Creating a Social Media Marketing Strategy in 10 Easy and Effective Steps

Posted: May 25, 2021 | Last updated: April 4, 2024

Social media has been a core component of marketing for more than a decade now. What started as a platform for sharing personal experiences has turned into a sales and marketing hub for businesses. This is true especially during a pandemic when there’s nowhere to go but online. With the growing competition on social networks, it’s important to establish a solid social media marketing strategy. 

Creating a social media marketing strategy involves many trials, adjustments, and evaluations. It’s not easy, but not impossible either. Whether you’re starting from scratch or building a new social media strategy for the nth time, you should follow clear and smart guidelines. 

You may wonder what are social media marketing strategies most suitable for your brand. Well, you’re in luck as we’ve prepared the best social media strategy examples and steps to help you get started. 

Is Social Media an Effective Marketing Strategy?

You may ask, “what are the 4 types of marketing strategies?” If we’re going to focus on digital and online marketing, you may do the following:

• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns
• SEO and content marketing

Of the four marketing strategies mentioned above, social media is the most effective. According to social media marketing statistics, 73% of marketers believe that social media marketing has been very effective for their business. Currently, there are more than three billion active social media users and 54% of social browsers use the platform to research and buy products. 

With the growing users and purchasers on social media, there’s a bigger chance for businesses to gain more customers and sales. The platform doesn’t only offer convenience and ease of use but also solid engagements, effective marketing, and loyal customers. 

What are the Five Most Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies?

In creating social media marketing for your brand, your primary goal should be to make your audience happy. There are different kinds of social media marketing strategies that you can do for your brand. But in this context, we highlight the top five strategies that worked for successful businesses. 

Planning

A business without a plan is like a dream without action. When you plan, you know your objectives and the path that you’ll take. It serves as the foundation for your business’ success and guidance for your venture. 

Content

We market our brand because we want to convey a message to our customers. Without content, your brand message won’t be delivered effectively. Through content, we can tell a story and have a deeper connection with our audience. 

Customer Service

It’s an inevitable truth that your customers pay for your business. Whatever type of marketing you have for your brand, you must ensure that your customers are at the core of it. After all, what’s the purpose of marketing? To acquire more customers and produce more sales, right? 

Collaboration

Influencer partnership is an effective social media marketing strategy when it comes to establishing brand reputation and promoting authenticity. You may advertise your products with all your resources, but your audience needs honest reviews from real people. Moreover, collaborating with influencers can widen your audience base, especially if the influencer has a large and active following. 

Read this Reech Influence Cloud review to get connected with the best influencers for your brand. 

Tracking

Measuring your success is the right way to know how you spend your time and effort on social media marketing. If you won’t track your campaigns, you’ll never know how to improve or what are the strategies that worked for your business. Most importantly, we track our success to determine whether our objectives are met. 

Creating a Social Media Marketing Strategy for Small Business

After knowing the most effective social strategies, we’re down to the gist of this article—how to create a social media marketing strategy. If you’re running a small business, follow the 10 easy steps below.

Evaluate your current social media presence

If you’re already into social media, evaluate the following:

• Your working and failed campaigns
• Active followers and your engagement rate
• Networks you and your audiences are currently active on
• Your social media presence vs your competition
• Account optimization (profile and cover images, bio, website URL, etc.)
• Social platforms that bring you great value

The information you collect will serve as your standing ground for your new campaign objectives. By evaluating your social presence, you’ll also know how you can improve online. If you don’t have a social media profile yet, skip this step. 

Set your social media marketing goals

Different businesses have different goals. But when it comes to social media marketing, the common goals are:

• To increase brand awareness
• Generate new leads
• Boost brand engagement
• Provide good customer service
• Build an online community around your business
• Drive traffic to your website
• Grow revenue and increase return-on-investment (ROI)
• Increase media features and press mentions

When outlining your goals, you also need to identify the key success metrics for your brand. These key performance indicators (KPIs) may include:

• Conversion rate
• Reach
• Engagements
• Follower growth
• Website traffic
• Brand mentions
• Email signups
• Testimonials and social media reviews

Whatever your social media goals are, make sure that they align with your overall marketing objectives. And essentially, your identified key metrics should determine whether your social media goals are met. 

Know your competition

It may be hard to admit but most of your competitors already know the social media game. This is especially true when they’ve been on social media years ahead of you. If you want to build an effective social media marketing industry, you should conduct a competitive analysis. It helps you understand the current expectations in your industry and what strategies worked for your competitors. 

A competitive analysis also helps you spot opportunities, including the ideal audience for your brand and the types of content that you should post. If your competition is active on Facebook only, you can work on your Instagram or YouTube marketing strategies to get ahead of them. Read this NoxInfluencer review to enhance your presence on YouTube.    

Identify your target audience

Once you’ve figured out your goals and checked your competition, the next thing to identify is your target audience. Understanding your target audience will help you build your overall marketing strategy. After all, your audience is the primary receiver of your social promotions, and your strategy should be aligned with their needs and interests. 

Look into the following details when identifying your target audience:

• Demographics (age, gender, job type, income, location, etc.)
• Interests (entertainment, food, travel, lifestyle, adventure, etc.)
• Behaviors (most active during the weekend, at night, or during their daily commute)
• Social platforms where they usually hang out (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, etc.)
• The content they mostly consume (images, quotes, videos, news articles, tips, etc.)

