How to Create Social Media Marketing Strategy? Comprehensive Guide
People always ask me if it is really possible to build a good online presence for a brand within a short period of time. Some even ask if they need to be lucky to go viral and attract thousands of followers on social media platforms.
Well, the answer is pretty straightforward. You don’t need luck, but a well-crafted social media marketing strategy.
A great social media marketing strategy will help you get the required results from social media. Whether a company wants a million followers or to engage more with its audience, the strategy will tell how to do it in a guaranteed way.
When it comes to creating a social media marketing strategy, you have to be precise yet comprehensive. If that sounds confusing to you, don’t worry at all. In this comprehensive guide, I’ll discuss how you can create an effective and realistic social media marketing strategy for your brand.
Let’s start.
What is a Social Media Marketing Strategy?
A Social media marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan that identifies your social media marketing goals and includes all the action steps that need to followed in order to achieve these goals.
Social media has become a hub of millions of businesses trying to grab the attention of their audience and increase their clientele. Many become successful, and many of them simply fail.
There is a high chance that the successful businesses on social media use a complete strategy to reach their goals. This strategy explains what type of social site they need to target, what type of audience they have, and how frequently content needs to be posted to get the required results.
How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy?
Now, let’s get straight to the business. To create a complete social media strategy, you need to follow a series of steps. Although following a social media marketing strategy template is useful, I recommend following these steps for better customization and control.
I’ve discussed the details of these steps in the information given below:
1. Identify Your Goals
The first and foremost thing that you need to focus on is identifying the goals. Before posting a single piece of content, it’s important to nail the targets that need to be hit. Social media marketing is huge.
Some companies focus on it to improve their brand reputation, and some for reaching out to new audience territories. Whatever your goal is, identify it properly before moving on.
How To Identify Goals?
- Clarify the main objective of the company.
- Understand what will make the company successful, such as followers, a good brand image, etc.
- Understanding the challenges will help find a solution and then ultimately, the goals.
Practical Scenario:
I am running a football t-shirt brand and want to focus on social media marketing. My business is new, and I want to make a brand reputation as well as have more customers. So, my goal will be:
- Increase brand awareness.
- Have more customers.
🤥 Social Media Virality
Recognition, recall, top of mind, and preference are the top 4 levels of brand awareness in the targeted market.
2. Know Your Audience
Understanding goals isn’t enough for getting started. You also need to understand what type of audience you’re targeting. It is a very important step, especially for a B2B social media marketing strategy. Keep in mind that ‘if you don’t know who you’re selling to, you won’t be able to make sales.’
Understanding the audience will help in identifying what type of content needs to be posted and how you need to interact with the audience for better engagement.
How To Know Your Audience?
- Create a proper audience persona.
- Use different business tools for audience analysis.
- Conduct surveys to gather people’s opinions and understand their mindsets.
Practical Scenario:
In most cases, companies know what type of audience they’re targeting on social sites. Since I am running a football T-shirt shop, my target audience will be:
- Football fans of different clubs and leagues.
If you’re unaware of your audience, taking the help of audience insight tools can be of great help.
3. Pick A Social Media Platform
Whether you’re creating a social media marketing strategy for startups or an already developed business, picking the right type of social site can make all the difference in the world.
Social media platforms usually work in the same way. People and businesses create accounts and start sharing content and interacting with each other. However, there are some distinctions in each platform.
For Example
People who are interested in consuming visual content will use Instagram and Snapchat. On the other hand, people who like to stay aware of current world events prefer X. So, be precise about what type of business you run and which social site would be useful for it.
How To Pick The Right Social Media Platform?
- Understand what type of platforms the audience is using.
- Pick a platform that is suitable for the type of content that will be posted.
- Analyze the pros and cons of the platform before picking.
Practical Scenario:
My shop sells t-shirts of football clubs. Most football fans like to interact with pictures and videos of football matches on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. So, my target platforms are:
- Instagram and Facebook
4. Create A Content Calendar
Now, it’s time to go over one of the most important steps in this process. Creating a content calendar is more important than many people think. A content calendar is actually a schedule that includes pre-planned posts that will be posted in the future.
