The Complete Guide to Creating a Social Media Marketing Strategy
Marketing using social media is no longer rocket science. Look around and you’ll find a number of small and big businesses successfully using social platforms to power their social media marketing strategy. It’s definitely a “marketing” tool that’s giving them real-world results, which continues to grow with time.
Now, in order to understand the true benefits of social media marketing and make the most of it, it’s important to understand what all it can help you achieve. In other words, if you only look at social media as a way to grab quick sales, then you’re looking at it with a limited vision.
Social media has the power to help you build a personal connection with your prospects. Yes, it can help you build a relationship that you can leverage to grow your brand, understand your customer’s need and yes, eventually get more business on the table.
Your main goal with social media should be to grow awareness of your products and services – without indulging in any kind of hardcore selling. Or without trying to game the system.
However, the problem is, many small business owners and marketers try to leverage social media without proper planning. And that’s a mistake which can cost you big marketing dollars, and as well as time in the long run.
Having a crystal clear plan is the prerequisite to making social media work for you. You need to know what you’re doing, where you’re headed, and what you plan to achieve with your social media. In short, you need a social media marketing strategy that gives you a bird’s eye view of everything. And at the same time lets you grasp and work with the details when needed.
If you are armed with a solid social media marketing strategy, then it becomes easier to know your customers and also look into how your competition is performing and how you can do things better than them.
Initially, you may find it challenging to formulate the right social media marketing strategy and execute it well. But once you get a hang of it and start to see the results roll in, you’ll find that the efforts are worth it.
Now, let’s look further into it…
Why Do You Need a Social Media Marketing Strategy?
1. To Grow and Build Your Presence
Regardless of what niche you’re operating in, your business needs an ever-growing presence on the social web. Having a social media marketing strategy will not only help you grow your organic presence, but will also help you maintain your reputation.
When you’re clear about your strategy, you won’t hit the wall and go blank when it comes to posting content to your social media accounts. You’ll be in control of what you post and when, which will allow you to plan out your content well in advance and schedule it for later.
This makes you better than most of your competition because when most of them would be failing to consistently post relevant content, you will be able to stick to your posting schedule. Which is a huge plus on any social network. Because once your consistency hits rock bottom, your social media following starts shrinking and your overall social media presence becomes weaker. In short, your social media marketing strategy helps you plan ahead and get the most out of your content.
2. To Save Precious Hours and Invest Them Where It Matters
Social media marketing can be a time sink for those who are wasting too much time on it — with little returns. Time is critical for a social media marketer, so by creating and implementing the right strategy will let you save a lot of it. Which you can utilize on things that actually matter, such as taking your marketing and business to the next level.
In the beginning, getting everything organized with a content bank and a content calendar may seem to be a time consuming and frustrating process. Because it takes attention to details and great deal of focus. But this will turn out to be a rewarding and productive experience as you move on and get a hold of it.
When you have your content updates neatly sorted and scheduled for the coming days, weeks or months, you will be able to spend more time on tasks that actually contribute to your business’s bottom line.
Last but not the least, when you’re not wasting time trying to figure out what type of content to post, you’ll be able to deeply analyze things that are giving you results.
3. To Achieve Better Audience Targeting
If you want to consistently grow your business, you need to know your audience like the back of your hand. It’s the first step towards building great customer experiences and even greater products.
Today, thanks to social media, understanding your target audience is not as complicated as it used to be. You have the right tools in hand that help you target varied demographics and connect to your prospective audience.
When creating your social media marketing strategy, understanding your audience can make it more precise and result-oriented. Not only do you get to enhance your relationship with your existing customers, but you also are able to find untapped opportunities.
How?
By analyzing how your target audience behaves and interacts on your choice of social networks. This insight can prove to be a big help, especially when your business is at a growing stage.
Last but not the least, your brand needs to be authentic in its approach in order to find success with social media marketing. There’s no replacement for being authentic and real, it gets you closer to your customers and grows your business.
The best part about social media is, it gives you the opportunity to be yourself. Even when you’re using something like Facebook ads, you’re able to go beyond just “selling”, and present the personal side of your business.
If you want help in creating a solid social media marketing strategy that is authentic and transparent, be sure to visit our social media services page.