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What are the elements of a social media strategy?
09.07.2020
To achieve your business goals, a successful social media strategy can support you in your efforts. This kind of content strategy raises brand awareness, helps you to effectively reach your target audience and can improve engagement rate.
If you want your business to succeed and remain relevant in an increasingly cut-throat marketplace, then a social media marketing strategy is crucial. Posting on social media is not quite enough in isolation to boost your digital marketing.
What is a social media marketing strategy?
A social media marketing strategy is an overarching plan that uses social media platforms to elevate digital marketing efforts and promote a brand, service or product while increasing reach and visibility
Through social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter, businesses can implement a strategy that will help in achieving goals and converting audiences into customers.
A social media strategy can be used as part of your content marketing to approach customers and prospects from multiple touchpoints.
How to execute a social media strategy
So, what does a social media strategy look like? There are various elements of a social media strategy. When combined, they become a powerful tool in helping your business succeed.
To enhance your digital marketing, you can create a social media strategy as follows:
Set goals
Any strategy is useless without a clearly defined end goal. Goals help keep all activity on track as well as helping to measure success.
Establish a social media calendar
A social media calendar is a schedule – usually in a spreadsheet format – of all your upcoming social posts. This type of content needs to be planned and monitored in a way that perhaps other content wouldn’t. A social media calendar can help you effectively organise your social activity.
Determine the appropriate platforms
Not all businesses products or services are suited to every social media platform. A data-driven company probably won’t make much impact on Instagram, for example. Know which platform will accentuate your assets and use it to empower your offering.
Know your target audience
Effective social media marketing includes knowing your audience intimately. Social media is essentially one big conversation. If you’re not talking to the right people, you’re wasting precious time.
Engage!
Once you know your target audience, you should engage with them. Respond to their comments and queries and establish trust.
Create captivating social media content
Once you’ve set the groundwork, following the points above, it’s time to start creating content that is interesting and suited to social media. Make it interesting enough to stop users scrolling and start engaging, while keeping it to-the-point to maintain attention.
Why do you need a social media strategy?
Whilst enforcing a social content marketing plan can contribute to the long list of strategies to achieve your business goals, it’s an approach that should eventually pay off.
A B2B social media strategy is important, if not obligatory, for businesses in the digital era. An effective social media strategy:
- Increases brand awareness
- Aids social listening
- Boosts community engagement
- Builds brand image
- Helps with lead generation
- Improves business and customer relationships
By creating a concise social media roadmap that aligns with your brand, its values and objectives, you can expect to reap some of the above benefits. These can, in turn, aid with such things as business growth and accelerated ROI.
Social media marketing tips
If you need a bit of a boost with your social media marketing strategy, we have compiled some tips to help you achieve your goals.
Create platform specific strategies – Each social media platform has its own style and purpose. Ensure each piece of content suits this. Consider where, what time and what mood your readers will be in when scrolling past your posts.
Test where you can – It no good churning out a load of social media content if it’s not getting you results. A/B test your activity as and where you can so you can make the appropriate changes necessary to keep improving.
Don’t be afraid to invest – A paid social media strategy will cost you, however it can be worthwhile as part of your digital marketing efforts. Providing you do your research beforehand; a little bit of investment can go a long way.
Be mindful of your tone – There’s a lot to be said for tone of voice. In this case, keep your tone calibrated with your brand’s tone of voice and ensure it’s not too salesy. People don’t use social media platforms to be sold to. Take time to build a relationship and eventually you should be able to convert.
Achieve your business goals with a successful social media strategy
Social media is a powerful tool that helps give businesses and individuals a voice. Social media platforms can enable your brand to get noticed, connect with customers and prospects and to highlight the virtues of your products and services.
A carefully crafted social media strategy entails creating audience-specific social media campaigns and being there to solve the problems of your prospects. When done right, these elements of a social media strategy can aid business growth, increase profit and enhance overall credibility.
If you would like any support building and executing a social media strategy or social media campaign, then please get in touch with EV today.