Introduction
3 Billion! Yes, that right nearly 3 billion people across the world today use social media and guess what the number is still counting.
With the advent of various social media platforms and its inherent ability to connect, it has been able to lure a humongous populace over time, so much so that Facebook is a country within itself and we haven’t yet talked about other platforms.
We cannot even imagine a day we haven’t had used social media. Can we? The answer can easily be reckoned from the long pause you took to recall. People check, check and again check.
That’s the trend now, pal! With social media another concept has gained recognition over time and what else it could be other than Social Media Marketing Strategy?
Before you further scratch your head, let’s make it easy for you, it means ‘A process of creating customized content to the context of each individual and various social media platforms to boost engagement and drive traffic to your websites.’
Social media marketing enables you to connect with your target audience, build your brand, shoot-up sales and generating new leads.
With e-commerce becoming the emerging mode of business nowadays, terms like social media marketing strategy have gained more and more importance in the business world.
For a successful social media marketing one should have a strategy. Without a strategy you might be sailing a ship without an anchor and all your efforts directed in posting might go in vain.
Creating a social media plan is the first step towards achieving where you are headed. Without defining your goals, understanding your target audience, and what they want, will become tough and it will be hard to achieve favorable results.
If you want to grow your brand across various social media marketing channels or hone your skills as a social media marketer, having a strategy is the first and foremost step.
5 Strategies to build a solid social media presence
From strategies to mastering the art of social media marketing, we’ve all got you covered. Here a set of social media marketing strategies that would enable you to reach your goals and optimize results.
Content
1. Set goals that resonate with your business
The very first question to ask yourself is ‘Why you want your business to be on social media?’ The answer to this question would help in realizing your goals, whether it is to promote products, to drive site-traffic, or to serve customers.
Social media can generate engagement around your brand, create a community, and can prove useful in serving customers as a customer support channel.
Having predefined goals and a well-developed social media marketing plan would give you an upper-hand over the competitors.
Starting a social media marketing campaign without a goal-oriented strategy would lead you nowhere and you might get lost. Here are some questions to ask while defining your social media marketing goals.
- What are you aiming to achieve from social media marketing?
- Who is your target audience?
- What are you going to share?
- Where are you going to share?
- When are you going to share?
The questions above would help you chalk out a full-proof social media plan for your business and would mean having an endgame in mind.
2. Planning and Publishing to gain customer-attention
An effective social media marketing strategy starts with a consistent presence over social media. Being present on social media enables potential customers to discover your brand and create an authentic, lasting and organic brand awareness.
The main focus here should be publishing a customer-tailored content on various social media marketing channels that reflects your brands’ usefulness and emphasizes business values instead of just publishing promotional content.
By publishing the right content at the right place always consider one of the best content marketing strategies.
Publishing on social media is as simple as posting on your Facebook profile but the game changes when the content to be published is well planned in time instead of just publishing content for the sake of posting it.
Another trick being the differentiating factor is publishing great content, which the audience likes, at the perfect time, and at the perfect rate.
As one has said it rightly “Content is king” and it’s only the content that can make you go awry or it can make you trendy.
3. Listening and Engagement: an impression that you care
Once you have successfully marked your presence online through publishing and posting content people would engage on your content and posts, tag your brand on their pictures, blogs, videos, etc.
Talks about your brand would fly in the air and with that comes the role of creating a social media plan that would enable you to discover conversations about your brand on various social media platforms that you might want to monitor to tap potential customers and convert them into successful leads.
Digging further into your social channels becomes feasible only if you are aware of certain keywords, hashtags or phrases which will take you closer to the target audience much faster.
Striking conversations with your current followers can increase your engagement rate and help spread word of mouth by your cheerful and satisfied customers.
If you get a positive response thank them for the generosity and take hold of the situation before it gets worse.
With your presence now made online and the engagement rate going steeply up you need to ensure that your social media marketing plan effectively locates social media conversations, post mentions, and messages that didn’t tag your business profile
4. Social Media Analytics
After defining goals, setting forth a social media plan, publishing great content, and actively engaging with your followers, you might want to understand why things are not falling in place as anticipated?
If you are thinking along the same lines then probably you need to go deep into the finer nuances of social media marketing.
