Want to improve your social media marketing strategy? Great! There’s no better time than now to make it happen. With increased competition, content, and networks, having a clear and concise strategy is crucial in order to prioritize efforts that align with your goals.
That’s why we’ve created a detailed guide on how to develop a digital social media marketing plan from the ground up. Whether you’re a beginner or simply want to reassess your priorities in 2024, this guide has got you covered.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing involves utilizing platforms such as Instagram, X (previously known as Twitter), and Facebook to advertise your brand and sell your product or service. When you introduce a new item and intend to promote its launch on social media, that falls under social media marketing. Similarly, when you engage with your customers through comments, that also falls under social media marketing.
Additionally, when you create captivating content that highlights your brand’s values and narrative, that too is considered an online social media marketing services.
To effectively market using social media, you’ll need to utilize your social media management skills and tools. Similar to how you prepare other parts of your marketing strategy, it’s important to have a plan specifically for your digital social media marketing efforts.
Now that we’ve explained what social media marketing is, let’s go over the process of creating a plan. Take a look at our video below to see how you can implement the tips from this article and develop a strategy in just seven steps.
Benefits of social media marketing
Social media is incredibly popular and flexible, making it a powerful tool for promoting your business without any cost. There are numerous advantages to using social media for marketing:
- Humanize your business: Social media allows your business to actively engage with your market. By creating a friendly persona through your profile, posts, and interactions, you can build trust and connection with your audience.
- Drive traffic: Between the links in your profile, blog post links in your posts, and your ads, social media is a top channel for increasing traffic to your website where you can convert visitors into customers. Plus, social signals are an indirect SEO factor.
- Generate leads and customers: You can also create opportunities for leads and conversions on these platforms by utilizing tools such as Instagram/Facebook shops, direct messaging, call-to-action buttons on profiles, and appointment booking features.
- Increase brand awareness: The visual nature of social media platforms allows you to build your visual identity across vast audiences and improve brand awareness. And better brand awareness means better results with all your other campaigns.
- Build relationships: These platforms open up both direct and indirect lines of communication with your followers through which you can network, gather feedback, hold discussions, and connect directly with individuals.
What are the steps in building a successful social media strategy?
Now that you’ve got the hang of the fundamentals of an online social media strategy, let’s dive into the steps you need to follow in order to create one.
We’ll also show you how to seamlessly integrate your content and engagement strategies into your overall social media activities, so you’ve got all your bases covered. Here are seven key steps to crafting a winning social media strategy:
1) Set goals for your business
It’s important to invest time in this stage because your social media goals will shape your entire strategy. Consider what your business wants to achieve through social media and remember that marketing and business goals are not the same.
Do you want to increase brand awareness, gain insights about your audience, grow your following, or generate more leads? While you may have multiple goals, it’s crucial to acknowledge each one as they will require different approaches on social media. Once you’ve established your goals, define your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to determine which social media metrics are significant.
To succeed on social media, set specific metrics for each platform you utilize. For instance, on Facebook, focus on reach, engagement, and impressions, while on Instagram, prioritize interactions and discovery.
In addition to the basic metrics, you can delve deeper and track audience growth rate, amplification rate (how often users share your content), or virality rate. There are numerous metrics available to measure success, so narrow them down to what truly matters for your business.
2) Research your audience
In order to create personalized messaging and content, it’s important to have a clear understanding of your audience and their preferences. One effective way to achieve this is by conducting market research through online surveys, customer interviews, or setting up a focus group.
Another useful method to gather information about your customers and community is through social listening. Tools like BuzzSumo or Followerwonk can assist you in this process by monitoring social networks.
By utilizing these approaches, you can develop buyer personas that combine your buyer profile and insights, allowing you to visualize your ideal customer. It’s possible to have multiple personas to capture various insights, demographics, and pain points.
If you require assistance in creating buyer personas, our convenient template can help you get started.
3) Research your competitors
Knowing what your competitors are up to is essential for your social marketing strategy. It allows you to gain insights into their social media presence, including the platforms they utilize and the campaigns they execute. Additionally, you can analyze their messaging, content creation, and posting frequency.
By understanding how they interact with their audience and the effectiveness of those interactions, you can decide whether to follow their lead or explore a different approach to attract customers.
