5 Critical Steps in Creating a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Your business’ social media efforts have gone dormant or you’re recognizing a social media platform would be a beneficial addition to your business’ growth. Should you decide to manage multiple social media platforms across different channels and potentially target multiple different audiences, it sometimes becomes obvious that obtaining assistance from a marketing and creative agency that specializes in social media or a social media agency can be a substantial benefit. These agencies encompass social media management tools to diligently manage and observe the performance of your social media efforts. Their competencies vary from analyzing the data, reporting on the ideal times to post content, manage content, and strategize how to increase the effectiveness of each campaign. Whatever your social media management needs may be, creative agencies that specialize in social media marketing and planning will assist you in everything from the development of a social media strategy, content development, social media community management and platform management.

The first step is to structure a detailed Social Media Marketing Strategy which encompasses 5 crucial stages to plan for how your company will effectively utilize Social Media into your overall business objectives. These 5-steps will help guide your business to obtain the most out of your social media efforts by helping you identify, plan, and implement your social media goals:

1. Make your social media goals clear and concise: First, ensure that the goals of your social media strategy are driven by the overall business objectives of your company. Everything from the tone, message, branding and overall look and feel should also match that of the company’s marketing message and strategy. Be specific and focus on specific areas of improvement and confirm targets can be set and that they are measurable. Ensure the goals are attainable and realistic. Set a timeframe for each goal and benchmark the progress on an on-going basis. You will want to sync with business development and marketing teams to ensure your goals align with the overarching company goals.

2. Review your current social media status: Analyze and understand the effectiveness of your existing social media efforts. Identify what is working and not working. You can view your current social media data records to analyze observe your follower count, average weekly activity, average rate of engagement and conversation rates of engagement to sales. You should also audit what type of content drove traction and what did not. What types of messages did your audience respond to? Which did they not respond to? You can also perform a competitive analysis and view your nearest competitor’s social media platforms and analyze what type of messaging and overall look resonates with their audience. Once you go through the audit, determine which platforms are not sparking engagement and consider closing them. Throughout the new strategy development, if you believe traffic and engagement will increase on a certain channel do not close the account and monitor it closely during implementation. You will also want to connect with your marketing department and collect information about any demographics such as age, gender, buying habits and overall interests to tailor each of your platforms. 

3. Content strategy: Just like you want to meet with your company’s business development and marketing teams to ensure all goals align, you want to maintain consistency across all social media channels. The personality of each separate platform should be recognizable and exactly the same. How you speak to your audience should match the tone and voice your marketing team is projecting to your audience. You will want to document the personality of your brand and ensure this is funneled through to all of your platforms. Your messages should always remain on brand and never stray to risk confusion by your audience. Also, you will want to plan out your social media calendar to give yourself time to prepare for each content release. Specify the period of time when you will be developing your content, the dates when you’ll be releasing it, and the overall duration of each campaign. 

4. Track your progress by utilizing analytics: To measure and track your progress, you will need to apply quantitative and qualitative measurements to your social media strategies. You should continuously measure your results against each goal that was created. Quantitatively, you will need to track the increase and decrease of your social media values which includes: Base, Reach, Engagement, Conversion Rates, number of e-mail sign-ups, qualified leads and conversion into sales transactions. Qualitatively you should be collecting insight after each social media content deployment and establish reporting intervals. You want to look at the trends over a longer span of time, for example, over a few weeks rather than measuring the day to day traction. Looking at trends over a wider span of time will help you clearly see how your strategy is really working. Look closely at what your data is telling you and do not ignore it. 

5. Alter strategy as needed: Through the qualitative and quantitative data gathering and analytics, you will want to optimize your strategy on an on-going basis. Should you notice any efforts are not working, consider pursuing a different direction immediately. You want to gather your data, analyze it, and take action. Don’t wait until your social media community abandons your platform; re-grab their attention by deploying your new content strategy and engaging your audience by utilizing information that is meaningful to them.

Formulating the social media strategy is only the first step in the in developing your social media presence.  You will need to staff an internal team to develop the strategy, formulate and deploy targeted and relevant content, manage each social media community, perform constant due diligence, complete on-going monitoring, present reporting, and manage each platform closely and carefully. Sourcing a social media agency that encompasses all social media competencies may be the best route to take should your company not have the available resources or subject matter expertise to strategize and deploy full social media platforms and channel management.