How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy in 5 doable Steps

How to Create Social Media Marketing Strategy

A social media marketing strategy is a summary of everything you plan to do and hope to achieve on social media. 

How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy is the next step to know. 

It guides your actions and lets you know whether you’re succeeding or failing. Every post, reply, like, and comment should serve a purpose.

The more specific your strategy is, the more effective the execution will be. 

Keep it concise. Don’t make your plan so broad that it’s unattainable or impossible to measure. 

In this post, we’ll walk you through an eight-step plan to create a winning social media marketing plan of your own.

Step 1. Set SMART goals that align to business objectives

Set S.M.A.R.T. goals

The first and foremost step to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy is in creating a winning strategy is to establish your objectives and goals. Without goals, you have no way to measure success or return on investment (ROI).

Each of your goals should be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

This is the S.M.A.R.T. goal framework. It will guide your actions and ensure they lead to real business results.

Step 2. Learn everything you can about your Target audience

Create audience personas

Knowing who your audience—and ideal customer—is and what they want to see on social is key to creating content that they will like, comment on, and share. It’s also critical if you want to turn social media followers into customers for your business.

Try creating audience/buyer personas. These allow you to think of your potential fans, followers, and customers as real people with real wants and needs. And that will allow you to think more clearly about what to offer them.

Gather real-world data

Don’t make assumptions. Think Facebook is a better network for reaching Baby Boomers than Millennials?

 Well, the numbers show that Millennials still outnumber Boomers on the platform.

Social media analytics can also provide a ton of valuable information about who your followers are, where they live, which languages they speak, and how they interact with your brand on social. 

These insights allow you to refine your strategy and better target your social ads.

Step 3. Research the competition

Odds are, your competitors are already using social media—and that means you can learn from what they’re already doing.

Keeping an eye on your rivals shows that you’re open to trying out new ideas for your audience. 

You are not learning if you are not studying and analysing what your competitors are doing. If a competitor employs a technique over and over, it is because it is effective for them. 

You should try the technique out as well to see if it works for you. Your rivals are involved on social media.

Conduct a competitive analysis

A competitive analysis allows you to understand who the competition is and what they’re doing well (and not so well). You’ll get a good sense of what’s expected in your industry, which will help you set social media targets of your own.

This analysis will also help you spot opportunities. For example, maybe one of your competitors is dominant on Facebook, but has put little effort into Twitter or Instagram. 

You might want to focus on the networks where your audience is underserved, rather than trying to win fans away from a dominant player.

Engage in social listening:

Social listening is another way to keep an eye on the competition.

Step 4. Conduct a social media audit

Examine your current efforts:

If you’re already using social media tools, you need to take a step back and look at what you’ve already done and accomplished. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What’s working, and what’s not?
• Who is connecting with you on social?
• Which networks does your target audience use?
• How does your social media presence compare to that of your competitors?

Once you gather all this information in one place, you’ll have a good starting point for planning how to improve your results.

Step 5. Find inspiration

While it’s important that your brand be unique, you can still draw inspiration from other businesses that are great on social.

Get Inspired by Social network success stories

You can usually find these on the business section of the social network’s website. (Here’s Facebook’s, for example.)

These case studies can offer valuable insights you can apply to your own goals for each social network.

Award-winning accounts and campaigns

You could also check out the winners of The Facebook Awards or The Shorty Awards for examples of brands that are at the top of their social media game.

Your favourite brands on social media.

Who do you enjoy following on social media? What do they do that compels people to engage and share their content?

Bonus Tip

Yes Indeed , your content will tell the overall story of your brand, but why not keep your audience up to date with what’s going on with your company in real-time?

Facebook and Instagram, among other sites, have developed their own live streaming features, which are largely under-utilised by major brands. 

Start using these live features now to compete with them until they become popular.

Keeping an eye on your rivals shows that you’re open to trying out new ideas for your audience. 

You are not learning if you are not studying and analysing what your competitors are doing. If a competitor employs a technique over and over, it is because it is effective for them. 

You should try the technique out as well to see if it works for you. Your rivals are involved on social media.