Social media marketing is crucial for the success of your business. A successful social media marketing strategy involves all the steps that you have put in action in order to succeed on the various platforms. With millions of users, social media has become the number one option for business owners, entrepreneurs, freelancers and everyone who want to increase their sales.
People check their Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts while they are waiting in line, before going to bed or when they are checking the photos of their friends. Everybody has a smart device that they can’t live without. Building and improving your plan on social media platforms increase your brand’s exposure. By reaching your target clients exactly where they will be, you are going to get more leads. As your clients decide to buy your products or services, you are going to establish your social media presence and have a fan base of loyal satisfied customers. They might even refer your business to other potential customers.
The best thing about social media is that it can be used to market any service regardless of the size of your business. Some people can even start with a zero budget or by spending a very small amount of money. Today, the question is not whether to use social media or not. People are always asking about the best and most efficient ways to use social media platforms. Here are some steps that you can use to make it work.
Without goals, there is no plan. You should make sure that your goals are specific, measurable, relevant and attainable. Having a specific and scientific framework will help you track your goals and assess any deviation from the plan in order to take the right action.
The most important thing is to make sure that your social media posts are generating leads that will increase the conversion rate and make sense within your overall content roadmap. You can use social media to create brand awareness, increase customer’s loyalty and eventually increase your sales through referrals.
You probably already have one or several accounts on different platforms.
For example, which networks or apps are you currently active on? Do you feel that you are achieving any success? Do you need to improve your marketing plan or start a new one from scratch? These questions can be answered by studying different analytics.
Evaluating your current plan will show what is working and what isn’t. The point is not just to have an account on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. The point is to make sure that they are helping you realize your current and future business goals. If an account is outdated or doesn’t offer what you need, then you might need to discard it and start a new one, with a new image and message.
You should ask yourself what your audience needs to see on different platforms so you can create the kind of content that they will find useful and interesting. Be specific about the answers as this will help you to improve your social media marketing plan.
Different demographics use various social media platforms. By getting to know your potential clients you will be able to pick the right medium or app in order to establish your online presence. Different social media analytics will offer relevant information about your current followers. This will give you an idea of where you should do more effort to reach more people.
Chances are that your competitors are already using social media. Take a look at their pages and profiles. Are they more successful than you? Are they keeping their audience engaged? What are they doing differently?
Analyzing the performance of your competitors, knowing what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong will give you some useful information about what to expect. Every industry is different and such information will help you set the right goals. This also gives you an idea of where you can put in more effort. For example, if your number one competitor is already killing it on Facebook, you can build and improve your social media presence on Instagram or Twitter.
You can get inspired by successful business stories while keeping your brand unique. Different platforms are full of inspirational success stories that you can learn from, and not necessarily copy.
A mission statement states what exactly you plan to use your social media accounts for. It should reflect your brand’s identity and should be directly related to your business goals.
As you create your mission statement, you should think about your ideal target customer. What do your customers need? What are they looking for? People should feel that you are an expert because this will make them trust your profile and the information you post. Your mission statement will keep you and all your employees focused on the most important goals.
You need to post useful content that will keep your target customers engaged and interested. Think about what they need, the questions they ask, and the reasons why they want to check your social media page.
All your social media content should be optimized for SEO. Using the right keywords, meta titles, descriptions, images and videos will offer your followers and target customers with the information they need. You should pay attention to all the comments, likes, and retweets. Responding to them will increase your customers’ loyalty.
Make sure that everything you post is optimized for SEO. Allow your followers to share your content easily on their profiles and across different platforms. This way, you will guarantee that more people are going to check your posts.
Being consistent is one of the main keys to success. Your followers need to see that you are serious about your business because this is how they will trust your brand. Successful specialists leverage tools that can boost their business performance. Different social media management tools can help you schedule posts ahead of time and even set time for engaging with your followers. People love to check new content especially if it gets posted regularly.
Planning ahead helps you to save time and effort. For example, you can try to post different kinds of posts that serve various purposes. You can decide on the number of posts that you wish to create in order to divert customers to your website, the number that should result in live engagements and the posts that you can use to promote your business directly.
Creating a successful plan is all about tracking your performance. Give your actions time to work then re-evaluate the whole process. Make the necessary adjustments and tweaks in order to refine your current strategy. You can simply ask your followers for direct feedback. See what they think about your current strategy and consider their suggestions. You can also rely on the numbers to help you identify the successful actions from the ones that failed. All your employees should work as one team towards achieving one goal - success.
