Top 9 Social Media Marketing Strategies That Work

There has been a shift in the social media strategies since the last few years. Proper planning is required for a successful social media marketing strategy. Before you plan your marketing strategy, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who are your target audiences?
• Why do you want to use social media?
• What social media do you want to focus on?
• What form of content will you share?
• What will be the frequency of posts?

Most of the businesses use social media marketing to increase brand awareness, generate new leads, or grow revenue.

Today, 7 out of 10 Americans use social media. This is a good number and the best reason to use social media marketing for making your business grow. Social media produces endless benefits for small and large businesses. Brands can connect with their audience better and spread their message across a large community.

There is no doubt that social media has become one of the inevitable components of marketing nowadays.

Some facts about social media:

• Facebook gets more than 2.5 billion active users monthly.
• Instagram has become the second biggest social network in the world.
• Pinterest has 150 million users each month.

With such eye-opener numbers, you could be losing a lot of business if you do not plan social media marketing for your business.

Have you made up your mind to get started with social media marketing? Keep reading then to know how to plan the most effective social media marketing strategy that really works for you.

1. Determine Your Goals

The first question you should ask yourself is: What will be the main aim behind my social media marketing strategy? If you want to begin your first campaign, you should know what you’re trying to achieve. If you do not have string goals behind it, you can do some research or conduct surveys to get an idea about your goals. You can jot down your objectives before planning any social media strategy.

Setting your goals is the first step to be successful when it comes to planning social media strategy. Always set a deadline for achieving your goals.

2. Research About Your Audience

Before you begin to plan your marketing strategy, you need to find out who your target audiences are. For instance, if you sell baby and infants clothes, the target audiences would be men and women aged between 25 and 45 years. You cannot target teenagers for your products. Similarly if you sell mobile accessories, the best target audience could be teenagers and the younger generation.

Once you identify your audience, you can pinpoint their needs and wants for planning the best social media marketing strategy. Surveys can be conducted to help you identify the target users.

3. Run Contests

Running contests can pull the attention of a lot of visitors to your social media page. This is an effective tactic that helps you grab the eyeballs of your visitors and followers. You should try to create a successful social media contest and offer some interesting giveaways or sweepstakes to engage the audience.

4. Dig Into Your Competitors’ Social Media Profiles

Before planning your social media content, you should keep an eye on what your competitors are doing on social media platforms. You can also use competitor analysis tools to find out the numbers of users and followers for your competitors’ profiles. Once you analyze the social profiles of your top competitors, you’ll be able to move in the right direction for crafting your own social media marketing strategy.

You just cannot steal or copy your competitors’ content ideas. You can see what works for them and you can plan your campaign accordingly.

5. Create Social Media Calendar

You need to plan when and where you would be sharing your content to create the maximum impact. You cannot just post the content on different social media networks during any time of the day. You should figure out the frequency of posts and create a social media content calendar to increase engagement. Prepare a list of topics you would be posting on. Weekly or monthly planning of social media posting can be helpful.

6. Craft the Content Smartly

Different social media networks have different criteria and users. Each piece of content you post should engage the target audience. Depending on the social network, you can create posts that are ideal for the audience. For instance, LinkedIn is a professional social media network that is just perfect for B2B audiences. Facebook is for news and entertainment, while Instagram is meant for creating visual content. Static images and short videos can be a great way to connect with your ideal audience.

7. Analyze and Evaluate

You cannot just plan your social media strategy and sit back and relax to make it do wonders for your business. It is important to track your results and find out what type of posts generate the maximum engagement. One should evaluate the social media campaigns and their results from time to time so that the social media strategy can be refined to generate the best results.

8. Video Content

You can use video marketing to boost your social media marketing campaign. A recent study showed that 83% of the traffic would be coming from videos by 2021. If you haven’t been using this form of social media tactic, then you could be losing a lot of business.

9. Create Attractive Images

Creating high quality and engaging images for social media is a must. In today’s competitive market, you can use online tools to design alluring images to leave a lasting impression on your visitors.

Once you’ve planned and set up a strong social media marketing campaign, you need to focus on achieving ongoing results through it. You can make use of some automation tools to increase your website traffic and maximize your sales within no time.