How To Make An Effective Social Media Strategy ?

Looking for creative ways to promote your brand on social media? We have got some tips for you.

In today's world, social media has become virtual real estate and also a prime location to promote your brand. It is a must have identity for the startups however only few know how to use it wisely.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, P-interest, Snapchat, YouTube, vine etc. are rapidly gaining global citizens and have become most populace online destination where people spend their most of the time.

However, the concerning issue is how to market yourself in the crowded market of influencers and brands and how to differentiate yourself from others. Do not worry this is the first question every entrepreneur gets when they start promoting their business or startup on social media landscape.

So we are here with some valuable points to define your social media strategy.

Goals and objectives

Before taking a plunge into social media marketing decide what you want to achieve. For example, you may want to increase sales, subscription or app downloads. Define short, medium and long term goals with deadlines ranging from days to months. And do not forget to set milestones to mark your progress.

Revisit your goals once you hit deadline and perform reflective analysis of the overall progress.

Customer Profiling

Once you are done with your goals and objectives, it is time for creating customer profile of your target audience. Now it is a time to ask yourself different questions for instance, Who are your ideal customers? Why they are going to buy your product or service? Where they live? What are their hobbies? Where they hangout? What are their interests? What is their age group?

Create 2-3 customer profiles so you get better understanding of your audience and you can formulate innovative ways to approach them.

Competition

Look at your competitors and analyze what they are doing? How they are promoting their product or service? On which platform they are active? What kind of message they spread? Who are they targeting? How are they engaging with their audience?

This activity will offer an insight to customer targeting. Remember what works for your competitor does not necessarily will work for you too but will give you a better understanding.

Crafting your message

This is the most important component of the social media strategy. You must define your message for your customer personas. Prepare 2-4 messages for each persona to convey your value to them. Keep an eye over what your competitors are communicating and be alert to approach opportunities. Use some creative sense to market your brand such as growth hacking tactics to get customers on board.

Social Media Channels

Go where fish are, not let fish come to you because it will help you to target them at one place rather go and approach them at different places. Look out where your audience spend most of their. For instance, P-interest is for fashion and women audience, LinkedIn is for businesses and professionals etc. So decide wisely where you can market yourself and how. Going to wrong channel can result in waste of time, money and effort. You can also test one channel for some time and see results and then optimize.

Content Planning

Most of the content marketer plan their days ahead in their editorial calendar. It helps them to maintain the list of content to publish and platforms where they are going to publish them.

Remember to test different type of content such as audio, video, post, info-graphics etc. to get an idea what works and does not for you.

Social media is an effective marketing platform but only when you know how to use it effectively and wisely. Remember formulating right strategy for right platform can yield successful results for your marketing.

Author Intro:

Dushyant Sethiya is a Co-founder at The Puppeters ( T-shirt Brand for Youngsters) and CEO of Mandsaur Buildcon Pvt. Ltd.

He runs podcast " Entrepreneurship with Dushyant Sethiya" and writes frequently on entrepreneurship on Yourstory, YouthKiAwaaz, Citispotter, YFS Entrepreneur's Magazine and NextBigWhat. He also mentors aspiring entrepreneurs and startups on the EverWise mentoring platform.

He is a social activist and involved with Malwa Keshari NGO to promote sports activities in rural India. He has also written many Op-Ed articles on Entrepreneurship and Micro-finance for the Newspapers and he expresses his personal views on prominent issues via blogging. He is the author of the Book ” Micro-finance: A Helping Hand”

He did his “Post Graduate Diploma In Entrepreneurship” from Judge Business School, University Of Cambridge (England) and “Masters In International Business” from Leeds University Business School, University Of Leeds (England). Prior to that he completed his Bachelors of Engineering in Information Technology from RGPV University, India.

You can connect with him via Twitter @dushyantsethiya or [email protected] or Visit him at www.dushyantsethiya.com