this regard. When it comes to devising a content strategy, make sure you stick to consistent content themes, which help users relate a certain brand language with your posts, be it graphic, Instagram reels, or anything else. For example, you can maintain a uniform color code, be it for memes, product photos, or user-generated content. These days, the social media trends that are driving innovative content include, stories and time-sensitive posts, short-form video, posts that highlight your human side, and so on.
e. Establish a timely social media presence: In today’s times, the main mantra for marketers is timeliness. It is not only important to post fresh content regularly but also be “on” for your followers as much as possible. Check out the following ways to optimize your schedule:
- Review the best times to post on social media as it is also critical to engage after posting. Your social media team or community managers should be available to answer product queries and other questions.
- Be present and talk to your audience. Speedy responses to customer questions and shoutouts make a huge difference. If you want to increase audience awareness, never ignore social customer care.
f. Evaluate what’s working and what’s not: You should be flexible enough to adapt your strategy throughout the year. Make sure you continuously analyze your efforts to figure out how different campaigns are performing. If you manage to monitor the metrics behind your campaigns in real-time, it will be easier to make minor tweaks to your strategy instead of more painstaking, time-consuming changes. The fundamental step is to take your data seriously; what we mean is, it pays to be reactive in the short term as it will help you leverage your running campaigns to the fullest. Additionally, you can use these takeaways to strategize your next moves.
g. Use social data to support other departments: Social media teams always have an edge over others when it comes to understanding customer sentiment. With their valuable insights, you can put a lot of things into perspective. This gets further amplified with cross-department collaboration to take your business notches higher. Be it HR, sales, product and merchandising, or any other department, you can make a tremendous impact with social data.
Modern-day social media presence should assimilate all the above-mentioned points for optimal gains. The trick is to set actionable goals and address each of the steps delineated above to establish a strong social presence. Hence, you need to improve your game in terms of your social media marketing strategy at any cost!
