Creating a Successful Social Media Strategy

Five years back, you could get away with throwing a social media marketing campaign together in a couple of hours. Since then, however, the popularity of this tactic has surged, and it is now more difficult than ever to come up with a successful campaign.

Behind every great social media marketing campaign is a successful social media strategy. Creating this strategy requires you to follow a methodical process and pay great attention to the details. If you do it properly, though, the rewards are magnificent. Here is our five-step plan for creating a successful social media strategy –

Attend Social Media Training

You are going to need a dedicated employee or employees to run your social media pages for you; it is a full-time job – believe me!

It is important that you provide extensive and relevant social media training to these people, so they know how best to use your social media pages to engage with your target market and avoid PR nightmares by unintentionally being offensive or saying the wrong thing. Social media training is super important – we have all seen the backlash which some brands have received because of a slight mistake made by a social media operative. It’s not nice! This is why you should find a social media trainer who can help you learn more about the different platforms, and make sure you know what you are doing going in.

Research Your Audience

Social media sites have a truly global audience. It is estimated that there are more than 2 billion users on Facebook and this number is constantly growing, not with just adults though; children, teenagers and even older generations are getting on Facebook as the world goes more digital and we are required to have access to the internet to perform basic tasks.

Understanding your audience is a necessary step to creating a successful strategy, because you will need to target these people later with your marketing campaign. It is critical to know your audience; however, many people forget this.

Research the Competition

Competition on social media is fierce when it comes to marketing; everyone is trying to get noticed. It is smart to investigate your competitors and know just what you are up against before you launch your social media marketing campaign. You should research your competition before putting time and effort into producing marketing materials, because you will probably come up with new ideas or be inspired by looking at the advertising campaigns which your competitors are running.

Looking at your competition is a great way to learn from their mistakes and avoid common pitfalls.

Create Engaging Content

A boring Facebook text-post is not going to be an effective piece of marketing, no matter how much money you plough into it or how well you market it. A visually engaging and emotive picture or video, however, will.

Engaging content is crucial to social media marketing; you want to create something which is stunning and provokes an emotive response from your followers or target market. Your marketing content also needs to be relevant to both your brand and your target market; people will be put-off if you churn out lots of promotional posts which do not resonate with your target market.

Engage with Your Audience

The very thing that makes social media marketing so lucrative are your customers – the very people who will be engaging with your brand in real-time. One fatal mistake which some businesses make is to avoid the people attempting to engage with them. The main purpose of your brand’s social media pages is to be a means by which your customers or potential customers can communicate with your brand, receive support or just chat with a support representative. If you ignore your audience and do not engage with them, you will find your success on social media to be short-lived.