8 Steps To An Effective Social Media Strategy

Ever been surprised by the creativity of social media users? Social media accounts that succeed have discovered the secret to a successful social media strategy.

It's not easy to keep up with social media algorithms, I'm sure. To put together your initial plan, it can take many days of continuous effort.

It's essential to take the time necessary to make sure it is done correctly. You should ensure that the plan is sustainable if you are going to spend many days or weeks creating it.

Quick Takeaways

• Social media marketing should be well thought out and supported by psychographic and demographic research about your audience.
• Reaching the largest number of customers doesn't necessarily mean you should cast the most wide net. Start small.
• A social media strategy that works will allow you to build stronger customer relationships, increase customer satisfaction, and give clarity around your brand.

What does a social media strategy that is successful look like?

A social media strategy that works effectively can reap the benefits

Social media is vital for today's businesses, as we all know. However, social media is not enough to drive growth. You can increase your brand's visibility by creating a strategy.

1. Awareness
2. Authority
3. Authenticity
4. Engagement
5. Efficiency

Social media platforms have blurred lines between customers and businesses. Social media can only be maximized if you are actively breaking down walls and showing up.

These are 8 steps that will help you make one.

Step 1: Understanding Your Audience

Understanding your target audience and what motivates them is the foundation of any social media strategy. You will need to look at a variety of psychographics and demographics in order to do this.

Demographics

Demographics is a statistical and descriptive description of a group of people. It includes their location, gender, occupation, and age. You may not need all these descriptions and statistics.

There are many ways to determine the demographics of your website visitors if you own one. Google Adwords is a useful tool. You can use Google Adwords to find a similar website or competitor site that you could use for your analysis.

Psychographics

Psychographics are a way to understand your audience's values, lifestyle, opinions, interests, and attitudes. These questions should be answered when you do your analysis.

1. Why would they want to know more about your product/service?
2. What is the importance of your product/service to your target audience? Is it part of their job? Or is it personal?
3. What do they prefer to learn? What type of media do they prefer? Text, video, audio, etc. and what channel or device are they using?
4. What are their most common questions about your product?
5. What level of knowledge do they have about your industry, product, or service?

Your social media strategy's success is dependent on your psychographics. This can be a difficult part to master, so make sure you are doing it right before you move onto the next.

Although there is no single tool that will give you the psychographic information about your target audience, there are some places you can look.

• Interview current clients
• Analyze website analytics
• Utilize subreddits
• Participate in community forums and focus group discussions
• Comment on blogs and social media

Keep track of the valuable information you discover about your target audience. This could be very useful when creating content!

Step 2: Targeting your channels

Do a social media audit to see what is working for you. Be open about what isn't.

These are some questions to consider:

• What is working for you? Take a look at the insights and business analytics you have on each platform.
• Is it your target audience? Are you reaching your target audience?
• What is your performance compared to the competition? Is their growth rapid?

You may want to be on every channel, especially if you are just starting out. It's best to focus your efforts on a few channels at first, or even master one before moving on to the next. Your social media strategy must be long-lasting, just like any other plan.

Focusing your efforts on the key channels will result in faster and better results. Then, you can expand your business as your team grows.

How do you decide which social media networks to start with?

First, you need to determine where your audience is located and then narrow down your options.

Age doesn't tell you everything. You need to examine your competition and determine which social media platforms are the most important. This can be done with Ahrefs or BuzzSumo.

Every business is not able to be everywhere. Concentrate your efforts on those platforms that have the greatest impact for you.

Step 3: Developing Your Content Strategy

Once you have a better idea of your target audience, and their preferred channels, it is time to create your content strategy. Think blog posts, videos, photography, quotes, quick tip.

Your target audience and the platforms you use will determine what kind of content you should create. You don't want your content to be self-promotional.

To help you keep your content organized and consistent, you can break down your ideas into categories. Below are some examples of how you can include diverse content in your plan.

Entertainment

This week, Hollywood's most ridiculous celebrity hosts are leading the media. Make red carpet events or the Royal Wedding entertaining memes that are related to your products or services.

Don't stop having fun! Here are some more ideas:

• Videos
• Lighthearted stories
• References to pop culture

Inspiration

You can attach your logo to any quote you find that resonates with you or your mission. Posts don't have to win prizes.

What other ways can your followers be inspired? Share more to get creative

• Industry gurus
• Trends
• Before and after

Education

Consider the core of your company. What do you do well? How do you do it effectively?

Think about how your knowledge can be made into an asset that will serve as a constant resource for your customers. You can tie it all together with an infographic or video tutorial.

You can create more graphics, posts, or stories about any topic you like.

• How to?
• Tips and Tricks
• FAQ

Oberer Homes is a Dayton-based custom home builder. They share helpful tips, tricks, and tips to help their customers along their home building journey. This is a graphic that Oberer Homes included in an article about bathroom color trends.