If you’ve been running your business on social media for a while now, it would be easier to identify your target audience. You can just modify your existing audience base (add or remove details) or create an entirely new target market while referring to the old one. 

Create engaging content

“Content marketing is the gap between what brands produce and what consumers actually want.” – Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group

Ultimately, content is the best way to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Without content, it would be hard to gain engagements and conversions. When deciding the right content for your social media marketing strategy, you need to consider your audience’s interests and the current trends in your industry. Make sure also that your content is engaging and appealing. 

Here are different types of content that you can post on social media:

• Images
• Infographics
• Videos
• Interviews
• Company news
• Blog posts
• eBooks

The content you create will depend on your campaign and the social platforms you’re using. For example, if you’re active on Facebook and Instagram, images and videos will work well for you. Blog posts and company news are useful on LinkedIn, while interviews can be posted on YouTube. Again, the key is to create content that converts—the one that your audience can relate to and will easily remember. 

Choose your social media platforms

Not all social media platforms can work well for your brand. Hence, you should choose the ones that will bring you greater value and help your business grow. To determine the best social networks for your business, go back to your social media presence audit. See which platforms are giving you positive results and consider where your audiences are most active. 

If you want to try your luck, you can create profiles on major social media platforms. Just remember that different sites attract different audiences. For example, YouTube and Facebook are the best spots for ads. Meanwhile, TikTok and Instagram are the favorite platforms of the millennials or Gen Z. You may also try marketing on Pinterest if you’re targeting the women social shoppers. Lastly, you can increase your presence on LinkedIn if you’re up for in-depth discussions and educational topics. 

Create a social media calendar

Say you already have content and have chosen your social media platforms. What’s next? Consider creating a social media calendar to organize your posting schedule. In your calendar, indicate the content that you’ll post on a certain platform and the date and time that you’ll upload it. You may also include the caption on your calendar for easy uploading. 

Social media calendar formats may vary depending on the nature of your business. For example, a leisure and travel company can include different themes on its calendar, including #BeachMonday, #FoodTripTuesday, #CocktailFriday, or #SlowDownSunday. In this way, you can ensure that your content is distributed evenly throughout the week, and your audiences are receiving different types of content every day. 

Here’s a quick social media frequency guide to help you determine how often should you post on the different social sites:

• Facebook: 1-2 times per day
• Twitter: 3-10 times per day
• Instagram: 1-2 times per day
• Pinterest: 5-10 times per day
• Snapchat: 5-20 times per week
• TikTok: 1-3 times per day
• YouTube: 1 video per week or month
• LinkedIn: 1-2 times per day

Meanwhile, here are the best times to post on the different social platforms:

• Facebook: weekdays at 1-4 pm
• Twitter: weekdays at 1-3 pm
• Instagram: weekdays at 5-6 pm; Mondays at 6-8 pm
• Pinterest: weekdays and weekends at 5-8 pm
• Snapchat: weekdays and weekends at past 10 pm
• TikTok: weekdays and weekends at 6-10 am or 7-11 pm
• YouTube: weekdays at 5 pm; Sundays at 8-11 am or past 5 pm
• LinkedIn: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 7-8:30 am or 5-6 pm

Consider your social media advertising methods

Your advertising methods may vary according to your social media goals, content, and target audience. Here are a few examples of advertising methods that you can include in your social media marketing strategy:

• Organic promotions – if you have a dedicated social media marketing team, you can carry on with this type of advertising. 
• Paid promotions – whether you’re advertising on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, make sure to allot the right budget for each platform. 
• Contests and giveaways – a fun and subtle way to promote your products and drive your audience’s attention. 
• Special deals and promo codes – a good strategy to keep your followers engaged with your brand. 
• Influencer collaborations – there’s nothing more effective than hearing prominent people talk positively about your product. Influencer reviews and testimonials are the most powerful ways to attract new customers and establish a loyal fan base. 
• Social media communities – if you can, take the time to join relevant social media groups and promote your brand there. It’s one of the surefire ways to engage with interested customers and gain brand loyalty. 

Invest in a social media management tool

Creating a social media calendar is easy, but posting manually online can be tiring. This is especially true if you’re uploading different content across multiple platforms. To make things easier, consider investing in a social media management tool. Most tools allow users to schedule and post content, view and respond to comments, and track analytics—all in a single dashboard. 

If you want hassle-free social media marketing, we recommend these tools:

• Hootsuite
• Buffer
• Sprout Social
• Coschedule
• Crowdfire

There are lots of social media management software available for various online campaigns. 

Track, analyze, and optimize your results

The most important social media marketing strategy is tracking your results. Again, go back to your indicated key metrics and analyze whether your goals and objectives are met. If some KPIs weren’t successful, try to optimize your next campaigns focusing on your failed strategies. Never be discouraged if you won’t be successful on the first try, just keep on tracking your social media marketing performance and constantly find ways to improve your strategies. 

The Social Media Strategy Proposal

 

Now that you’ve gone through the quick and easy steps in building a social media marketing strategy, we guess you’re ready to create one for your brand. Whether you’re starting from scratch or using social media for a while now, the tips above are your complete guide to social media marketing success.

Read our post, “Social Media Advertising Campaigns: Definition, Examples, and Strategies” to leverage your knowledge in online marketing.