4) Choose your social platforms
The question isn’t whether you should be active on social media, but rather how to choose the best channels for your business. It can be overwhelming at first with so many options available. However, it’s important not to make the mistake of being present on all of them just for the sake of it. Some platforms may not be the right fit for your business or content. So, how can you narrow down your choices and optimize your content for each social network?
Let’s start with Facebook. Being one of the biggest social media platforms and the oldest, Facebook provides a targeted way to engage with prospects and customers. It supports various content types and even offers Facebook Live, which allows you to connect with your audience through video. If you’re interested, here’s a simple guide to help you set up a Facebook Business page.
Instagram: Instagram is still a favorite among the younger crowd and has experienced significant growth in recent years. It’s an ideal place to display products and collaborate with influencers to expand your customer reach. And with the upcoming feature of in-app shopping, customers can easily make purchases directly on the platform.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn is the go-to platform for B2B companies, but it also offers chances for B2C businesses. It allows companies to connect in the B2B realm naturally or through paid ads. Effective content on LinkedIn includes blogs, whitepapers, eBooks, and industry-specific material.
Twitter: Twitter is an awesome platform that operates in real-time, so it’s important to make sure your content is timely and relevant. It’s a fantastic channel for brands to provide customer service because of its quick reply feature and the hashtags on Twitter are great for discovering new and trending content. Using hashtags effectively can be a bit of an art, so take some time to learn how to use them across different social networks.
TikTok: TikTok is an awesome social media platform that’s growing rapidly. It’s perfect for sharing video content, especially short and quirky ones. If you’re into marketing, TikTok is a great place to be. It’s unbeatable for user-generated content and collaborating with influencers. If you want to keep track of potential partnerships, check out this influencer tool.
YouTube: Right at this moment, there is definitely someone out there watching a YouTube video. That’s how incredibly popular it is! It’s like a dream come true for marketers, as it allows them to engage with customers by providing both informative and entertaining content. If your brand produces a lot of videos, especially how-to guides or tutorials, then YouTube could be the perfect platform for you.
Pinterest: Pinterest is all about finding new things. It’s a platform where people go to find inspiration through images and videos. The wide range of pins it offers includes everything from home decor to recipes, making it perfect for curating content like a social mood board.
5) Plan your content
Now that you’ve done your research and decided on the right social media platforms, it’s time to think about your content and approach. To help you get started, check out our social media style guide.
Let’s go into planning your content in simple steps:
Let’s set the vibe for your pages! The tone you choose will shape how the world perceives and interacts with your brand. Are you aiming for a formal or informal approach? Will humor be your weapon of choice, or is your business all about seriousness? Remember, each platform has its own unique personality, so do you want to tailor your voice accordingly and let your brand’s personality shine through?
Come up with different content themes or categories. Identify your unique selling point and brainstorm content themes or categories that align with it. For instance, if you run a travel resort or hotel, you could focus on a content category centered around wellness, featuring your spa services and nutritious recipes. Another category could highlight your location, emphasizing what sets it apart and makes it special, whether it’s the wildlife, landscapes, and so on. If you’re struggling with content creation, don’t forget there are plenty of helpful tools available.
Create a content calendar. It’s key to post regularly on social networks and a calendar can put some order to your posting especially if you’re posting on multiple channels. There are optimum days and times for networks too so take that into account and find out when to post on TikTok and the best times to post on Instagram.
Schedule your content. It can be difficult to keep up with the pace of social media and if you post regularly, keeping to a schedule is important for consistency.
Why Is Social Media Marketing (SMM) So Powerful?
Social media marketing’s effectiveness comes from its ability to excel in three key marketing aspects: building connections, fostering interactions, and gathering valuable customer data.
Connection
Social media not only allows businesses to connect with customers in ways that were previously impossible, but it also provides a wide range of avenues to reach target audiences. These avenues include content platforms such as YouTube, social sites like Facebook, and microblogging services like X.
Interaction
Social media interactions, whether through direct communication or passive liking, allow businesses to take advantage of free advertising opportunities through eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) recommendations among current and potential customers. The positive impact of eWOM on consumer decisions is significant, and the fact that these interactions occur on social networks makes them quantifiable. For instance, businesses can assess their social equity, which refers to the ROI from their online social media marketing services efforts.
