- Alise Talley
3 Easy Steps to Planning Your Social Media Strategy
Updated: Feb 18, 2022
Okay, so you’ve started a business, or you have a new project that requires getting the news out. Now what?
Whatever your dream is, the world deserves to see it.
If it’s something you care about, there’s someone out there who will care about it, too. The key is how to find them.
Social media has been aptly criticized for perpetuating mental health issues and political divisiveness, but it’s not all bad.
Thanks to the internet, small businesses in Savannah, Georgia can reach people on the other side of the country.
Hell, on the other side of the world.
Using social media to your advantage can mean growing your business in ways you never could before.
But something this important requires a plan of attack, a strategy if you will.
Step 1: Establish Your digital marketing Goals
Before you begin your marketing campaigns online, you first have to know what your goals are. Knowing what you want to get out of campaigns can help you make the best use of your resources. And it’s far more effective than a scattered approach of throwing money at Instagram and seeing what sticks.
Here are a few ideas to get you going.
Brand Awareness for social media profiles
Let people know what you’re about. Increasing brand awareness means promoting your business’s mission rather than your products. This is the thing that gives your business a personality for customers to interact with.
As a result, customer loyalty will grow.
Leads and Sales through digital marketing
Selling more products is the most straightforward goal. You can do this by updating customers on sales and promos.
Expand Your Audience with digital marketing
Social media is a great tool to grow your audience. It allows you to connect with a large number of people who have similar interests. If you learn to use the algorithm to increase your reach, more people will see your business, thus more chances that someone will like what they see.
The key is to also learn about what your audience is interested in. Pay attention to what people in your industry are talking about and how others respond to it.
While you’re lurking around your competitor's pages, see what hashtags and keywords they’re using. Adopting these into your own posts will let users that follow those topics have a greater chance of seeing your posts on their feed.
Community Engagement on social media
Maybe, you want to be the conversation starter. Getting your audience to interact with your brand will make you more memorable to them and more likely to use your services.
What’s the best way to reach your audience? What do they respond to? Play around with different ways to communicate with people, and see what works best.
Website Traffic
You’re paying for your website domain and putting in the effort to make the web design fit your brand, so you probably want people to actually see your site. You can increase your website traffic by posting content that encourages users to visit it or by paying for ads.
With any goal you choose, don’t overcomplicate it. Start small and expand. This way, you can best see how different changes impact your results.
Step 2: Pick Your Channels
After you know your goals, you need to know the best social networks that will fulfill them. As you’ve probably seen, the internet is overrun with social networks for all kinds of purposes. But today, I’m only going to talk about three.
Figuring out which one works best for you is all about research and experimentation.
There’s no denying that this OG social site is still a big platform for marketers. With Facebook marketing, you can be as specific as you want to when it comes to targeting users. Whatever combination of interests, age groups, gender, or location you want in your target audience, Facebook will get you to them.
And you can have any type of ads you want. You can have pictures, videos, or text. The world is your oyster.
Aside from ads, Facebook is good for building a community. Through Facebook groups, you can have conversations related to your brand to better build connections with your audience.
While Facebook’s numbers have peaked, Instagram’s billion users are still marginally growing every year. If you’re looking to appeal to the younger generations, Instagram is where they are, especially the influencers.
Instagram is an influencer marketing hub. On Instagram, influencers can post promotions for your product and market it in unique ways.
This highly visual platform is great for showing off your product and eye-catching graphics to go with it. And the new Reels feature allows you to take creative, short-form videos.
Twitter has its own benefits as well. This social network site was built on monitoring the latest trends. It allows you to see the latest fads and industry conversations.
With thousands of hashtags flying around, you can customize your own to engage with your user base. See how people respond to your business by searching up your company name. You’ll be shown every tweet your brand was directly mentioned in.
At the heart of Twitter, there is communication. That’s all it really is. You can use this for your benefit by having direct conversations with your audience.
From this, you can help with customer service problems or talk about what your customers want to see from you.
Of course, there are many other platforms you can market on. And I encourage you to try as many as possible. A multichannel marketing strategy is the best way to get the greatest reach.
Step 3: Plan Your Content
Be Consistent
Posting regularly will make sure your page doesn’t go stale and is the best way of getting media algorithms to push your content. You should make a schedule for when you want to post and queue up your content beforehand, instead of waiting the day of.
In your schedule, it’s good to note where you’ll be posting to, as well. Organization is your best friend.
With that, be consistent in what you post. Having a consistent theme is the easiest way to get your brand across. Whether it’s a color scheme or having your product in each visual post, the best branding will have a strong theme that ties certain imagery to your business in the eyes of your audience.
Instagram is best for creating this visual branding, as it’s heavily reliant on pictures. But that doesn’t mean it can’t apply to other platforms. Whatever you choose to do, keep the same tone across all platforms.
If someone visits your Instagram and Twitter page, they should be able to tell it’s the same brand without reading the username. The same goes with your captions. Are you using the same language throughout your social networks?
It’s okay for your brand to evolve, but be purposeful about the changes you make and the meaning behind it.
Be Interactive
One way to get users to engage with your content is by posting theirs. User-generated content (UGC) is when users post about something related to your product that you can put on your page. And let me tell you, people love this!
Reposting UGCs encourages more people to interact with your brand, as a result. You get content for your page and are increasing community engagement.
Use Stories
There’s nothing people love more than a behind-the-scenes look, and that’s what stories let you do. Yes, you can just post pictures and videos onto your page, but stories feel more personalized. Like it’s something special for your followers.
Stories are also temporary, so users feel they have to look at them now before it expires. And who would want to miss out on that? Not to mention social media algorithms favor accounts that post on their story more frequently.
Stories have an interactive quality that regular posting doesn’t. It’s great for quick updates, fun daily content, and showing off the wonderful personalities you have on staff.
Take Videos
Don’t let videos scare you. They’re not as intimidating as they seem. You don’t need a full film crew to shoot a good video. All you really need is a smartphone and an idea.
Videos are great to show your product in action and can give your company more of a narrative. If you have a story about why you made your business, videos are an outlet that can showcase that. You don’t even have to talk if you don’t want to (but, it helps).
If you’re still weary about videography, Sugoi can film and edit your videos for you. So, you don’t have to stress.
When it comes to social media marketing, it’s important to plan your strategy out, so you go into it feeling confident. Through social sites, you can see your business grow in just a short period of time.
Why wait? Start your marketing journey now.