The thing is you cannot determine the success of your social media plan without tracking data and that’s where Social Media Analytics comes into the picture, which enables you to draw insights on your victorious social media marketing technique as well as the redundant strategy that are better off abandoned.
These analytics should be deployed on all your social channels to conclude which content is performing well with the audience.
It would help in moving forward with the content that generates more engagement, as more the engagement, more are the chances of it getting translated into a possible sale, or someone might knock your doors and make a purchase that way.
Therefore, the analytics enables you to know your social media marketing performance.
5. Advertising and Tracking the Competitors
Social media advertising tools can prove to be a boon for your business and brand value. It allows you to reach a wider audience apart from those who are already following you. These tools are so powerful that you can choose to whom you want your ads to display.
Creating a social media plan that defines your target audience based on their demographics, interests and preferences, behaviors, and more, comes before deploying the social media advertising tools on the field that would increase the result rate.
Along with advertising it’s important to keep track of your competitors and keep an eye on their every move – they can provide valuable keyword research and insights. Looking at the competitors’ profile would directly inform you about the effectiveness and relevance of your marketing strategy.
If your competitors are using a certain strategy that is working for them, you might consider the same for your promotion campaigns as well with a tinge of your personal story and brand value. The aim is not to copy their ideas but what conclusions you can draw about your campaigns.
Before you begin stressing over the content creation ideas, it’s important to know your competitors and their creativity to set yourself apart to carve and cater to your niche.
Wrapping Up
Humans are social beings and this characteristic of humans has led to the development of social media, so much so that it became the fastest growing trend in the history of the world.
When people started connecting through social media a need was felt further to improvise this platform and mutually provide value to the people.
This led to its advancement and the entire human race came across the term of social media businesses, with businesses now being operated on various social media platforms another term gained recognition within no time and we wondered what it could be?
To our surprise the concept of social media marketing gained huge importance in the world of corporates and with that they began coming up with innumerous social media marketing strategies followed by creating social media plans to achieve their goals taking advantage of the huge number of people found on this form of media.
On average, every single person uses social media every day and the market has turned out to be a lucrative option for various upcoming social media websites and platforms. Social media has made it easier to reach people and remain connected with them.
Gone are the days when ship-owners would wait for the customer to visit their stores. It’s the new era where businesses with their social media marketing strategies entice customers on various social media platforms and convert them into sales or successfully drive them to their websites.
They make it nearly impossible for the potential customers to resist the temptation with so much subtlety that the customer doesn’t even feel they are being allured.
All this couldn’t have been possible without the use of social media marketing strategies that are so powerful that business nowadays doesn’t even require an offline presence to conduct business, an online one has become far more than sufficient.
FAQ
A. The 4Ps of social marketing are as follows:-
I. Product – In social media, Content is the product. It’s the product to which customers are attracted the most. The quality of content affects the overall social media plan and your entire social media campaign is driven by it.
Make sure the content is built around creative themes, style, consistency, and quality. Customers should be able to decipher easily what is your content about and what values does it offer.
II. Price – In social media marketing, price is the cost of accessing and consumption of data for all your marketing efforts across various social media marketing channels.
III. Place – Place is nothing but the intelligent use of social media channels to get close to potential customers. Even if you have the best content in the world, it’s of no use if the target customer is unable to find it or access it.
Here are some objectives behind social media marketing:-
1)Successful generation of leads
2) Increasing sales
3) Active engagement with the people
4)Increasing influence over people
5) Good reputation
A well-developed and timely executed social media marketing plan can fulfill various objectives. Below are a few of them:-
a) Brand Awareness
b) Enhance Public Relations
c) Build a community
d) Driving sales and leads
Social media has a tremendous impact on marketing due to which the relationship between customers and businesses have changed a lot.
It has brought customers near to the businesses where businesses can generate lead based on the choices and behavior of the customers.
Social media has opened new avenues for marketing which is changing its pace at a phenomenal rate. Social media helps in developing business tactics proving beneficial both for MNCs and small businesses.
Through social media campaigns run by businesses, they figure out the likes and preferences of customers as well as the latest trends adopted by the public.
Social media marketing helps a brand to build a strong online presence through innovative techniques and customer satisfaction.