It is clear that today, social media marketing strategies have a lot of potential for any type of business. But do you know how to plan it? What tools to use? How to generate conversions?
Social networks are the perfect way to increase the reach of your communications, reach your buyer persona, interact with your community and improve the results of your marketing strategy, and today I present you 6 simple steps to implement a social plan mean .
But, before addressing these 6 points, let’s briefly see why social media has so much potential. We started!
Why is it important to take care of your social media marketing strategy?
Working on the content of the publications and the image that we project on social platforms has become a requirement to acquire brand awareness, for this reason I have compiled some reasons why it is important to follow a marketing strategy in the corporate profiles of your business:
- According to the Digital 2020 report by We Are Social , approximately 29 million users use social networks daily in Spain, spending an average of two hours a day on them. What’s more, Facebook has more than 1.13 billion daily active users.
- They are the perfect channel to build a quality relationship with your target audience, segment your audience and increase the visibility of your campaigns and promotions.
- With social networks we can obtain very valuable information to understand what the current needs of users are and, thus, be able to offer them the best solution.
- The social networks of a company, without a marketing strategy, can create a negative image in its community of followers and among potential customers.
Also, if you are still not sure whether to invest resources in a social media plan, here are some of the benefits of doing so:
- Improves the notoriety and image of the company.
- It allows the optimization of user acquisition through the social channel to increase web traffic, a basic requirement if you sell online.
- Social media can be used as a market research tool.
- Contributes to improving customer loyalty.
- It allows to increase the database of potential customers by capturing leads.
Another important aspect to take into account before starting a marketing strategy in social networks is to know very well which platforms our buyer person moves and what our objectives are. From here, we can prioritize, based on our available resources, which social networks we will work with.
For example, while Instagram is a perfect social network to develop branding and work on brand recognition, LinkedIn is for B2B companies that want to generate new business opportunities, and Twitter is more appropriate for those who generate highly specialized content.
Steps to follow to define your social media marketing strategy
While it may initially seem that implementing a social media marketing strategy is a monumental job, everything will be easier for you by following these 6 steps. Take note!
1. Definition of objectives (SMART) and KPI
From the definition of the objective of our business we can develop the objectives that we want the marketing plan to meet, which in turn will allow us to decide what objectives we want to achieve thanks to our social networks. Optimize, maintain and manage are the verbs to keep in mind.
To begin with, you should ask yourself questions such as: what products bring me the most benefits? What strategies am I using to get customers?
Some examples of possible goals on social media are:
- Make your brand known in the digital world.
- Improve digital reputation.
- Manage a fast and efficient customer service.
- Increase the database thanks to the capture of leads.
- Increase interactions on social networks.
But what we really have to define are the SMART objectives in social networks. For you to understand, a SMART goal has to meet the initials of this abbreviation:
- Be specific.
- That can be measured.
- Achievable (let’s face it).
- Relevant (for the evolution of your project).
- Be delimited in time (usually raised in the medium term, for example, in the next 3/6 months).
So examples of SMART objectives raised in a social media strategy would be:
- Increase the number of followers by 20% in two months.
- Increase engagement by 15% in the next three months.
- Increase the number of visits to the website through social networks by 30% in the next six months.
That said, it is also necessary to raise what our key performance indicators in social networks (KPI) will be through a dashboard or social media dashboard. These KPIs will help you measure your objectives and be able to better control your actions, recording progress every week, month or year, rectifying or making other types of decisions in your strategy depending on whether or not your objectives are met.
I recommend you choose around 3 KPIs to measure a specific objective, establishing a goal in time for each of them. For example, for the purpose of increasing engagement , we can take the following KPIs as a reference:
- Growth of followers on Instagram compared to the same period of the previous year.
- Scope of posts and stories.
- Interaction.
2. Creation of the buyer persona
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are social networks that also serve as tools to obtain valuable information about the people who interact with your brand.
Keep in mind that in social networks we can find all kinds of users, that is why it is important to segment your audience and, in this way, define how you are going to address it, what tone to use, when and at what time to publish, etc.
Our goal, in addition to those we have defined in the previous step, will be to connect emotionally with that group of key people in the marketing strategy.
