Creating and Executing an Epic Social Media Marketing Strategy

Today, we’re going to talk about eight steps to creating and executing an epic social media marketing strategy. Our company helps small businesses grow with our marketing strategies and services. So make sure to follow us to learn tips, tricks, and strategies to grow your business and fuel your brand.

Research Your Competition

Step number one is to research your competition. Now, this might sound like a no-brainer, but really, if you spend the time and energy in the beginning, understanding where your competitors are, what channels they’re producing on, what profiles, and what social channels they’re on, it really helps you identify where you should be focusing your efforts and where you should be spending your time.

Now, additionally, you may be able to understand and find some new channels or new profiles that you should start, where you can jump in first, and really be the thought leader in that space. If your customers are there, you should be there, too, and if you can get there before your competition does, it’s a win-win for everybody.

If your customers are there, you should be there, too, and if you can get there before your competition does, it’s a win-win for everybody.

Pick Your Social Media Platforms

Step number two is to pick your social media platforms. You’ve already done your research. You’ve already found where your competition is. Now you have to identify which platforms you’re going to be spending your time and energy on. Now, running a social media campaign is not the simplest thing in the world to do. It takes time, energy, money, commitment, focus, to achieve your goals, so you have to identify where do you want to be.

Where can you commit to being, and what do those channels look like. There’s a bunch of social media platforms to choose from, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google My Business, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and many more. Pick the ones you’re familiar with, start there, and create a plan to grow as you see success in the channels you’re on.

Outsource Or Keep It In House

Step number three is to decide if you’re going to hire, outsource, or enlist the help of somebody else.

Now, it may make sense to hire somebody new into your company who can help you to achieve the goals that you want. Maybe you don’t have the time, skill or experience, or even the desire, to run your own social media channels, so hiring somebody, and bringing them into the company, may make sense for you. You could outsource.

You can outsource to a full-scale marketing agency (which is what we are). Obtaining professional guidance will help you to achieve your goals by creating more user-generated content. Another option is to outsource to friends and family, depending on what your business is and what your goals are. Don’t feel that all of the focus, energy, and the time has to be on your shoulders. As long as you’ve got some people in your organization that is willing that may be a great opportunity, as well.

Finally, you want to decide, is it worth it to you? Social media is all about pulling back the curtain and allowing people to see what your business truly is, and what your business means. Sometimes it may not make sense to bring in an outsourced party, or a third party, or even just an individual who doesn’t represent your business at its core.

If you can produce that voice authentically yourself, we highly recommend that that’s the way that you go. You can try a couple of different things, and as long as you achieve the goals you’re looking for, then it’s a win.

Content Research

Step number four is to research the type of content you want to be posting. What are your customers looking for? Once you’ve identified what kind of content they want, then start to work on producing that. You can also balance this by generating additional content from people outside your organization, such as blog posts, other DIY companies, or networks. You can augment a lot of the material that you’re producing with third-party resources that can help to shore up the content that you’re posting on a consistent schedule.

Now, you want to make sure that the content you’re posting is highly valuable. Look at it. If this is something you would want to read or see, in your timeline or feed, then that’s the kind of content you should be producing. If you don’t find value in it, neither will your customers, so ensure that the value is there.

Create A Posting Schedule

Step number five is to create a posting schedule. People love consistency if you can create a calendar where you’re consistently posting, regardless of the platform, or the channel that it’s on. You’re always posting the same kind of content that they are expecting, you can start to increase your engagement. And you can begin to teach people that, on certain days and certain times, they can expect to see specific types of content from you. Maybe on Saturdays, you post a blog, on Mondays, you post a motivational quote, on Wednesdays, you post pictures from around the office.

Here’s a platform that we use to schedule our content, Instapro.ai.

Choose your schedule, define what that looks like, and then stick with it. You’ll see your engagement go up, and your consumers will love it.

Utilize A Budget

Step number six is to utilize a budget. Now, this is a step that a lot of people skip. Unfortunately, if you skip on using a budget to promote and increase your engagement, you’re hoping to be found by random chance. Most algorithms for social media networks don’t produce organic results, so you can’t always rely on that. You also can’t rely on just randomly showing up in people’s timelines or feeds and hope that you’ll see the success. By having a budget, it doesn’t even have to be a massive one, but by having a small budget for boosting posts, sponsoring content, or just increasing engagement, you can see a lot more value as time goes on.

This is also a great way to find new customers, people that haven’t heard of you before, or people that haven’t engaged with your content in the past. If you bring them into the content fold, you bring them into your social media profiles and platforms, just a little bit of spending can result in a significant increase for your engagement and the number of people that are communicating with you over social media.

If you’re looking for help to run ads check out our PPC Management Page.

Optimization

Step number seven is to optimize. Don’t skip this part. Just because you’ve made a plan, and it looks great on paper, doesn’t mean that it can be executed well. Or that you’re getting the results that you’re looking for. By optimizing after you’ve received the data, this allows you to change up your schedule. Also, it can allow you to change up content, to change the posting that you’re doing, to achieve maximum results.

Take a look at your analytics. Every social media platform will have analytics of some sort. See what your engagement looks like. What do your clicks look like? How many comments or shares are you getting? These are all things you want to keep an eye on, and if you find that you’ve got specific content that is generating better engagement and better results, that’s the kind of content you want to stay producing.

If you’ve got content that, honestly, it’s just mediocre, and it’s not getting what you’re looking for, pull that out of the posting schedule and find new styles of content to put in there. You never want to clog up a user’s feed with something that’s not valuable to them, so by optimizing your content schedule, it saves you time, increases your engagement, and produces an excellent value for your consumers.

Engage

Tip number eight, engage. You have to engage with your customer base. If people are leaving comments, they’re liking, and they’re sharing, they’re asking questions, they’re sending messages, you have to engage with them.

You need to make sure that you are as available to them as they are to you. You’re interrupting their social media experience or their social media feed with content that you’ve spent a lot of time to produce, so you want to make sure that if they are taking their own time to engage with you, that you’re responding to them.

If they’re sharing your content, go and leave a comment, thank them so much for sharing. If they leave a comment with you, respond, or send them a message. Thank them for their question or their feedback. Drive them into your sales funnel. It could be another opportunity to answer questions or to produce additional customers, maybe even both. Social media is all about connecting with people. It’s a way for people to communicate with other people, so having natural language, natural communication, and proactively engaging with your consumers is a great way to ensure that they keep coming back, and they specifically keep coming back to you.

It’s A Return On Engagement

Finally, we’ve got a bonus tip for you. Keep in mind that the goal for social media is not supposed to be a return on your investment. Initially, the purpose of social media is to up your return on engagement. You’re looking to engage with customers and consumers in a safe place. A place they’re familiar with. By focusing on a natural language, and consistent communication with your customers, just because of that, you start to see that you will see an increase in sales, an increase in ROI, and an increase in brand ambassadors.

These are all things to look for, but really, focus on your engagement first. The return on investment will come, but you can’t be solely focused on that. Social media is not about sales. It’s about natural human connection and human language.

I want to thank you guys so much for reading. If you enjoyed the content, please like, share, and comment. Please leave us a note. Let us know what other kinds of content you’d like to see additional tips and strategies, and we’ll be sure to produce more content about subjects you’re interested in.

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