Social media wasn’t created to be used by businesses; it was made to connect likeminded individuals and help them exchange messages and share riveting content amongst themselves. However, in order to generate revenue, social media platforms had to turn to advertisers; once that happened, it wasn’t long before companies realized how cost-efficient social media marketing can be.

Even though social media platforms are simple to use, not all companies have cracked the code on how to make effective social media strategies.

Everyone can get a few likes and shares on their posts, but what is it that helps you gain thousands of followers? What keeps users coming back to your page? How do you create content that you know will be shared?

Unfortunately, many organizations are still clueless about how to use social media marketing to their advantage. Setting up pages on various platforms isn’t enough to generate results.

In order to make effective social media marketing strategies, businesses need to take into account what they want out of social media platforms and then devise ways to achieve their goals.

Here’s an overview of what it takes to create powerful social media marketing strategies that positively affect your bottom line:

1. Write Down an Executive Summary

Seem like a waste of time? It really isn’t!

An executive summary doesn’t need to be any longer than a page. It will succinctly define the purpose of your social media strategies and state how they support your business’s goals and objectives.

Keep it simple. Start by defining a primary goal, list short-term objectives below them and identify relevant social media channels that will help attain them.

Remember to set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bounded) objectives to hold as a benchmark and measure success.

Example: Increase your Instagram audience by 25 percent over the next three months.

Your executive summary basically lays the plan out for your team—don’t undermine its significance.

2. Carry Out a Social Media Audit and Competitor Analysis

Want to stay ahead of the game? You can’t do that without knowing what your competitors are up to!

Before you begin brainstorming ideas, you’ve got to carry out a competitor analysis to see how your top competitors are using social media. How many followers do they have? What sort of content are they posting? How often do they post? What sort of activities are they running?

All of this will give you an idea of what you need to do.

Feel free to gain inspiration from other brands that aren’t in your industry but use social media platforms very effectively. Brands like Zappos and Red Bull are great examples.

3. Define Tactics

Now that you’ve set goals and objectives and have an idea of how brands are using social media, you can begin to think about the different tactics you can use to attain your objectives.

For every goal you define, you’ll have a list of measureable objectives that will be followed by a list of tactics you can implement.

Goal: Make your self-help book a best-seller

Objective: Increase leads to the book’s website by 50%

Tactics: Hire health and wellness influencers to gain exposure, use branded hashtags, post relevant content on social media platforms and link to the book’s website.

4. Know Your Brand’s Personality

Every brand has a distinct personality. Both Gucci and Levi’s may sell clothes but they cater to very different audiences and their marketing campaigns need to reflect that.

Is your brand’s persona fun and playful? Or is it more straight-laced and formal?

The answers to these questions determine the sort of content you post and the tone/language you will be using.

5. Breakdown Your Paid, Earned and Owned Categories

Social media marketing comes in many forms.

You can have social media marketing strategies that are paid for (ads, sponsored content, etc), owned (branded hashtags) and earned (attention you’ve gained from influencers and media).

Paid

If you’re publishing a post on Facebook, you can publish it organically to see how it performs and then pay for a boost after a week for increased visibility.

Owned

Use branded hashtags across all social media platforms. Incorporate them in posts and bios. Ask all employees and influencers to use branded hashtags in their posts.

Earned

Engaging in conversations with journalists, bloggers and social media influencers and using branded hashtags can help you gain the attention of millions of users.

6. Timing Is Everything

What sets social media apart from traditional media is that it is much faster. Everything happens in real time on social media. There will be times where you’ll need to be quick on your feet and respond to events as they happen, but the majority of times, you’ll have to prepare your calendar in advance.

Think about the activities you can run on upcoming holidays, events, seasons, etc.

7. Monitor Your Progress

Every social media network offers analytical tools that you can use to monitor engagement. Whenever you run activities on your social media platforms, be sure to analyze how well they performed to see which ones were most effective.

You can use these analytical tools to determine whether or not your activities are running smoothly and if they require any modifications.

Look at both, the quantitative and qualitative data, to see how users are responding to your strategies and what they’re saying about your brand.

If you don’t have the expertise to carry out social media marketing yourself, hire professionals who will take care of it for you!

Devebyte Marketing

Devebyte Marketing prides itself on developing unique and effective marketing strategies that are tailored to the needs of our clients and their industry. Our social media marketing strategies consist of Facebook advertising, content creation and much more!

We also provide search engine optimization and web development services.

If you’re in Edmonton, AB and require reliable digital marketing services that deliver results, get in touch with us today. Give us a call at +1-780-445-4359 and let’s discuss your needs!