Social Media Marketing Guide
Social Media Marketing Strategy
Social media has taken over the world one business at a time. With the proliferation of business owners competing to reach the top, social media marketing strategy has become more important than ever for unlocking a brand’s maximum potential.
Read on to find out some of the most effective strategies of marketing through social media that can help you build your brand, drive engagement, and secure a foothold in an ever-evolving digital realm.
What is Social Media Marketing (SMM)?
The essence of any social media marketing strategy lies in utilizing different social media platforms to optimise the user-brand interaction and drive engagement towards the target audience. For this, knowing and connecting with your user bank is extremely important. This involves implementing everything from publishing timely content on your socials and tailoring each post for the intended audience to measuring results and securing social media advertisements.
You need to start with the basics to build your social media marketing strategy.
Here is a list of the most commonly used terms related to SMM:
Social Media Content
This includes all the visual, auditory, and written content shared on social media platforms. However, each text, video, image, or link that is put up on your SM platform should reflect the brand’s vision and values. Identify the kind of personality that your brand resonates with and customize the social media content accordingly. A business can choose from a wide array of content like branded graphics, infographics, videos, GIFs, memes, blog content, etc.
Social Media Content Calendar
Next comes the organization once the brand has a content strategy in place. Social media content calendars are an effective way to plan out your content. Social marketers often take the help of content calendars to schedule and systemize:
· The date and time of publishing
· The platform and account where the content is to be uploaded
· Image and post copy
· Other accompanying media
· Links and tags to be include
Hashtags
These are a social marketer’s holy grail. Hashtags are most commonly used on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Such tools make it easy for users to discover your brand amongst an already over-saturated content pool.
Shares and Likes
Once your content is up, it is up to the users to carry it forward. Most SM platforms allow users to interact with the content by liking, commenting, and sharing it. This helps in the broader reception and expanding the reach of each brand. The more shares one post has, the more likely it is to fare well in social media marketing.
Cornerstones of Building an SMM Strategy
Social media marketing strategy forms the core of any good SMM plan. Creating a blueprint for your intended aims and the prospective audience is always advisable.
Determine your goals
Begin with a few goals that you would like to accomplish. We have listed a few examples of what your goals may look like:
Amplify brand awareness
Create a story for your brand which tells the audience who you are. The success of a brand relies not just on promotional activities but on how unique and authentic the brand’s storytelling is.
Creating a community
When users start relating to the brand’s vision, the next step is to leverage the brand’s services, personality, customer reviews, etc., to increase community engagement.
Generate sales and leads
Any interested client will always approach a brand with certain expectations. To generate revenue, brands should level with the customers, include new additions, products, and promos in their social media posting strategy, and introduce exclusive deals for their followers.
Choose your platform
Think about which tools represent your brand best, then choose a social media platform. For instance, choose platforms like Instagram and TikTok if your strengths lie in photography and videography. Initially, test the waters with the most prominent SM platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Once you are comfortable with the mechanism of SMM, you can also go for smaller niche social media platforms that augment your business.
Schedule your content
Previously, we visited the concept of social media calendars. These become a handy addition to your social media marketing strategy as they influence brand engagement and awareness.
Finding the best publishing schedule for you might take some trial, but do not forget to employ analytics in the process. Each social media platform gives its users post analytics to measure who, where, and how many people a post reaches.
Focus On The Next Step
The aim is to keep growing.
There is never a good time to stop building your social media marketing strategy. There are countless businesses ready to launch their career on the digital spectrum. As a brand that aims to achieve continuous success, it is imperative to keep allowing your social media game to evolve. And once you learn the art of strategizing SMM, your business will only go onwards and upwards.
How Can Digital Drushti Help You?
We are a premium digital marketing consultancy & learning platform for digital and social media marketing.
Digital Drushti provides comprehensive online/offline courses conceptualised by experts with cross-industry expertise. Our courses/workshops cater to students (graduates), management/working professionals, and business owners.
We are the right platform for you if you want to take up a social media course.
If you want to know more copywriting tips, social media, and digital marketing across all major platforms, check out our website or follow our founder Trupti Rahate. She is a seasoned digital marketing professional with a decade-and-a-half-long career in the industry.