Social media marketing (SMM) has become an essential tool for businesses of all sizes to engage their audience, build brand awareness, and drive conversions. Leveraging platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok, companies can interact with potential customers directly, gaining insights and growing their reach effectively. Here’s a breakdown of why social media marketing matters and how to implement a strategy that brings results.
Why Social Media Marketing Matters
Social media has revolutionized how brands connect with consumers. In a world where billions are active on social platforms, SMM provides businesses a chance to:
- Boost Brand Awareness: Consistent posting and engaging content increase visibility, helping consumers recognize and remember your brand.
- Foster Community and Trust: Social media encourages two-way communication, allowing brands to respond to questions, address concerns, and show a more human side.
- Increase Website Traffic and Sales: By sharing content and promotions, brands can guide followers to their website, generating potential leads and conversions.
- Gather Valuable Insights: Social platforms offer analytics that help brands understand audience preferences, measure engagement, and adjust strategies.
Steps to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy
1. Define Your Goals
Decide what you want to achieve, such as increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, or boosting sales. Your goals will determine your approach, content type, and measurement metrics.
2. Know Your Audience
Analyze your target demographic to choose the right platform and content style. For example, LinkedIn is ideal for B2B marketing, while Instagram is more visual and popular among younger audiences.
3. Select the Right Platforms
Focus on the platforms that best align with your goals and audience. Avoid spreading resources thin across too many channels. Each platform has unique features and user behaviors, so tailor your approach accordingly.
4. Create High-Quality Content
Content is the cornerstone of SMM. Develop content that aligns with your brand, from informative blog links to visually appealing images, videos, and interactive posts like polls and Q&As.
5. Engage with Your Audience
Respond to comments, share user-generated content, and engage with followers to build a loyal community. Engagement is crucial for creating meaningful connections and encouraging users to become brand advocates.
6. Measure and Adjust
Track your success using metrics such as engagement rates, impressions, and conversions. Use this data to refine your strategy continually and adapt to changes in trends or audience behavior.
Content Calendar
First off, you need to create and stick to a content calendar. It’s recommended to post twice a day, but hey, it’s just a recommendation. How often you post will ultimately be decided by you, the nature of the business, the content you choose to post, and your relationship with your followers.
Whatever you decide, at the very least, you should be posting 3 times a week. Posting this often as a minimum keeps your business relevant and active. After you’ve created a content calendar that works for you, the next step is to fill it with amazing content! Word posts, videos, illustrations, infographics, republishes, you need to schedule it all. Have a variety of content to keep your channel interesting.
As you’re planning out what content to publish, apply the 80-20 rule. Spend at least 80% of your time on social media posting interesting content, following users, and building a community. Spend no more than 20% of your time on self-promotional activities.
Why the rule? If you’re constantly shoving your business in the face of viewers, they will get annoyed. Users are human, after all, and don’t like to be heavily advertised to.
Promoted Posts
Marketing is made easier on social media than other forms of marketing, since business profiles can carefully narrow in on their audience when spending money on a boosted post. Goodbye, days of wasting money advertising to a large, random audience!If your business already has social media profiles, then it’s time to consider Promoted (or Boosted) posts. These posts don’t show up on your profile; instead, they appear as advertised posts on your target audience’s News Feeds.Take, for instance, Facebook.
Creating a Promoted post can be done in 3 simple steps:
- Log onto your Facebook business page and click ‘Create Saved Audience’
- Select your demographic (age, gender, race, location, hobbies, interests, etc.). The more specific you are, the more beneficial the boosted post will be. But don’t do too crazy—too many specifications, and you’ll be advertising to a nonexistent audience.
- Choose a Lookalike Audience based on your saved audience.And that’s it! Note that the Lookalike option can only be used when you spend money to boost a post.
When you write a post and publish it organically, only those who follow you will see it.While these are the steps for Facebook and Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms have a similar process. As you figure out which social media your target audience is on, spend more time researching how to market specifically on that platform.
As you figure out which social media your target audience is on, spend more time researching how to market specifically on that platform.
Regular Posting
Besides the paid, boosted posts are your regular day-to-day posts. It seems simple on the surface-just write out your thought and post it!
Well, yes…and no. In order to successfully market yourself on social media, it’s a bit more difficult.
There’s a science to word posts. From word count, to topics, everything needs to be carefully planned out. Typing out a post and publishing it without a second glance is not the best way to market yourself… think of all the typos you may have missed!Specifically for Instagram and Twitter, focus on the post’s keywords. Use hashtags in your keywords, directly in the post instead of listing out hashtags after you’ve finished typing out your piece. Hashtagging the important words makes the posts easier to find when users look up keywords.
Every so often, take a step back. Ask your audience open-ended questions to get a conversation going. Follow your followers back and spend time ‘liking’ their posts and getting to know them. Create a relationship with your customers in a way that can only be done on social media.
Integrate Marketing Efforts
Spending all this time building up your social media channels doesn’t do any good if people don’t know about them! Advertise around your office and website to promote your social media channels.
Don’t be shy! People won’t follow you online unless they 1) Know you have social media and 2) Are motivated to follow.
As you get your social channels up and running, test them out by offering an amazing deal that can only be found on social media. Count the number of likes, shares, and ultimately redemptions the code gets to measure their effectiveness. Social media is essential for business growth, with our tech-savvy society. The large number of active users, wide variety of people, and the ability to pay for Promoted posts to appear in front of your target audience makes social media a key marketing tool for any business.
But more than the paid posts is a consistent content calendar; posting often and with a variety of content is a sure way to market your business.
Best Practices for Social Media Marketing
- Consistency is Key: Regular posting keeps your audience engaged and informed. Develop a content calendar to maintain a steady flow of posts.
- Focus on Value: Share content that educates, entertains, or solves a problem for your audience, rather than solely promoting products.
- Leverage Paid Advertising: Social platforms offer targeted advertising options that help you reach specific audience segments effectively, increasing the reach of key messages.
By focusing on these core areas, social media marketing can become a powerful tool in your brand’s growth strategy, helping you build meaningful relationships with customers and drive measurable results.
