Although social media is a great tool of information, it has been misused by people at large. Social media is being misused by business men and employees.
Showing up social media without a clear plan is like having no clear focus on to something. Social media is pointless without a plan and your brand suffers. Hence, you need a clear social media marketing strategy.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing is a process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites. Social media marketing makes use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Most social media platforms have built-in data analytics tools, that enable companies to track the progress, success, engagement and ad campaigns.
What is social media marketing strategy and how to create social media marketing plan?
Social media marketing strategy is a summary of everything you planned to do and hope to achieve using social media. The more effective the strategy, the more effective is the execution. Let’s learn how to create social media marketing plan:
- Creating social media marketing goals
The first step to any social media marketing strategy is to establish the objectives and goals that one hopes to achieve. These objectives allow one to quickly react when social media campaigns do not meet your expectations.
- Conduct a social media audit
Before creating a social media marketing plan, one needs to assess their current social media use and how it is working. One should figure out who is currently connecting with you through social, which social media sites you target and how social media presence is compared to your competitors.
- Improve or create your social media accounts
After one has completed the social media audit, one needs to hone their online presence. Select which network best meets your social media goals. If one doesn’t have social media profile, one needs to build them up with broader goals and audience in mind. One also needs to update their existing accounts and refine them.
- Collect social media marketing inspiration
The consumers can also offer social media inspiration through the content that they share and in the way, they phrase their messages. For inspiration, one should look for what others in the industry are sharing and make use of social media listening to see how one can distinguish oneself from competitors.
- Creating a social media calendar
- What type of content do you aim to post and promote on social media?
- How will you create the content?
- Who is your target audience for every type of content?
- Who will create content?
- How will you promote the content?
The social media calendar should include a content marketing plan and it should answer the following questions.
- Evaluate, test and adjust your social media marketing plan
One should be reliable on constant testing, if one needs to find out what adjustments need to be made to your social media marketing strategy.
Every social media marketing plan must keep changing constantly. Also, rewrite your social media strategy to reflect your latest insights.
Cons of social networking
- With so much sharing going on, the issues over privacy are a major concern.
- With so many people on social media, tweeting links, posting selfies and sharing YouTube videos, it can get noisy.
- Since social networking is done either on computer or a mobile device; it can sometime promote too much sitting down in one spot for very long.
- People get distracted by all social apps, news and messages they get. This creates all sorts of issues like distracted driving or lack of gaining attention during conversation.
Beware to fall prey to the wrong side of online interaction. Social media strategy is the most effective, when your strategy is more specific. Hence, a clear social media marketing strategy will make your brand work.