They used a graphic created by an industry expert to create the graphic.

Conversation

Use your captions to spark conversations in the comments. Perhaps you are sharing an opinion that isn't popular or a hot take on a topic in the industry. Invite your friends to join the conversation. Here you can also do some psychographic research.

Here are some more examples of conversational posts:

• Questions
• Fill-in-the-blanks
• Surveys

Connection

Customers love to see the behind-the scenes. You can share a story about how your product was made or packaged or what you did on a typical day at work. This makes you more human to them.

Here are some more ways to connect with your audience.

• Personal wins
• Your "Why"
• Shoutouts for businesses/followers

Promotion

You should reuse a blog post you are proud of for your social media profiles. Make graphics or a video based on the content.

Other examples of promotional posts are:

• Product launches
• Discounts or sales
• Client testimonials

It's safe to adhere to the 80/20 rule, which is non-promotional content to promotional content. If you share your big launch and want to promote more, make sure to include other useful content.

What content types should you share?

Start by creating a list with the most popular keywords related to your topic or product/service. As a starting point, you can use Adwords Keyword Planner. Next, go to Ahrefs or BuzzSumo and enter your keywords. Then sort by the channel that you are interested in. It will take time but you will have a list with proven topics that your audience is interested in.

Step 4: Find Inspiration

First and foremost, authenticity is important. Social media is a place where you can be yourself and represent your brand well.

However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be inspired by others who do it well.

Consider your favourite brands

What keeps you coming back time and again to their site? Which type of content do you find most appealing as a potential buyer or viewer?

These tactics can be applied to your strategy, but you can make them yours!

Scroll down to find the top hashtags

You don't have to scroll mindlessly.

Pro tip: Set a timer for your phone to scroll through one or two hashtags every 15-30 minutes. You can leave with only one new content idea, regardless of whether you are scrolling through the reels tab on Instagram or engaging in passionate conversation on Twitter.

But don't stop there. You can start by creating a blank sheet. Then organize your ideas into tabs or sections for each content category. It will be amazing to see the results of letting your ideas flow.

Ask your followers

They are there for a reason. Why do they choose to stay?

Ask them for the content they would like to see more of. This can be done through your regular posts, stories or, if you have one, your email list.

Maximize engagement by working smarter, not harder.

Step 5: Creating a Content Calendar

You must be excited to share more content now that you have started growing your readership and following. To achieve your goals, you need to create a content calendar.

Frequency

There is a lot of discussion about how often to post on each platform. It's possible to get so frustrated trying to achieve each algorithm perfect.

These numbers may not be sufficient. You might need to share more than this, so test it to see if you can optimize your strategy. Here is a guideline:

• Instagram (feed): 3-7 times per week
• Facebook: 1-2 times per day
• Twitter: 1–5 times per day
• LinkedIn: 1-5 times per day
• Blogs: 1-2 times per week

These frequencies may not be possible in your early years. That's okay. You can still use Instagram if you feel it is the right place for you. You can start somewhere!

Variety

Combine the information you have learned in steps 3 & 4 to create valuable content your audience will love. Your social media feed can be used as a place for your audience to come together and share all the information you want your customers to know about your industry.

Step 6: Automating for Success

Consistency is the key to social media success.

Do not get caught up in analysis paralysis, where it takes you weeks to decide what post to make. You're more likely than not to follow a schedule for your messaging.

If you decide that 5 a.m. is the best time to post, you may find it difficult to get up at 5 a.m. every morning to write content. Automating your content flow is the best way to ensure consistent posting.

You can automate your posts with a variety of paid and free tools, including Buffer and Hootsuite. Hootsuite is used to post all articles across all of our employees' LinkedIn accounts.

Step 7: Maximizing Traffic

It takes time and money to create new content. You should share old content as well as new content to maximize your efforts in creating new content. This can double, and sometimes even triple, your traffic.

However, you don't want the same post shared four times per day. On Twitter, for example, you might want to share an older post within 2 hours of your first tweet and then promote it again the next day or next week or next month.

You should use different descriptions to promote old posts in order to maximize traffic. Your readers and followers will see the same descriptions and likely ignore them.

Reach out to influencers within your network to encourage them to share the post. This will increase your exposure and help you get more traffic to your content.

Step 8: Tracking the Results

You need to measure the results of your social media strategies to see which ones are working and which ones aren't. This will help you to know where to make improvements in the future.

To see which social media posts and content are driving traffic to your site, you will need to keep track of all social shares. This includes impressions, shares, clicks, clicks, and shares. These stats can be gathered using great tools like Google Analytics, Buffer and Hootsuite.

You can track these numbers frequently to learn which pages get the most clicks and reads. Then you can revise your strategy to increase your results.

Now you know how to build your social media strategy.

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