8 Steps in creating social media marketing

A social media marketing strategy is a summary of everything you plan and hope to achieve on social media. Strategy helps you to know what to do and measures your success or failure.

To create a social media strategy, We will consider the following steps:

(1)  Goals Setting:

we set social media that are inline with business objectives. Setting our goals we consider the acronym S.M.A.R.T which stands for

• Specific.
• Measurable.
• Attainaable.
• Relevant.
• Time-band.

These guides your actions which will lead to great results. It is also important to consider and track meaninful metrics. We have vanity metricslike retweets and likes which are easy to track but their real values cannot be proven, Therefore we focus on targets such as lead generated, web referrals and conversion rate.

(2) Learning about your audience;

Your audience is your ideal customer, Therefore it is important to know what they like, comment on and share. It is also possible to convert some of your social media followers to your customers, for every follower invited or not, who like or comment on your posts is a potential customer. To achieve this, it is important you create an audience personas, Gather real-world data, and if possible create a positive interactive section.

(3) Research the competition:

Every business has a competition. It is therefore important you know the strenght and weakness of your competitor. To do this you have to conduct a competitive analysis and engage in social listening.

(4) Conduct a social media audit:

While carrying out your strategies it is important that you examine and measure your efforts from time to time. By doing this, you will know what is working and what is not, Who is is connecting with you on social media, which networks does your target audience use and what is the strenght of your major competitor over you.

Note that there might be some impostor accounts who might be using your business name. It is important to report such account to protect the interest and safety of your customers and your business.

(5) Set up accounts and improve existing profiles:

While you define which network to use, you will also define your strategy for each of these networks. In most cases facebook, instagram and snapchats are popular among the younger generation. It is also important to create a solid mission statement for a particular social network.

Below is a chart showing the methods used to communicate with customers in the month of february, 2019.

(6) Draw inspiration from other businesses:

To do this, you can analyze other businesses that are great on social media by;

1. a) knowing their social network success stories.
2. b) Knowing award winning accounts and campaigns.
3. c) Identifying your favourite brand on social media examples are national geographic for instagram and IKEA for twitter.

(7) Creating a social media content calendar:

For your content to get the maximum impact on your audience, It is important you create a posting schedule and plot your content mix. Your schedule includes both your day-to-day posting and content for social media campaigns. It lists the dates and times at which you will publish types of content on each channel. It plans all your social media activities ranging from images and link sharing to blog posts and videos. It ensures your posts are spaced out properly and published at the right time. It is important that your calendar reflects the mission statement you have assigned to each social profile so that everything you post is working to support your business goals.

(8) Evaluating and adjusting your strategy:

For the first time when implementing your strategies you may experience some drawbacks or falls, this should not get you discouraged, rather it should warm you up for a better performance. To evaluate and adjust your strategy it is important to track your date by tracking your social visitors as they move through your website. This is to enable you see exactly which social posts drive the most traffic to your website. You can also use this information to test different posts, campaign and strategies against one another. Constant testing allows you to understand what works and what does not work, so you can refine your strategy in time. It is important you carry out surveys like knowing their needs and expectations and what they will like to see more.