Creating this schedule is very important to get favored by social media platforms’ algorithms. That is because an account that publishes content frequently and regularly has a better chance of getting more engagement. So, create a proper schedule so there’s no shortage of content to post on different profiles.
How To Create A Content Calendar?
- Understand what types of posts will be shared.
- Decide how often the profile has to share posts.
- Select a time for sharing content and stick to it.
- If you find it difficult to do, you can use a content calendar template to make things easier.
Practical Scenario:
So far, I’ve discussed what type of goals I need to achieve, what audience I am going to target, and what social media platform I am going to be using. My content schedule is going to be something like this:
| Platform | Content Type | Number of Posts | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Promotional Posts | 1 | 12 pm to 3 pm | |
| UGC photos | 3 | 4 pm to 8 pm | |
| Engagement posts, such as polls | 1 | 9 pm to 11 pm | |
| Product pictures | 3 | 10 am to 12 pm | |
| BTS stories | 1 | 3 pm to 5 pm | |
| Reels/short videos | 1 | 7 pm to 9 pm |
📍 FACTS
Posting time on social media is really effective and works best for your social media profiles’ growth.
5. Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis is very important for creating a perfect and functional social media marketing plan. It helps understand what type of content the competitor accounts are sharing and how often they’re sharing it. Besides that, it also helps you understand how you need to engage with your audience to make a better impact.
It’s actually a way of identifying competitors’ weaknesses and strengths and then optimizing your strategy accordingly. Make sure to put some effort into this analysis so that you can create a strategy that will help you outgrow the competition.
How To Perform A Competitor Analysis:
- Identify who your main competitors are.
- Completely stalk their profiles to understand their content type.
- Go to the comment section to view how they engage with people.
Practical Scenario:
For my shop and its online presence, I’ll analyze other shops that are promoting their brands on Instagram and Facebook. My focus will be on:
- What type of content do they post?
- How often do they post the content?
- How frequently do they engage with post comments?
6. Analyze And Adapt
This is actually a post-strategy creation process where you analyze its performance and adapt according to the situation. Social media algorithms keep changing. What’s working today might not be good enough to work after a week.
That’s why you need to keep monitoring the strategy constantly. If the results aren’t coming, try making some tweaks in the strategy so that the performance can get back on track.
How To Analyze The Performance?
- First of all, identify your KPIs.
- Use different social media analytical tools to track these KPIs.
- Create a proper schedule and check out performance accordingly.
Practical Scenario:
I will monitor important metrics, including views, interactions, etc., for measuring my approach. Should the outcome not meet my standards, I will just adjust the relevant elements of the plan. I will, for instance, create the next posts more engaging and appealing to convince the viewers to engage if my sponsored posts do not receive a good interaction.
Would You Like To Start?
So, that’s how you create a proper social media marketing strategy. It’s really no rocket science. You simply have to understand what end goals you want to achieve and then identify your audience properly.
Once done, pick a suitable social site and start posting according to a content calendar. Don’t forget to analyze competitors since they can help improve your strategy to a great extent. Besides that, keep on monitoring the performance and then make changes if the results aren’t showing.
People Also Ask
Q1. What Is The 50 30 20 Rule For Social Media?
The 50, 30, 20 is an important role for social media marketing. According to this rule, 50% of your posts should be about your audience. The remaining 30% and 20% should be about brand and promotion, respectively.
Q2. What Are The 5 Ps Of Social Media Marketing?
The 5 Ps of SMM are product, price, promotion, and people. These factors are very important for creating and implementing an SMM strategy.
Q3. Is Creating A Social Media Marketing Strategy For Small Businesses Important?
Yes. These businesses should create an SMM strategy. It will help them get the most out of their marketing efforts and have a good influence on the audience.
Q4. Why is it important for businesses to have a social media marketing strategy?
Creating an SMM strategy is very important for businesses. It allows them to have a proper roadmap that they can follow while posting content on social sites and while engaging with the audience as well.
