More than 3.6 billion individuals use social media regularly, which makes them one of the most important mediums for business growth. Social media channels not only help businesses with brand awareness but even strengthen relationships with their customers and improve sales.
But the thing is that you cannot just jump on to social media. You need a strong and result-oriented social media marketing plan to make things work. Keeping it concise instead of making it broad and lofty is the key to success. So, make sure to have a specific plan that is both measurable and attainable. On that note, go through the steps below to develop a winning social media marketing plan:
1. Set Goals Relevant to Your Business
Planning a good social media marketing strategy starts with your objectives. What do you want to accomplish through social media?Common goals for businesses on social media include increasing engagement and brand awareness. Your objectives define your plan and the amount of energy and time you need to spend on your campaigns. The key here is to set realistic goals and take on the smaller objectives initially to scale your social media marketing efforts affordably.
A blend of common objectives like increasing brand awareness, generating leads and sales, growing the brand’s audience, and boosting community engagement is excellent. Any combination of such goals can also help you understand the networks you must tackle.
Just choose one or two objectives so you do not complicate things, and let your team works only around them.
2. Know Your Target Audience
Audiences are not the same on different social media channels. Different people use different networks in varied ways. Therefore, you can achieve your only by using the same social media platforms as your target audiences.For that, understand the psychographics and demographics of the target audience to find where they are on social networking sites.
Here’s a fine example of how Dove, the American personal care brand, connected with its target audience. The company’s main objective is to make women feel good about themselves. It is well aware of its target audience and made contest narrating a story that the majority of the women can easily relate to. Unfortunately, company marketers found that 80% of women go through negative chatter on social media platforms.
Hence the brand coordinated with Twitter and launched the #SpeakBeautifulEffect campaign that brought in 800 million impressions.
Dove knew its audience and thus built a social media marketing campaign around them. So, knowing your customer base is the only way of engaging with them on social media platforms.
3. Start with Just Two or Three Social Media Platforms Initially
Choosing the right social media marketing platform is important for the success of your marketing campaign. So, how to select aptly? Initially, it can be tempting to try out all the social media platforms, but that’s not important.Instead, choose only two to three platforms where you are confident about finding your target audience. Engage with your audiences on these channels first and then move on to the other ones.
Ensure an effective and complete social media marketing plan before moving on to the other platforms.
4. Go By the 30/60/10 Principle
Your content on social media platforms should be the perfect blend of curated and branded matter. A good rule of thumb is using 30% owned content, 60% curated content, and 10% promotional content.Owned contents are videos, articles, blogs, and infographics that you have created. Curated content is content from different external sources. Sharing this kind of content shows that you aim to bring value to your customers instead of promoting your products and services.
You can create a video to share valuable business matters but do not be too salesy. Once you establish trust with the target audience, start creating promotional content. Your audience will accept it and even end up making a purchase.
Take the example of PlayStation here. This huge video game brand with 18.7m followers on Twitter uses a mix of content for engaging its fans. These include gaming footage, game trailers, and live streaming events.
And this has brought in results, with PlayStation witnessing 376% growth in its followers in the last five years.
5. Use Live Videos
What about running a cross-channel promotion for a compelling live video?Live videos are all the rage this season as they help individuals connect online. Many businesses are using such videos to connect with their target audience. For instance, BuzzFeed, the entertainment, news, and internet media brand from the US, invited comedians, musicians, and other celebrities for a live event for raising funds for coronavirus victims.
The brand also used a combination of cause-based marketing, cross-channel promotion, and live videos to promote its event on varied platforms, streaming it on Facebook and YouTube simultaneously. And guess what? It helped the brand raise huge funds.
So, it’s time to integrate live videos into your social media marketing plan if you have not done this yet. Simply choose a social media channel where you have a massive customer base and use live videos to engage with them. Make sure to feature industry experts and influencers in your live video.
6. Scrutinize Your Competitors
Even before creating content and posting it on intended social media platforms, make sure to scrutinize what your competitors are doing.Review your competitors' social presence to get useful insights about how to form your social media marketing plan.
Investigate everything, from their focus and the audience they are targeting to the key phrases and hashtags they are using to gain visibility. The goal here is not to copy what your competitors are doing but to get inspiration from the marketing campaigns.
This will help you spot hidden opportunities you never had an idea about.
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