In yesterday’s article, we looked at the nature of the term ‘social media marketing’. We discovered that marketing on social media is not just about putting a couple of posts on the first platform that you can get your hands on. To be successful with respect to social media marketing, you need to adopt a strategic approach that’s underpinned by the core principles of your business.

We also chatted a bit about the necessity of having  a social media marketing strategy. This is because it informs all the activities that you take on social media and allows you to achieve the goals that you set out to. If you don’t have a plan in place in order to achieve your goals, chances are very good that you won’t be successful in your endeavours.

How do you put together a social media marketing strategy?

Putting together a plan or strategy for your social media marketing efforts is no different than putting together a strategy for any other process in your business. There are a couple of tried-and-trusted principles that you can rely on when you carry out this process.

Figure out your goals

Your social media strategy needs to be underpinned by your company’s goals. This is because the strategy needs to assist you in meeting the goals that you’ve set out. For example:

• If your company is a business-to-consumer (B2C) concern, your social media strategy needs to target social media platforms, such as Facebook, which are known for bringing in success for other B2C companies.
• If your organisation is new, you’ll need to draw in a lot of leads which you can ultimately convert into paying customers. Thus, on your social media platforms you’ll need to put in place a strategy that assists with generating these leads for your business.

Always evaluate your goals against the S.M.A.R.T (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time sensitive). A goal that is ‘S.M.A.R.Ter’ than others is more likely to be achieved. If it falls short in any of these areas, rework them.

Determine how you’re going to achieve your goals

Any goal needs a roadmap. This is so that the people who are going to be doing the work along the way in order to achieve the goals know that they are on the right path and if their efforts will ultimately lead to the goal being achieved.

From a social media point of view, this step will involve setting out a detailed plan on how to achieve the goals that you’ve set out. For example:

• If you’re a B2B company, what features on LinkedIn are you going to use in order to drive traffic to your website? Are you going to use the content-creation platform that the network uses in order to showcase your subject matter expertise and attract people that way? Or are you going to use LinkedIn’s advertising options?
• If you play in the B2C market, are you going to use Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter as the cornerstone of your marketing strategy? What aspects of these channels are you going to use in order to broadcast your message effectively?

Look at your budget

Even the best strategy out there will fall flat on its face unless it has the budget to back it up and to keep it sustainable. If you’re operating on a shoestring, don’t plan to get Academy Award-nominated directors to produce short films for you for your YouTube channel – this just isn’t viable economically.

If you are set on producing video content for your company, investigate ways that you can produce professional-looking video content for a lot less. For example, there are free-to-use programmes out there which allow you to make videos out of stills shots , to add text to them as well as music in the background. The end product is exceptional – so take a look!

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

A social media marketing strategy doesn’t have to be complicated in the slightest. It can be a one-page, typed document or even a flow diagram. As long as it makes sense to you and you can execute it, this is all that matters. The Digital School of Marketing’s Social Media Marketing Course will teach you everything that you need to know about developing the best possible social media marketing strategy for your business as well as everything else that you need to do in order to guarantee social media success for your business! For more information, follow this link.