5 must-haves in your social media marketing strategy
A successful social media marketing strategy requires thorough preparations and established routines. To help you structure your work, our strategist Evelina Andila, has summarized five fundamental pillars your social media marketing strategy needs.
Reading time: 2.5 min
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Define what you want to achieve with your social media channels. Do you want to increase brand awareness, build community, drive traffic to your website, or perhaps increase sales? Step one in your social media marketing strategy is to put the long-term purpose into words.
Next, you need to set the level of ambition through short-term objectives and measurable goals. The goals will make your objectives tangible and function as milestones that will help you evaluate your efforts.
TIP: Define your social media goals SMART. This means that your goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
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Understanding your target audiences is key to a successful social media marketing strategy. In this part of the strategy, you should specify demographics, interests, behaviors, and preferences. This will guide you in the creation of customized content that resonates with the audience. It will also increase the likelihood of you meeting the business goals.
TIP: Limit yourself to 1-3 target audiences to keep your social media marketing strategy at a manageable level.
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Creating a content plan helps you to quite quickly get into a sustainable routine for your social media activities. The content plan should outline the types of content you'll create, the topics you'll cover, and the frequency of your posts. Keep the plan as informative as possible by listing what channel, date, format (e.g. organic post, paid ad), and topic.
TIP: Schedule and organize your content 1-2 months ahead. By planning in advance you’ll ensure consistency and prevent last-minute rushes.
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Social media is a place for dialogue. Hence, you have to be prepared to interact with your target audience through comments and messages. Actively participating in relevant conversations lays a good foundation for building authenticity that can strengthen customer loyalty and brand credibility.
As part of the social media marketing plan, you want to define the tone of voice for your social channels. You also want to describe how to manage various request types. Do you e.g. want the community manager to act as customer service, or not?
TIP: When working with community management for a while, you’ll notice recurring questions. Make sure to save answers to these questions in an internal FAQ. This will help you be prepared to answer questions fast and streamlined, especially if more than one person managing the accounts.
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Establish KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) aligned with the listed goals in your social media marketing strategy. Analyze the KPIs regularly to measure success over time and make data-driven decisions for strategy refinement. Remember to also include “soft insights” in your analysis, such as learnings collected by community managers.
TIP: Social media tools report immense amounts of data which can feel overwhelming. It is therefore important to always focus on your KPIs, as those are your primary measures for success. Analyze the social media performance every month to make sure you have enough data to make data-driven conclusions.
In need of a social media marketing strategy?
Social media is constantly changing so be sure to stay up to date with platform updates and industry trends. This means a social media marketing strategy is not a fixed plan. Rather, it should be dynamic and adapted based on insights gathered.
Last, but definitely not least, be open to experimentation, and trial and error. Even failures give you valuable lessons on how to amp up your strategy for social media.
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