Nowadays it is seems impossible to make a successful product without the use of SMM. Even though it is quite a recent thing, many specialists ask themselves about how to create a social media strategy. In this article we will try to answer these questions.
Social media play a huge role in every marketing strategy. Nowadays it is impossible to have a successful product or service promotion without the use of decent SMM strategies.
Even though it is quite a recent thing, many specialists ask themselves, “How to create a social media strategy and how to achieve success with it?” Well, in this article we will try to answer these and some other questions.
To begin with, we need to understand what social media strategy means. Basically, it is a summary of your plan and the steps that you are going to take to achieve your goals with the help of SMM. Making your own blueprint of the actions to be taken gives both you and your client full understanding of where to go and what to do.
Developing a social media strategy calls for the several steps to be done. Here are some of the actions you can take and use them on the practice.
Be precise
When formulating an SMM strategy, point out the main goals you want to achieve, and the target audience of your product and service. You can transfer your goals into business objectives such as S.M.A.R.T. goals. This means that your goals must be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
This system of measurement will give you a precise understanding of how you can track your success, rather than giving you some vague ideas.
Your target audience is yet another key element of your blueprint. You need to specify what you want to sell and to whom. For example, if you want to sell essay writing services сanada you need to target students in Canada with your posts and advertisements so that they knew that your essay writing service exists and they will get there any help they might need.
Choose your channels of communication
The communication channels play a decisive role in SMM as the message that you want to send to your audience should be delivered without any side factors affecting it. These side factors are called “noise.” For example, if you set your Facebook account and try to contact the clients directly – the repost of your original post with the comment of a person on it will be considered noise.
To avoid it or to diminish its effect – you need to decide which kind of social media you want to use and for what purpose. What is more, you need to understand which kind of model you run in your company: is it B2C, C2C or B2B model – based on that, you can choose the right channel of communication.
Track your metrics
Main and most valuable metrics to use for the business are web referrals, convention rates, and leads. Of course, these are not the only metrics you need to use. All of them can be split into several categories:
- Awareness metrics. This one reflects the attention of the audience paid to your brand. This includes likes, re-tweets or shares of your posts, followers, etc. You can measure during a specific period which can be weekly, monthly or quarterly. In addition to that, you can have the audience growth rate which reflects how many people want to follow you on social media.
Also, awareness metrics include post reach data, potential outreach and social share of voice. These will show you how many people read your posts, how many times your brand was mentioned.
- Engagement metrics. This includes applause rate, average engagement rate, amplification rate, virility rate. Basically, each of them is going to show you the rate of posts, shares, comments comparing to the total number of followers.
- A conversion rate is a number that gives you information regarding the visitors, who really take some action when they visit your page, post or article (for example, subscribe to your account).
- Customer testimonial metrics help you understand the customers’ attitude toward your brand. It includes their feedback, customer satisfaction rate, net promoter score, etc.
Study the market
When creating a social media strategy, you need to know your competitors and their positioning in the market. Choose your segment and learn more about the tactics and strategies of main players.
Try to find the gaps in their actions and choose the traffic you want to generate. In order to make it easier, you can conduct business analysis of the market. You can use SWOT or any other competitive reports in order to analyze your own resources and strategies, taking data about your rivals into account.
What is more, when you try to conduct research, use the real data. Never try to assume something – this not practical. Conduct interviews, research questionnaires, use official statistics and even conduct focus groups if it is needed for your campaign. Use all of the available information to make your blueprint detailed and practical.