Customer Data
A good social media marketing strategy provides a valuable asset for improving marketing results: customer data. Instead of getting delayed by the 3Vs of big data (volume, variety, and velocity), social media marketing tools can not only gather customer data but also transform it into useful market analysis—or even leverage the data for brainstorming new tactics.
Establish your most important metrics and KPIs
No matter what you’re aiming for or which field you’re in, it’s important to base your social media strategy on data. Instead of getting caught up in superficial metrics, delve into the data that directly relates to your goals. Now, let’s talk about the specific metrics we’re referring to. Here’s a brief overview, but if you want a more comprehensive understanding, check out our detailed guide on the social media metrics that truly make a difference and why.
- Reach: Have you ever wondered how many people actually see your posts? Well, post reach is the count of individual users who have laid eyes on your content. It’s a great way to gauge how much of your content actually makes it to users’ feeds.
- Clicks: This is the number of clicks on your content or account. Tracking clicks per campaign is essential to understand what drives curiosity or encourages people to buy.
- Engagement: The total number of social interactions divided by the number of impressions. This sheds light on how well your audience perceives you and their willingness to interact.
- Hashtag performance: What were your most-used hashtags? Which hashtags were most associated with your brand? Having these answers can help shape the focus of your content going forward.
- Organic and paid likes: Beyond a standard Like count, these interactions are attributed to paid or organic content. Given how much harder organic engagement is to gain, many brands turn to ads. Knowing these differences can help you budget both your ad spend and the time you invest in different formats.
- Sentiment: This is the measurement of how users react to your content, brand or hashtag. Did customers find your recent campaign offensive? What type of sentiment do people associate with your campaign hashtag? It’s always better to dig deeper and find out how people talk or feel about your brand.
- Video views: This varies by platform but refers to the number of views you receive on a video. Some channels treat video views as impressions–like TikTok–and others get super detailed with views. For example, Instagram offers view metrics for Stories, Reels, and Live. Facebook and LinkedIn count a view when a user watches a video for at least three seconds. From the popularity of TikTok to live streaming, video is taking the internet by storm, so familiarize yourself with social video engagement metrics if you plan to use it in your strategy.
- Follower growth: Follower growth measures the net new followers you earn within a set time frame. Follower count on its own doesn’t tell the whole story: knowing how many followers you gained can help you prove the value and return on investment for campaigns, content types, and social media experiments.
- Follower growth rate: This percentage shows how quickly your audience is growing or declining over time.
- Reply time: This refers to how long it takes for your team to reply to a customer message or @-mention on social.
- Total response volume: The sum of responses your team sends to customers.
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): A CSAT shows how satisfied customers are with your product, service or brand as a whole. You can use social messaging to measure CSAT by DMing customers and asking them how likely they are to refer your business. Or by working with your customer care team to formalize a survey for after interactions.
- Impressions: The number of times a piece of content was displayed to users. Impressions can indicate how well you’re promoting your account, content, campaigns, ads, etc.
- Brand mentions: This number tracks how many times a brand is mentioned in posts/comments, whether the brand is directly tagged or not.
- Share of voice (SOV): This indicates where your brand ranks in the market compared to competitors. SOV can help you understand how much of the industry conversation your brand dominates.
- Conversion rate: This metric measures how many people you convert to take a desired action on social, such as making a purchase, downloading gated content, or signing up for a free trial, webinar, newsletter, etc.
A successful social media marketing plan relies heavily on data. It’s important to analyze these numbers in relation to your overall objectives. Make sure to regularly review analytics reports to understand the story behind the numbers and determine if you’re on track with your goals.
Conclusion
To achieve long-term success in today’s competitive landscape, it is crucial to optimize your digital social media marketing strategy. By understanding your target audience, creating engaging content, analyzing data, and adapting to platform changes, you can greatly improve your brand’s online presence and engagement.
At Hue Digital, we specialize in providing customized solutions that cater to the unique needs of each client. As a leading social media marketing agency in your area, we combine creativity with data-driven insights to create impactful campaigns that resonate with your audience. Whether you require assistance with social media ads or comprehensive digital strategies, our team is committed to delivering measurable results for your business.
Partner with Hue Digital, your trusted social media ads agency, and take your brand to new heights by connecting with your audience in meaningful ways. Let us guide you through the ever-changing world of social media marketing and help you achieve your business goals.
