![](https://www.bizgenx.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/pic-bizgenx-90.jpg)
10 Simple And Effective Ways To Build A Social Media Marketing Strategy That Works
Social media marketing is the practice of using social media channels to promote your brand, product or service. It can help you increase your brand awareness, build engaged communities, sell products and services, and measure your performance.
There are many ways to build your social media marketing strategy, but here are 10 common steps that you can follow:
1. Choose goals that align to your business objectives.
Make sure they are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely (S.M.A.R.T.).
Specific: Your goals should be clear and well-defined. For example, instead of saying “I want to grow my social media presence”, say “I want to increase my Instagram followers by 10% in the next three months”.
Measurable: Your goals should be quantifiable and trackable. For example, use metrics like followers, likes, comments, shares, clicks, conversions, etc. to measure your progress.
Attainable: Your goals should be realistic and achievable. For example, don’t set a goal to get 1 million followers in a month if you only have 100 right now. Instead, set a goal that challenges you but is within your reach.
Relevant: Your goals should be aligned with your business objectives and values. For example, don’t set a goal to increase your TikTok views if your target audience is not on that platform. Instead, set a goal that supports your overall marketing strategy and brand identity.
Timely: Your goals should have a deadline or timeframe. For example, don’t set a goal to increase your Facebook engagement without specifying when you want to achieve it. Instead, set a goal that has a clear start and end date.
2. Learn everything you can about your target audience.
Find out their demographics, preferences, pain points, and motivations.
Demographics: This includes basic information like age, gender, location, income, education, occupation, etc. You can use tools like Facebook Insights or Google Analytics to get this data.
Preferences: This includes their likes, dislikes, interests, hobbies, values, beliefs, etc. You can use tools like surveys, polls, quizzes, or social listening to get this data.
Pain points: This includes their problems, challenges, frustrations, needs, wants, etc. You can use tools like customer feedback forms, reviews, testimonials, or online forums to get this data.
Motivations: This includes their goals, aspirations, desires, hopes, fears, etc. You can use tools like interviews, focus groups, or buyer personas to get this data.
3. Get to know your competition.
Analyze their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) and identify gaps in the market that you can fill.
Strengths: This includes what your competitors are doing well or better than you on social media. For example, their content quality, their engagement rate, their brand awareness, their customer loyalty, their influencer partnerships, etc.
Weaknesses: This includes what your competitors are doing poorly or worse than you on social media. For example, their content frequency, their response time, their customer service, their reputation, their innovation, etc.
Opportunities: This includes what external factors or trends can benefit your social media marketing strategy or give you an edge over your competitors. For example, new platforms or features, new markets or niches, new customer segments or needs, new regulations or policies, new technologies or tools, etc.
Threats: This includes what external factors or trends can harm your social media marketing strategy or give your competitors an advantage over you. For example, new competitors or substitutes, changing customer preferences or behaviors, negative reviews or feedback, legal issues or risks, cyberattacks or hacks, etc.
4. Do a social media audit.
Evaluate your current social media presence, performance and audience engagement.
Presence: This includes which social media platforms you are currently using and how they fit with your goals and audience. For example, are you using the right platforms for your business? are you reaching the right audience on each platform? are you consistent with your branding and messaging across platforms? are you following the best practices and guidelines for each platform?
Performance: This includes how well you are achieving your goals and metrics on each platform. For example, are you meeting or exceeding your targets for followers growth? are you generating enough traffic or leads from social media? are you getting positive ROI from social media? are you tracking and analyzing your results regularly?
Engagement: This includes how well you are interacting with your audience on each platform. For example, are you posting relevant and valuable content for your audience? are you responding to comments and messages promptly and politely? are you encouraging conversations and feedback from your audience? are you building relationships and trust with your audience?
5. Set up accounts and improve profiles.
Choose the best social media platforms for your business and optimize your profiles with relevant information, keywords, images and links.
Choosing the best platforms: This means selecting the social media channels that match your goals, audience, and content. For example, choose platforms that have a large and active user base choose platforms that cater to your target demographic choose platforms that suit your content type and format choose platforms that offer features and functions that you need
Optimizing your profiles: This means creating or updating your social media accounts with information that reflects your brand identity and value proposition. For example, use a consistent name logo and handle across platforms use a clear and catchy bio or description that summarizes who you are and what you do use keywords that are relevant to your industry or niche use high-quality images that showcase your products or services use links that direct your audience to your website or other platforms
6. Find inspiration.
Look for successful examples of social media marketing from other brands in your industry or niche and learn from their best practices.
