Have you been active on social media and still aren’t generating enough leads for your business? Well, you thought right – social media marketing (SMM) is much more complicated than most people think. But, it doesn’t have to be. 

Social media marketing is crucial in today’s business world and can be a great way to drive business growth; if done properly. Yep; it requires a lot of time and effort. But, most importantly, it requires an informed strategy that is ideal for your business. 

A good social media marketing strategy is the bread and butter for attracting new followers, driving traffic and generating leads and revenue for your business. With the explosion of content and competition across the numerous social media platforms we have today, having a strategy for SMM will ensure you stand out and avoid efforts that do not serve your business goals. 

A social media marketing strategy is a structured plan to engage, target, and convert your audience effectively on social platforms. The specifics of a social media strategy will look different for every business. However, in this post, we’ll walk you through the essentials for building an SMM strategy that works for any business. 

Step 1: Set goals that align with your business objectives

It all begins with setting the goals you want to achieve with your marketing tactics. These goals must align with your business goals and objectives. These of course will change over time. For instance, a small local business looking to build a digital presence, its goal can be to increase local brand awareness and community engagement. Whereas for a larger enterprise looking to scale, its goal may be to build a national audience. Other social media goals include generating leads and sales, providing customer care or driving traffic to your site or onsite stores.

For whatever your goals are, they have to be S.M.A.R.T: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. SMART goals provide metrics that allow you to track your success. The ‘SMARTer’ your goals are, the more likely you will achieve them.

Step 2: Define and Understand Your Target Audience

There are 4.8 billion social media users globally. Your business is relevant to only a portion of this massive audience and you need to determine who they are and what they want. You need to know where to find them and how best to engage with them.

Your audience is real people with real needs. Although it’s impossible to factor in the uniqueness of every individual, defining your audience involves creating buyer personas or customer personas. A buyer persona is a detailed description of someone who represents your target audience. Defining buyer personas enables you to execute a social media marketing plan that targets them specifically. For instance, the target audience for a weight loss brand may differ from that of a beauty and high fashion brand. There may be some overlap, but there will be more differences than similarities. 

A buyer persona consists of a number of factors such as demographics (age, gender, marital status, location, children, income, and education); job title or industry; values and fears;  goals and challenges etc. 

Some of these factors, especially demographics, account for the particular social media platforms in which you can reach them. If your audience is a younger generation, you are less likely to find them on Facebook and more likely to find them on Snapchat, Instagram or TikTok. The type of content that drives higher ROI differs between these platforms. 

Step 3: Know what your competition is doing

Your audience is not the only people you need to study. You must investigate what your competition is doing and not doing on social media. Since you have the same audience, understanding how they have engaged with your competitors provides valuable insights into what you should include in your social media marketing plan. 

A competitor analysis will provide insight as to who your competition is, how your audience has engaged with them, as well as their areas of weakness. By identifying these, you will know where to optimise your content. For instance, if certain types of content have shown higher engagement rates, then you know what to focus on. Again, if your competition is more active on Instagram and less active on TikTok, provided there are potential customers on TikTok, you can capitalise on this information by ensuring you have a stronger online presence on TikTok. 

Step 4: Create Engaging and Strategic Content

All your research and fact-finding will mean nothing if you do not post great content. We have already provided some tips on figuring out what great content should be. Identifying what your competition is posting about doesn’t mean you have to replicate the exact post. Customers love authenticity! However, if your competitor has been successfully using short Instagram to advertise certain services, then short reels may be to go as well. Find the balance.

As to the actual content, you must be intentional about what you are trying to say to your audience. This is where a content strategy comes in. A content strategy is like a roadmap – it outlines what to post, when, and why, to engage and connect with your audience effectively.  A common mistake businesses on social media make is to focus more on promotional content. We want to sell and only sell. But we forget that social media is meant to be social. 

There should be a balance between content that engages, informs and promotes your products and services. Marketing experts recommend the 80:20 Rule. That is, 80% of your content should educate, inform and entertain your audience while 20% can be to promote your products and services. Some break down the 80% into 50% for engagement or entertainment and 30% for keeping them informed. This may however be varied or broken down further. It comes down to understanding the needs of your business at a given time while balancing the interests of your audience. 

Step 5: Create a social media marketing calendar

Managing social media platforms can be really demanding and a huge part of succeeding at it involves being organised. Your audience craves a steady diet of engaging content. A content calendar ensures you serve them regular, delectable bites, keeping them coming back for more. Items to consider include the creation of content, reviews, posting schedule, response to customer engagement and so much more. A content calendar helps you manage it all.

By posting when your audience is hungry for your message, that is, at peak engagement hours, you will be able to maximize your reach and impact. Like most content creators and social media managers, inspiration is not in constant flow. Having a content calendar that details all you intend to post within a period, you have a varied menu of flavoursome content that your audience can consume. 

Step 6: Track performance and adjust where necessary

The world of social media is very volatile and there’s no telling what will happen. Monitoring and evaluating your social media campaigns is necessary. By evaluating your engagement insights, which shows the reach of your content, you will see what worked and what didn’t. Various social media platforms have different metrics that track how users engage with posts. By analysing the data provided on engagement with your posts, you can make necessary adjustments where necessary.

Sometimes, certain posts do not do as well as expected not because your audience preferences have changed or because you didn’t understand them well enough. Rather, it may be due to changes in the algorithm of these platforms. The algorithm used determines what pops up on the feeds of your audience. Typically, you cannot look up exactly what the algorithm changes are, so it means you need to analyze each and every post and see if a pattern develops that indicates a change has been made.

Take Action

Investing in social media marketing can be the next best decision you will take for your business. As your business grows, your social marketing strategy will evolve and become more complex. Although it seems like a lot to deal with, it’s a worthwhile puzzle to unravel. But it doesn’t have to be an issue. With MevNet Studio’s social media marketing services, you can be sure of a social media marketing strategy that is tailored specifically to your business and drives consistent revenue and growth.

Ready to take your business to the next level with social media? Contact MevNet Studios today and let’s get you going.