Social Media Marketing Strategy Guide

29 Jun Social Media Marketing Strategy Guide

According to Statista, about 36 million Canadians actively use social media platforms, including 26 million Facebook users and 6.45 million Twitter users.

Facebook is a widely used social networking platform in Canada with over 60% market share. One report highlights that Canada has over 11.8 million Instagram users. The number will reach 14.3 million by 2023.

Social media marketing has become a central component of the marketing mix for both small and large businesses. Your social media marketing strategy can have a measurable and significant impact on your bottom when done well.

Follow the tips and tricks below to craft a measurable, reliable, engaging, and cost-effective social media strategy that aligns with your business objectives and your target audience’s needs. Read on!

Set Your Objectives

Like other marketing activities, setting clear goals and objectives is crucial for a successful social media strategy. If you don’t have a social media presence, evaluate your competitors to benchmark where you want to be on social platforms.

Before you set an objective, it is crucial to determine why you are planning a marketing campaign. You must run social media activity tactically to solve critical challenges facing your company.

For instance:

• Are you looking for ways to raise your brand awareness? If yes, your objective is to build followers across different social platforms, reach a large audience, and achieve engagement rates.
•  Do you want to drive more traffic to your business website? In that case, your objective is to promote clicks through to your business website from your social media content.
•  Do you want to build brand loyalty? Your objective is to achieve higher engagement rates, especially comments, shares, and retweets.

Bear in mind that the objectives or goals you set and the social media approach you take will differ based on the challenges you want to overcome. It is crucial to think about how you will deliver against each objective by performing thorough research.

Create Audience Personas

Audience personas are generalized or fictional representations of your ideal customers. It gives you specific details about your ideal customers, representing a key customer group. We recommend creating personas based on your audience research. You can always test and analyze any hypothesis as your progress with your strategy. Here is an example:

Who

• Age
• Gender
• Marital Status
• Location
• Income bracket

Characteristics

• Hobbies and interests
• Attitude to your industry (active, keen users, or necessity)
• Attitude to your brand (Engaging, indifferent, or transient)

Social Media Behavior

• Why are they using social media platforms?
• Are they prolific users of social media?
• What are platform preferences (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)?

These insights will help you determine the type of social media platform you should focus on and the type of content you should post to engage your target audience, drive traffic to your website, or generate leads

Content Planning

Plan ahead with your content calendar if you to engage your prospective customers. The purpose is to plan around key industry and business events or any other important dates. When you plan your content in advance, you will have a consistent flow, allowing you to build up a following. Besides, you need to understand the type of content you should post on each social media platform you use. For example:

Facebook:

• Brand related news stories
• Photos, Gifs, infographics, and video
• User-generated content, including:
  • Customer stories
  • Engagements
  • Feedback
•  Seasonal and trending content about your brand

Twitter:

• Blog posts sharing to drive traffic to your business website
• Follow images and tweets or carry out retweeting to engage your audience
• Share exciting content about your business
• Promote Instagram content via Twitter
• Share YouTube videos about your brand
• Share discount codes and promotions
•  Use hashtags for creating trending content

Instagram:

• Use High-quality photos and videos
• Post-User-generated content
• Use popular and relevant hashtags
• Leverage the power of Instagram stories

Pinterest:

• Infographics (DIY type or how-to type)
• Rich pins, including product pins and real-time pricing pins
• Article pins with a headline, author, and story description
• Use engaging board names that align with your brand personality

Measure Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Do you want to achieve your social media marketing goal? If yes, measure key performance indicators. For instance, Facebook offers an excellent insights platform, allowing you to access and analyze in-depth stats on each Facebook post.

The use of up-to-date and accurate figures on your target audience and posts’ interactions enables you to re-evaluate your strategy, make changes, and create a more powerful one.

So, if you use Facebook, here are the KPIs you need to measure:

• The volume of likes: People who like your business page
• Reach: The number of people who have seen your Facebook posts
• Engagement: The number of people who engaged with your content (likes, shares, comments)
• Click-Through: The number of people who have visited your business website from Facebook posts

On the other hand, if you carry out a paid advertising campaign on Facebook, we recommend measuring KPIs like paid reach, organic reach, actions, cost per action, cost per click, conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion.

Social media websites, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., have billions of users, allowing businesses to reach their target audience, engage and convert them into loyal customers. The tips and tricks given above will help you create an effective social media market strategy.

If you have any questions or would like to book a free health brand check please reach out to Marcia at marcia@socialmd.ca