Social Media Marketing Strategy 101: Building a Digital Presence that Converts
Social media is much more than a place where teenagers post and practice trendy dances. It’s an essential tool for businesses to reach and engage with their target audience. According to Pew Research, 72% of American adults use social media. This means you could miss out on reaching millions of potential customers by not regularly creating and posting business content on social media.
Simply creating social media accounts and posting content isn’t enough. You need a plan. Building a marketing plan/ strategy will bring you lightyears ahead of companies or brands that just post. While opening an account and posting is a great start, you need to do more if your goal is to build your brand and community while converting your audience.
You Need A Strategy: Here’s Why
You have to post branded content that clearly & accurately portrays your brand in a way that resonates with your audience. For example, you shouldn’t post content about fashion or hairstyles on your brand’s social media if you're a restaurant owner. Everything you post should position your brand to be viewed by your target audience as their go-to within your industry.
Components of Social Media Strategy
Managing multiple social media platforms can be time-consuming and overwhelming. Implementing a social media management system that allows you to schedule posts, monitor engagement, and track metrics will help you reach the best results.
To succeed in social media marketing, you must develop a strategic plan that aligns with your marketing goals. In this blog post, I’ll discuss the critical components of a social media marketing plan.
Business Goals
The first step in creating a social media marketing plan is to define your goals.
Answer these questions to find out what your priorities should be:
- What do you want to achieve through social media marketing?
- Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, or increase sales?
- Are your clients primarily online or offline?
Your goals will determine the rest of your social media marketing plan, so it’s essential to be clear and specific.
Social media marketing is an ongoing process; monitoring and measuring your results is essential. Knowing what goal you’re working towards will help you determine which KPIs you should focus on. Once you’ve determined your KPIs, you can use analytics tools to track engagement, reach, and conversions. Your results determine what’s working and what’s not, then adjust your social media marketing plan accordingly.
Audience Personas
To effectively reach and engage with your target audience, you need to know who they are. Research your target audience and identify their demographics, interests, and pain points. This information will help you create content that resonates with them and develop a social media strategy that speaks directly to their needs.
Audience or buyer personas are fictional representations of a business’s ideal customers based on market research and data analysis. These personas consist of various characteristics and attributes that help companies better understand their target audience and create content that resonates with them.
Ideally, they should be a generalization of a model customer you are targeting and/or the people who may be buying your product for your ideal user. For example, if you were selling children’s toys, while your target audience would be children, you should also have a strategy for marketing to parents because they make the buying decisions.
Audience personas typically include information such as:
- Demographic data (age, gender, location)
- Job title or profession
- Education level
- Income
- Hobbies
- Interests
- Pain points
- Challenges
- Goals and motivations
- Purchasing behaviors.
By creating detailed audience personas, businesses can tailor their marketing efforts to better connect with their target audience and improve the effectiveness of their campaigns.
Branding Identity & Positioning Guidelines
Your brand is your differentiator. It’s how you make your customers feel. When you brand yourself effectively, you develop a unique identity through what you teach customers to associate with your brand.
Your brand consists of several different elements, including:
- Logo(s)
- Photography/ Stock Images
- Colors
- Fonts
- Tone
- Experience you provide to your audience
- Price points
- Values
- Features & Benefits
Once you’ve solidified your brand, you’ll build brand recognition, which leads to brand loyalty and can increase customer retention rates. Your company’s brand should position itself in a way that deeply resonates with your audience. By properly branding and positioning your social media presence, you can improve your business’ online reputation, build trust with your audience, and drive more sales and revenue.
Platforms
While, in theory, it might initially sound like a great idea to join all platforms to get in front of as many eyes as possible, this can thwart your marketing efforts. Not all social media platforms are created equal, and not all will fit your business well.
Instead of immediately signing up for every platform, pick a few platforms strategically with what you’ve learned about your audience. Choose the platforms that align with your target audience and goals. For example, platforms like TikTok and Snapchat might be a good choice if you want to target a younger audience. On the other hand, if you’re targeting professionals, LinkedIn might be a better fit.
Content Strategy
Once you’ve figured out who you’re marketing to and where you’ll be posting, the next step is figuring out what you’ll be posting. Whatever you post must align with your goals and resonate with your audience. It must also be connected to your brand identity, mission, and services/products. The best content is content that either informs, entertains, inspires, or persuades your audience. Ideally, your content should contain a mix of all of these elements.
Develop a content strategy that includes the types of content you’ll create, the tone of your messaging, and the frequency of your posts. You should also consider the format of your content, such as images, videos, or live streams.
Content Calendar
Developing a content calendar is critical to building your social strategy. By planning, you will ensure that you don’t run out of ideas, but it also helps you post consistently. If you’ve already planned & scheduled your content for the month, you’re much less likely to get swamped with other work and forget that your posts exist. In my opinion, it’s best practice to plan your content calendar every quarter. There’s no right or wrong way to organize a content calendar. As long as it lets you see what content you have planned and when you plan on posting it, it’s serving its purpose. Just keep in mind that some companies and brands might have other needs, so you might need to add others.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, developing a social media marketing plan is essential for businesses looking to leverage the power of social media to achieve their marketing goals. By defining your goals, identifying your target audience, choosing the right platforms, developing a content strategy, implementing a social media management system, and monitoring your results, you can create a successful social media marketing plan that drives results for your business.
I understand that social media marketing can be a complex task, especially when you’re busy running your business. That’s why I’m here to help you! If you’re struggling with building your digital presence, email me at hello@briannamwalton.com so we can level up your business together!
Follow me on social media & subscribe to my Medium page to learn more about digital marketing!
Let’s stay connected:
Socially Interstellar
Instagram: @sociallyinterstellar
Connect with the author:
- Website: briannamwalton.com
- Email: hello@briannamwalton.com
