Want a Powerful Social Media Marketing Strategy? Here’s the Secret

In this blog, we are going to learn what it takes to create a powerful and effective social media marketing strategy? We’ll also learn why using a social media strategy template can prove disastrous?

social media marketing strategy

Social media has become such an important part of any business these days. Almost half of the world’s population is now highly active on one or many social media networking platforms. This makes it one of the easiest ways to reach your audience and to communicate your message to them.

If you’re a business owner, I am very certain that your business already has a social media presence. In case you don’t, make it your priority to do it as soon as you can.

As social media is a part of your marketing strategy, let me ask you how are you doing social media marketing?  Are you just randomly posting things whenever and wherever you want? Is it handled by one of your team members other than a marketing department or do you have a dedicated social media marketing team for it? Do you have a social media strategy and have you set up social media goals?

Most importantly, how do you know if your social media efforts are paying off, or are you just wasting your resources there without any hope of reaching the destination?

The ease of social media has definitely confused many people about what kind of power social media has and how can it affect your business?

Even though anything looks very simple, there is still a correct way of doing that – a way that generates the best results. And we are going to talk about the correct way of doing social media marketing in this article.

Social media marketing is a four-step process and every step is as important as any other. Make sure you are paying equal attention to all the four steps of doing social media marketing and are not ignoring one at the cost of the other.

 

4-Step Approach for Creating a Powerful Social Media Strategy

Research and analysis

If you want to create a winning social media strategy, you must follow these four steps. Most of the time, social media marketing fails to generate the expected results because we end up missing one of these steps.

 

Step 1: Don’t Skip Research & Analysis

Everything in business starts with proper research and analysis. It helps you in understanding your audience and in learning more about your competitors. The more you learn about your target audience, the more competitive edge you gain. Additionally, it also helps you in forming a strategy that’ll bring results.

It’s not a secret that strategies fail because they lack proper research. Without research and analysis, you are just hitting in the dark, when you can turn on the lights and shoot the bull’s eye.

Why Do You Need Research & Analysis For Social Media Marketing?

Customer Insights

Proper research & analysis is very important for the success of any social media marketing strategy.  It empowers you with valuable information which you can use to strengthen your stand in the market and in the heart of your audience.

 

Efficient Use Of Resources

Not just is it going to save your time and money, it will also make lead you in the right direction. A proper analysis will ensure that you are reaching the audience with the right message at the right time and in the right format.

 

Effective Social Campaigns

In addition, research increases the effectiveness of your social media campaigns. When you know what your customers want, you are able to connect with them better.

 

How to Do Research and Analysis?

Here are some tips on what all should be a part of your research and analysis for social media marketing –

Understand Your Market and Your Audience

Start by understanding your target audience and their needs. The more you learn about your audience, the more effective your social media marketing is going to be. Use the findings of your SWOT and STP analysis here as well.

 

Learn More About Your Competitors

Do some competitive analysis, understand who your competitors are and where do you stand in the market when compared with them.

 

Make sure to extend your branding to even your social media channels. If you don’t do that, you create a disconnect in your audience’s mind between your brand and your social media channels.

Don’t forget that when you don’t take care of your branding, you are actually causing more damage to your all future social media efforts. Ultimately, this can hurt your brand reputation.

You can learn more about market research in this very useful book for small business owners, Market Research Like a Pro.

Step 2: Social Media Marketing Planning

Step 2: Build a Social Media Marketing Plan

In the first step,  you formed a solid foundation of your social media marketing with the help of proper research and analysis. Now, you are ready for the next step. In this step, you’re going to build your social media marketing planning.

 

What is a Social Media Marketing Plan?

Social media marketing planning is the entire process of developing a social media marketing plan or coming up with a social media marketing strategy.

 

Word of Caution

The point to remember is that you should never post randomly on social media because every piece of content you add on the internet is either building your brand image or hurting it. Click To Tweet

Keeping in consideration that content on the internet lives forever and can be dug out of the graveyard whenever the need is warning you to be very careful about what you post as a brand.

And trust me you don’t want to take the chance of hurting your brand reputation with your posts as it takes a much higher budget and other resources to fix the damages than what you have originally spent on that particular social media post.

 

How to Create an Effective Social Media Marketing Plan?

Creating an effective social media marketing plan is a two-step process. The first part deals mainly with what do you want to do with your channels. And the second part deals with the why of that.

Let’s try to understand this with an example. I want to regularly post on social media channels so I can build some engagement. Or I want to be active on social media because I want to increase brand awareness.

 

What Do You Want to Do on Social Media? (The First Half of Planning)

The first half of social media planning includes what your social media marketing strategy should be. And what you can do on your social media as a part of your strategy.

Think of social media strategy as something which is unique to your business, which fits your business needs. It’s your social media Bible that is always making sure that you are progressing towards your business goals.

 Not to mention, it makes sure you’re not getting distracted in the entire process.

While forming your social media strategy, remember all the findings from step 1 about who your target audience is, how your product is going to solve their problems, and why they should choose you over your competitors.

