Are you struggling to reach your goals on social media? If you are, having a strategy can help you take the right actions to succeed and use social media effectively. 

What’s the purpose of social media marketing? 

Social media marketing has many advantages for businesses, such as:

• Building more brand awareness
• Having a more engaged audience 
• Selling more products and services 
• Using social listening to learn about your audience 
• Improving your customer service 
• Reaching a larger target audience 

A social media marketing strategy should outline your goals for social media, including metrics that can be used to measure your progress. It should also include specific actions you plan to take to achieve these goals on different platforms.

How to create a social media strategy 

Here’s a breakdown of how to develop a social media marketing plan: 

Step 1 – Have clearly defined goals 

The first step is to pick your main goals. These should be aligned with your business objectives, and they should be specific, relevant, and measurable. 

You should also identify some key metrics that you use for tracking success. These should be things that provide value, like conversion rates, post engagement, or clicks. 

Step 2 – Understand your audience 

Before building a strategy, you also need to research your target audience and create a buyer persona so you can understand who your customers are and what they want. 

To make content that’s engaging to your audience, you need to know basic information about them like their age, location, income, gender, interests, and job title.

It’s critical that you don’t make assumptions about anything. Instead, spend some time gathering data that could help you reach your ideal customer. You can also use social listening tools like Brandwatch to find out more about your customers and competitors. 

Step 3 – Assess your current situation 

If you already have social media profiles for your business, the next step is to perform an audit to see how you can improve them going forward. 

Start by assessing what’s working and what’s not. Are your posts engaging? Do you have a strong presence? Are your customers using any other networks you don’t currently utilize? 

Once you have collected this information, you can start to think about how you can improve, what purpose your accounts are serving, and whether you’re achieving your goals. 

Step 4 – Improve your profiles 

Now you know what your goals are, you can start to improve your strategy for each platform, focusing on specific goals that fit your business objectives. 

Make sure your profiles are complete and that you’ve included consistent branding, like logos and images. You can also add keywords to make your business more searchable. 

Additionally, you should be promoting your social media profiles on other channels, like your website and to your business cards, which you can create using a tool like BusinessCards.co.

Step 5 – Create a content calendar 

People now spend an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes a day on social media. This means that your content could reach a large audience. 

Sharing content is essential, but you need to make sure you’re posting consistently and that your quality social media content for the best impact.

Firstly, you need to set a posting schedule that’s realistic. Then, you can research topics that your audience would find interesting and plan a variety of posts. 

Getting the right mix is vital to support your business goals. Approximately 80% of your posts should inform, educate, or entertain your audience, and 20% can directly promote your brand.

Remember to interact with your audience after posting. If you get comments, you can use this to start conversations and build relationships with your followers.