A few years ago, many businesses still pondered whether or not they should invest in social media marketing. While some who did were reaping great success, others struggled to see any real return on investment.
Today, it’s no longer a question of whether you should do social media, but rather how to do it more effectively. The best way to see results with social media marketing is to set goals and have a plan.
Success doesn’t just happen. It’s planned for.
Following are 6 easy steps to help you create your own killer social media plan for your business.
Step 1: Look Back
Before you start thinking about where you’d like your social media marketing to be, take a quick look at where it is now and what you’ve accomplished so far.
- What social networks are you using? Why? Which ones have been more successful?
- What content have you been sharing? What kind of content has been more successful?
- How are your competitors using the various networks? How do your efforts stack up? What are you doing better? What can you do differently?
Step 2: Look Forward
Here is where you will define specific goals for your social media efforts that compliment your overall business objectives.
To help you set realistic, measurable goals here are some of the best ways to use social media:
1. To generate leads and interest.
2. To engage with and build rapport with current and potential customers.
3. To drive traffic to your website or physical store.
Step 3: Look At Your Audience
Who are your ideal customers? Who do you want to connect with? Be as specific as possible as this will help you determine the best social networks to use, as well as the type of content you will need to share to engage your audience.
Define things like:
- Age
- Gender
- Occupation (job title)
- Location
- Income
- Pain points (that your business can solve)
- Interests (that your business can relate to)
- Values (that your business also supports)
- Preferred social networks
Step 4: Look At Your Content
Content is what fuels social media, so it’s absolutely crucial to your success that you invest time and effort into creating visually appealing and engaging content for your audience.
List the topics that your content will revolve around as well as the formats that you will use.
Some examples of suitable content types include images, videos, blog posts, polls/questions.
Focus on creating content that aligns with your goals, brand, budget and skill level. Also pay special note to the networks you will be using and the type of content that works best there. Once you have decided on the best content to share, create a content calendar to help you organize your posting - network, frequency, day/time, and which posts you will promote (paid ads).
Step 5: Look At Your KPI’s
"KPI" is just a really cool way to say "Key Performance Indicator". KPI’s let you know how well you’re advancing towards your goals and targets i.e whether your social media plan is working or needs work.
Depending on your goals, some of the metrics you should be measuring are:
- Follower growth
- Reach
- Engagement (likes, comments, clicks, video views)
- Website traffic
- Click-through
- Sentiment
- Hashtag Use
- Brand mentions
- Conversions/ Leads
Determine what KPI’s you will track and set targets.
Step 6: Look At Your Progress
Equally important to your social media marketing success is the ability to track, analyze and optimize as you go. After all, you don’t want to be doing social media just for the sake of it, you want it to help grow your business!
A good social media management tool will allow you to do all this and more. I highly recommend using one. Most offer a free trial or free version so you can see if it fits your needs before you commit. You can also use the free insights that some networks like Facebook and Instagram offer.
Look at the data and let it guide you in what to do more of, and less of, and where you should be putting more of your focus.
Social media is always changing and so you must be flexible. Optimize as you grow and learn more about your audience and their needs.
There’s no doubt that social media marketing is a great way for businesses to increase brand loyalty, build relationships and boost sales. However, it can also be very time consuming to plan, prepare content, post, interact and respond to comments and queries. It can get overwhelming especially if you can’t fully dedicate yourself to it. We’ve helped many businesses get their social media marketing on track and reach their goals! We’d love to help you too. Drop us a note to start the conversation and get a quote.