Social Media Planning Tip

A good social media strategy should always include an alternative plan in case things don’t work out and also a corrective action plan, in case things go out of order.

Why Do You Want to Do on Social Media? (The Second Half of Planning)

The other half of social media planning is figuring out why you want to do all these tasks from the first half.

If your goal is to post 3 times a week, think about why do you want to do that. You’re not doing it just for the sake of posting on your social media handles.

Maybe you want more visibility. Or You’re hoping that some of your followers will visit your website.

Let’s take another example. You have decided to run a social media challenge on Facebook because you saw others doing that.  Before you create your challenge, think about how can this challenge contribute to your social media goals.

Time to implement

Step 3: Implementing Your Social Media Marketing Plan

A plan remains a plan unless acted upon by somebody. Amazon wouldn’t have become a giant eCommerce company if Jeff Bezos hasn’t decided to quit his job and work on his plan.

Once you have prepared a solid social media marketing plan, now is the time to implement it. It’s always good to have a real social media marketing plan so you don’t feel confused during this step.

This is the step to break down your strategy into achievable goals. And your social media goals into actionable tasks.

 

4 Steps of Implementing a Social Media Marketing Plan

Who?

Who will be responsible for implementing the social media marketing strategy? Are you planning to hire a social media team to do that? Or are you planning to involve a New York-based social media marketing agency like Bizadmark to take care of everything for you?

When?

When do you want to implement your strategies? Are you planning to launch your presence on every social media at the same time? At what points in time, do you want to implement various tasks from your social media marketing plan as you can not execute all the tasks at the same time? For example, if you are planning to run a social media challenge, when do you want to run it?

Where?

What channels do you want to use for implementing your social media marketing strategies? Are you planning to be on Tik Tok or YouTube or any other social media channel? Do you have to utilize even other digital marketing channels as a part of your social media marketing plan?

How?

How are you going to execute various social media marketing tasks? Do you need any paid tools to make the process easier? Do you have to hire a social media marketing team? How are you planning to create the videos or other creatives? How are you going to make sure that all your posts are reflecting your branding?

 

Step 4: Social Media Marketing Control

This is one of the most important steps of social media marketing and also, the most ignored one. Only 1% of people who I talk to are actually doing this. We all love to post on social media. But who loves to analyze the numbers later and mine some insights?

Step 4 measures and evaluates your social media results. Moreover, it tells you which social media strategies proved effective and which ones just wasted your time, money, and efforts.

As a result, if you skip this step, you will end up wasting your valuable resources on fruitless tasks.

 

 

 

3 Stages of Social Media Marketing Control

Stage 1) Measuring the Results

For measuring your results, you have to first identify your KPIs. KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are not complicated at all. It’s just a term used to identify all those numbers that can show your performance better than the rest. This can be the number of followers, engagement rate, number of new followers, your reach, website visits, purchases made, or something else.

Not all the numbers can be your KPIs. You have to pick the ones that best describe your goals.

If I have started a new channel, I will be interested in knowing how many new followers I’m gaining every day.

In a second case, when my business is not-so-new, I want to know how my audience is interacting with my posts. Are they ignoring me? No comments and likes? It can be because either I’m targeting the wrong audience or I’m not creating content that they want. Measuring engagement rate as a KPI would be ideal in this situation.

Start this step by defining your KPIs (Key performance indicators) which are going to measure all your social media efforts. Collect as much data as you can about your audience and how they are reacting to your social media campaigns.

Evaluating The results

Once you have access to social media data, then the next step is to evaluate the results. Data mining is very vital for a profitable social media channel. If you love numbers and have strategic thinking, you can do it yourself. In case you don’t, don’t hesitate to take some guidance from others.

Our data carries most of the answers we are looking for. Why my posts are not working? What can I do to make people notice me? How can I make my followers buy my product? Every question that comes in your head about social media, can be answered with the help of numbers.

Taking Corrective Action

Just knowing the numbers and not doing anything is the waste of your entire social media marketing strategy.

What if your social media marketing strategy is not working as you thought it was going to be? What are you going to do then? Do you have a corrective plan that you can implement?

Also, what if your actions on social media have affected your reputation? or what if any of your social media posts are taken out of context and have hurt the sentiments of your audience, do you have any online PR plan to fix and rebuild your reputation?

These are some important questions to answer. To many, it doesn’t seem like a crucial step. But when our actions fail to work in our favor, our judgment gets impaired. This leads to some bad business decision-making. Consequently, it’s important to work on your corrective action plan, when your thinking is more rational and less emotional.

 

Key Takeaway: Social Media Marketing Strategy

Any strategy succeeds when it’s formed after proper analysis, is efficiently implemented and then regularly measured for any kind of deviation. Click To Tweet

If your social media marketing strategy is not generating your dream results, then chances are there that you have missed one of the above-mentioned four steps.

In case, even after doing everything, your social media is still not generating any results for you, then it’s time for you and us to work together and get everything right back on track.


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