Examples: This includes finding and following brands that are doing well on social media and analyzing what makes them stand out. For example, what kind of content do they post? how do they engage with their audience? what tone and voice do they use? how do they showcase their personality and values? how do they leverage user-generated content or influencer marketing?
Best practices: This includes applying the lessons and tips that you learn from the examples to your own social media marketing strategy. For example, create a content mix that balances promotional and educational content use hashtags, keywords, and tags to increase your visibility and reach use visuals, videos, and stories to capture attention and emotion use polls, questions, and challenges to boost interaction and feedback use analytics, insights, and testing to optimize your performance
7. Create a social media content calendar.
Plan your content ahead of time and schedule it to be posted at optimal times for your audience.
Content calendar: This is a tool that helps you organize your content creation and distribution process. It can be a spreadsheet, a document, or an app that shows what content you will post, when you will post it, and on which platform you will post it. For example, a content calendar can help you plan your content themes and topics a content calendar can help you align your content with your goals and campaigns a content calendar can help you avoid duplication or gaps in your content a content calendar can help you manage your resources and deadlines
Scheduling: This is a feature that allows you to automate your content posting process. It can be a built-in function on some platforms or an external tool that connects to your platforms. For example, scheduling can help you save time and effort scheduling can help you post consistently and frequently scheduling can help you reach your audience at the best times scheduling can help you avoid errors or delays in your posting
8. Create compelling content.
Produce high-quality content that educates entertains or inspires your audience and aligns with your goals.
High-quality: This means that your content is well-written well-designed well-produced and well-formatted. For example, your content is clear concise and coherent your content is accurate reliable and credible your content is attractive appealing and professional your content is easy to read watch or listen to
Educate entertain or inspire: This means that your content provides value to your audience and motivates them to take action. For example, your content teaches them something new or useful your content makes them laugh smile or feel good your content sparks their curiosity creativity or passion your content encourages them to share comment or buy
Align with your goals: This means that your content supports your social media marketing objectives and metrics. For example, your content increases your brand awareness or reputation your content builds your community engagement or loyalty your content drives traffic leads or sales to your website or store your content measures your performance or feedback
9. Track performance and make adjustments.
Use analytics tools to measure your social media metrics and evaluate your progress towards your goals.
Analytics tools: These are software applications that help you collect analyze and report data from your social media platforms. They can be native tools provided by the platforms themselves or third-party tools that integrate with the platforms. For example, analytics tools can help you track metrics like impressions reach engagement clicks conversions etc. analytics tools can help you monitor trends patterns insights etc. analytics tools can help you create reports dashboards charts etc. analytics tools can help you compare benchmark test etc.
Metrics: These are quantitative indicators that measure how well you are performing on social media. They can be divided into four categories: awareness engagement conversion and advocacy. For example, awareness metrics measure how many people see or know about your brand on social media e.g. followers impressions reach etc. engagement metrics measure how many people interact with your brand on social media e.g. likes comments shares etc. conversion metrics measure how many people take a desired action after seeing your brand on social media e.g. clicks leads sales etc. advocacy metrics measure how many people recommend or promote your brand on social media e.g. ratings reviews referrals etc.
Adjustments: These are changes or improvements that you make to your social media marketing strategy based on the data and feedback that you get from analytics tools. For example, adjustments can help you optimize your content quality frequency timing etc. adjustments can help you improve your audience targeting segmentation personalization etc.
10. Test new ideas and experiment with different formats platforms and strategies to see what works best for your business.
Testing new ideas: This means trying out different types of content or campaigns that are creative innovative or unconventional. For example, test new ideas that are inspired by current events trends or memes test new ideas that are based on customer feedback suggestions or requests test new ideas that are fun engaging or interactive test new ideas that are bold provocative or controversial
Experimenting with different formats: This means using different ways of presenting or delivering your content to your audience. For example, experiment with different formats like images videos stories live streams etc. experiment with different formats like infographics quizzes polls tutorials etc. experiment with different formats like user-generated content influencer marketing co-creation etc. experiment with different formats like ephemeral content evergreen content seasonal content etc.
Experimenting with different platforms: This means using different social media channels to reach or expand your audience. For example, experiment with different platforms like Facebook Instagram Twitter LinkedIn etc. experiment with different platforms like TikTok Snapchat Pinterest YouTube etc. experiment with different platforms like Reddit Quora Medium Tumblr etc. experiment with different platforms like Clubhouse Discord Telegram etc.
Experimenting with different strategies: This means using different methods or techniques to achieve your goals or improve your performance. For example, experiment with different strategies like paid organic or hybrid experiment with different strategies like content marketing email marketing social media marketing etc. experiment with different strategies like SEO SEM SMM etc. experiment with different strategies like A/B testing multivariate testing split testing etc.