Here’s how you can create a social media strategy that gets you noticed and delivers the results you desire.
Have you ever been at a bar, ready to order a drink, but feel like you are completely invisible to the bartender?
You might have a couple of tactics up your sleeve – adopting an expectant expression when you make eye contact, maybe raising your hand slightly, even indicating to your empty glass – yet somehow, the bartender keeps taking other orders.
And all the while, you’re gradually getting prodded and moved and shuffled further away from the bar. You’re not getting that drink anytime soon.
Social media is like a world-wide crowded bar, full of millions of brands, all jostling for the attention of the people making the drinks. You might try a couple of things to get their attention, but unless you have a solid data-based strategy, you’ll never quite get there.
Here’s how you can create a social media strategy that gets you noticed, delivers the results you desire, and quenches your thirst (for marketing success).
What is a social media strategy?
While many businesses look at the latest social media post to go viral and credit luck, the truth is, most brands that experience social media success anticipated it. They developed a strategy, based on what they know about algorithms and consumer behaviour, and up-to-the-minute trends.
A social media strategy is a road map that will get you to your destination. It establishes a goal, such as to increase sales, raise brand awareness, or sell tickets to an event, and creates a plan as to how social media will achieve this goal.
A social media strategy will include what platforms to use, what type of posts to create, when to post, and which audience to target.
How to create a social media strategy
In marketing, developing a social media strategy requires certain steps. Miss any of these steps and your social media strategy will never be as strong as it could be.
1. Get clear on your goals
Clever marketers use SMART goals to clearly define what they want their social media strategy to achieve. SMART is an acronym for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.
Goals should be achievable and have tangible results that are able to be measured and achieved within a certain time frame.
2. Research your audience
Who is it you want your social media campaign to speak to?
You probably already have a fair idea of the demographics of your customers, but drill a little deeper for better results.
What are your customers consuming on social media? What are they responding to? What do they care about?
3. Research competitors
Learn from the best – that is, brands that offer a similar product or service to you, that are performing well on social media. Identify what they are doing, and take note.
Researching competitors doesn’t mean copying them. Say, for example, one brand is using humorous characters in eye-catching memes, and another is having great success with tutorial videos. Instead of running similar campaigns, think about what is making these campaigns work. It could be that you consider a tone of voice that includes humour, or you decide to increase your use of videos and images.
4. Choose your social media platforms
Often we see businesses focusing their social media campaigns on platforms they’re comfortable with or have traditionally used.
A better suggestion is to do your research and find out where your customers are. They might be spending hours consuming content on TikTok; they could be getting lifestyle inspiration from Instagram; they could be connecting with businesses on LinkedIn.
If your social media is in its early stages, it’s worth adding several platforms to your marketing mix, and analysing the results before focusing more heavily on the ones that are delivering results. From there, it could be beneficial to choose the right social media platforms to focus your efforts.
5. Create and share content
It goes without saying that you should create and share content on your desired social media platforms – but not just any content.
The content you share on social media should offer the consumer something of value to them. Maybe it’s an infographic, or an instructional video, or a fresh take on an issue that interests them.
Always remember, your marketing content should address an issue that is being experienced by the customer, offer a solution, and position your business as the best to address it.
6. Track content performance
There’s no need to wait until the end of a social media campaign to assess what worked and what fell short.
In fact, agility is often the key to successful social media strategies. If a particular post is getting a lot of traction, ramp it up!
7. Review performance, refine activity
Having said that, it’s absolutely essential to spend time at the end of your campaign reviewing its results. But that’s just the first step.
Reviewing your data analytics and using what you’ve discovered to inform your next campaign is how social media strategies really grow a business.
Speak to the marketing experts
At Assemblo, we know what works, we’re across the algorithms, and we know the social media strategy secrets that get results.
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne, and there’s few things we love more than developing social media strategies.
To find out how we can help your business, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or send us a note via the contact form below.