The simple social media marketing strategy

It’s without a doubt a company needs a strategy to succeed. Otherwise how would you know what path to take next? Let’s see what the simple social media marketing strategy entails.

What is a social media marketing strategy?

It is a summary of everything you plan to do and hope to achieve on your social media journey. It lays out your actions and lets you know whether you’re succeeding or failing and points for improvement.

Keep it detailed – The more specific your plan is, the more effective it will be.

Keep it concise – Don’t make it impossible to achieve.

In this post, we’ll talk through how you can make a simple social media marketing strategy of your own.

How to create the simple social media marketing strategy in 7 easy steps

1. Choose the right social media platforms to market your business.

The first step to creating a winning strategy is to establish your goals and objectives.

They should be measurable and relevant to your brand aim.

Outline the social media platforms you wish to implement in your strategy. Starting with 3 is always a good start. That way you can balance your time to each platform equally across the day.

You can track different goals for different networks, or even different uses for each network.

For example: If you use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your website, you would measure click-throughs. If Instagram is used for brand awareness, you might track the number of Instagram Story views. And if you advertise on Facebook, cost-per-click (CPC) is a common success metric.

Start developing your social media marketing plan by writing down your daily key points of action. You can use a social media planner to make it easier for you to set your goals.

2. Learn about your audience

Who is your audience?

Even though it would be absolutely perfect to pitch to the whole world your business idea, you simply CAN’T!

Your audience is created from various factors.

Are you targeting students, elderly, men, women, kids, adults, culture, ethnicity, race etc. These factors can all play huge parts in defining your audience.

Knowing who your audience is and what they want to see on social media is key.

That way you can create content that they will like, comment on, and share. An audience determines your virality of a post on social media, so it has to be targeted correctly.

Other factors can include:

• Age
• Location
• average income
• Typical job title or industry
• Interests
• Personal relations
• Etc.

Once you start building a following, try to understand your audience even more.

Why did they come to your page? What do they want in return?

This will help you market the next step in your business strategy.

Gather data

Never make assumptions. You never know who will like your content or what you have to offer. When pitching for an audience, include a wide range. Eventually as your brand grows, it will begin to become more targeted.

How to define your audience?

You can use Social media analytics to find a more targeted audience.

Social media analytics can provide valuable information about your audience. You can get insights to who they are, what’s there location, how they found you and how they interact with your brand on social media. These insights allow you to refine your strategy and better target your audience.

3. Know your competition

A crucial part many brands tend to skip is knowing their competition.

Do you not feel threatened? Well I guess you shouldn’t! Your brand, Your rules, PERIOD!

However “keep your friends close but your enemies closer” is a saying for a reason.

Odds are your competitors are already out there, trying to achieve what you want, and using social media platforms to create and engage with their audience. 

This isn’t a bad thing, it’s actually helpful. You can use tools to see what actions your competitors are taking and mirror them but in a better style!

Conduct a competitive analysis

You can conduct a competitive analysis. This allows you to understand who your competition is and what they’re doing well (and not so well).

This can help give a sense of direction for your social media marketing strategies.

It will also help you spot opportunities.

For example, If your competitor is dominant on Facebook, but has put little or no effort into Twitter or Instagram. You can focus on the networks where your audience is under served. This will make you the number one spotlight on the under served platforms.

So rather than trying to win fans away from your competitor on the same platform, you can consider other platforms to create an attracted audience.

Be wise and play it clever.

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4. Always audit your social media plans

If you’re using social media, then make sure to take time out and reflect on what your achieving from it. You could analyse your actions on social media and ask questions like:

• What’s working, and what’s not?
• Who is engaging with your content?
• Which networks does your target audience use?
• How does your social media presence compare to the competition?
• Is your following growing, reducing or at stead still.

Once you collect that information, you can start thinking about ways to improve.

Your audit should give you a clear picture of what purpose each of your social accounts serves. If the purpose of an account isn’t clear, then you may have to change its technique or even consider ditching it to move on to another.

5. Set up each account to a specific task 

Decide which networks you want to use for certain tasks.

For example, many make up artists use Snapchat and Instagram for tutorials as these platforms are video and picture based. They use Twitter for customer service and Facebook for analytics, it all balances out this way.

Set up your profiles

Once you’ve decided which networks to focus on, it’s time to create your profiles. Or improve existing ones so they align with your strategy. 

Ensure to fill out all the required info so your customer can read about you on one page without having to faff around on different pages.

Create an enticing bio which will help draw people into your profile and become followers.

Include keywords and hashtags where relevant. Keywords will help improve your SEO ranking and get recognised.

Use consistent branding throughout all your social accounts. People recognise a picture more than a name. If your brand logo is the same on all platforms, it will be easily recognisable for your followers to find you.

Ask your followers

Consumers like interaction. They like it when a brand they’ve taken the time out for to reply, actually replies back.

It gives a positive impression.

You can ask your customers direct, get them involved in your projects so they are more eager and excited to purchase your items when you launch. Ensure to deliver through what they ask and avoid click-baiting your way to success.

6. Create a social media calendar

Sharing great content is essential at the right times. Sharing content at the right time will give the maximum impact.

You can post manually or use a scheduler.

Check out the Top Schedule Tools I use for planning my posts

Set your posting schedule

Your social media content calendar should list the time and date at which you will publish types of content on each channel.

Posts can include images, videos, quotes, blog posts, promotions etc.

Your calendar should also ensure your posts are spaced out appropriately and published at the optimal times.

Determine the right mix of content

If your just starting out, the likely chance of you having enough things to post will be limited.

You can use the 80-20 rule when starting out.

• 80% of your posts should be of others to share (copyright mentions included), to inform, educate, or entertain your audience
• 20% of your own content to promote your brand.

As time goes on, your content will increase, eventually becoming, 80% of yours and 20% of others (or non traffic related)

You could also try the popular social media rule of thirds:

• One-third of your content promotes your business, converts readers, and generates profit.
• One third of your content shares ideas and stories from thought leaders in your industry or like-minded businesses.
• One-third of your content is personal interactions with your audience

7. Evaluate and adjust your strategy if required

As you begin your social media journey, you will face many changes along the way.

Your strategy should be updated at all times to stay informed with your audience.

You also may find that some strategies don’t work as well as you’d anticipated, while others are working even better than expected. You can then alter your strategy to give you most benefits.

Re-evaluate, test, rinse and repeat!

Summary

• Choose platforms, plan, create, and schedule posts to each chosen network.
• Include and track relevant keywords, topics, and accounts.
• Stay on top of engagement with a universal inbox of your brand and ensure to reply on a timely manner.
• Use additional tools such as schedulers or analytical tools if required to streamline certain asks.
• Analyse performance reports and improve your strategy as needed.
• With all the efforts your putting in, sit back and watch your business grow!

Do you follow a social media strategy? Let me know in the comments below.