How to Create A Social Media Marketing Strategy in 7 Easy Steps

7 steps might seem like a lot for a social media marketing strategy, but it is a lot easier than your brain is imagining. 

1. Set Your Marketing Goals 

It’s important to start off by figuring out what your essential goals are compared to more secondary goals you might have. By separating the two, it makes it easier to identify what you want to focus on first. This is where the majority of your budget should go. Goals that aren’t as much of a priority should still be addressed but with less concern.

2. Picking Social Media Channels

Depending on what type of industry your company or business is in, the next step should be deciding what social media channels suit you the most. 

Facebook and Twitter vary greatly from LinkedIn, whereas Facebook and Twitter are mostly for connecting with your business profile’s followers and “liked” users. LinkedIn focuses more on connecting and marketing to B2B (business to business) companies. It has a more formal vibe compared to the traditional social vibe you get with Facebook and Twitter.

There’s also Instagram, which is great to promote your product or services visually. Instagram is known for capturing the attention of many of your followers with images or videos you post on your business page. Although text, emojis, and hashtags are still important on Instagram, make sure your graphics stand out the most since this is usually what people notice first before scrolling by.

Overall, social media platforms vary greatly even though it’s not something we would think of. When you are in a business mindset, you can see clearly what social media platforms will best suit your brand for the better.

3. Who Are Your Buyers?

You may already have a good sense of who your buyers are, but it’s always a good idea to recap to see if you might be able to market to a wider audience. 

At GoingClear, our local Boston social media agency can determine who your buyer personas are. What is a buyer persona? It’s basically a fictional character that represents who you are trying to market towards. GoingClear uses these buyer personas to create the perfect content for your social media business profile. 

Age, gender, job descriptions, salaries, and a few other data points can play an important role in your social media marketing efforts. The way you present your content on any social media channel says a lot about how much you care about your specific buyers.

4. Tracking Meaningful Metrics

When you take advantage of a social media marketing strategy, tracking the metrics that mean the most to your business are also an important step to take. Maybe your company is more interested in the amount of conversions (leads or sales) month over month. Maybe it is brand awareness or site traffic. Whatever the essential metrics or KPIs (key performance indicators) are, our Boston social media marketing agency knows how to keep track efficiently. 

5. Social Listening

When you start to market on social media, social listening is something you can’t get with any other type of marketing. GoingClear considers social listening a part of a strategy because it allows you to build off what your customers or fans have to say about your business and how we can increase performance going forward. 

The best type of feedback is usually from customers themselves, so why not take advantage of what they have to say?

6. Stay on Top of Current Trends

Social media is always changing in the digital world. You might think you’re on top of one trend and it can change the next day. What is a social media trend anyway? Take hashtags, for example. You can use them on almost every social media channel and they are constantly changing. If you have content related to a certain hashtag, make sure you update your content to include that hashtag. If a trend is really big throughout the social world and your content is not so much related, try to put a spin on it to stay relevant. This is a great way to stay pertinent in the social world and keep your brand awareness increased. 

7. Report on Your Data

Lastly, make sure you report on your historical data. At GoingClear, our Boston social media marketing agency creates custom monthly reports for you and your company. Not only is it important to look back on how performance was month over month, but you can build off that data going forward. 

Our social media marketing agency also sends out recommendations for your social media account or accounts.  For example, performance might’ve been down month over month because engagements weren’t as high as they could’ve been. Going forward, we would suggest creating more engaging content that your customers can relate to or reach out to the business with a fast response time. This helps keep customers longer as well as show new prospects that you value each individual person and are not just a typical company that’s less humanized.