The creation of the buyer person is the great step to meet the audience you are addressing, a semi-fictional character that represents the prototype of your ideal client. To find it, you need to research and analyze a series of behavior patterns, demographics and interests of your clients and potential clients.
We have to know what their tastes are, where they like to buy, what makes them decide on one product or another, what their lifestyle habits are, etc. Likewise, you will have to know what social networks he uses, what he uses them, how often he is on networks, what he uses them for, what time he connects …
In addition, it is important to identify the buyer person in each of the phases of the sales funnel. In this way, we will know what content to offer you and what kind of action we have to incite.
At Jezweb we have developed a template to create the profile of your ideal client that you can download for free. If you do not have enough information to fill in all this data, surely you will gradually complete it to develop a much more effective marketing strategy.
Defining these archetypes will help you in your social media strategy when planning content, to know how we can solve your needs at all times, being able to implement our actions and focus your efforts in a much more specific way.
3. Select the correct social networks
Where are you going to generate conversations with your potential clients?
Knowing which platforms your buyer persona is present on is essential so that you can invest your resources efficiently and obtain better results. It is preferable to have a few well-worked social profiles than to have them all neglected due to lack of resources or time.
In addition, if you are not clear about how social networks for companies work, you should first master one platform before starting another at the same time.
The different social networks that are used the most in Spain require treating the content differently. Therefore, you will have to adapt your copy and the style of presentation of the publications for each platform. That is, you must define a digital strategy that takes into account the particularities of each social network and not publish the same content in all without adapting it.
This is a very brief description of the most used social networks and what they can help you for:
- Facebook: with 1.86 billion users in the world, it is ideal for viralizing content, publishing news and trying to take advantage of live videos. You can segment your audience, for example, by their zip code.
- Instagram: has reached 600 million users and it seems that this social network is at the forefront when it comes to developing branding.
- LinkedIn: it is the most successful professional social network and has attractive segmentation filters to find your ideal client in B2B companies.
- Twitter : the king of hashtags. Although it experienced a considerable decline in 2017 with 375 million users, some continue to use this social network for their paid ads as a differentiation strategy for those with a very Twitter audience.
- YouTube : the social network par excellence for videos, ideal for attracting users and improving online positioning.
- Snapchat : to get closer to your younger audience in the most ephemeral and imperfect way, since it is characterized by temporality and an informal and spontaneous tone.
You don’t know how to focus your strategy on each of them and which ones to select? Get inspired and locate yourself with a competitor audit.
4. Content plan and editorial calendar
Do you know what you are going to talk about on your social networks? What communication style will you use? What time will you publish your content? How often?
The next step is to develop a content plan by which to define what you will publish on the different social networks over a certain time.
When developing this content plan for social networks, you should consider issues such as:
- Weekly frequency of publications that you will make in each social network.
- Type of content that you will publish: external or internal, informative or illustrative, with your own blog or news channel, to show the products and services, create interest on a subject with which the company identifies, etc.
- The language and formats that you will use in each social network.
- The marketing strategy that the competition is carrying out on social networks.
The content and resources to use in social networks
To do this, the first thing is to identify what content we have at our disposal to use in the publications and which we can create. For example, if we have a web page with a lot of information about our services or a wide catalog of products, we can take advantage of it for networks. However, it can also be interesting to include external content, such as articles from the media. We will work with them on credibility and various current affairs.
How to offer interesting content on social networks?
For your content to be attractive to your users, you must be able to anticipate their own needs, answer questions and offer valuable content, as well as generate conversations and motivate user interactions. This way they will value you and, little by little, they will have you as a benchmark in the sector.
The idea is that the user has a good reason to follow you on networks. If your content speaks exclusively of how beautiful your brand’s corporate identity is or how well your product works, you will not be adding real value. On the other hand, if you offer tips, homemade tricks, or that type of content that responds to real searches on the internet, you will be offering solutions that will be appreciated.
The social media style guide
Developing a style guide will help you define everything that is going to differentiate you on your social networks as a brand. Topics that represent the interests and concerns of the buyer persona, the tone and formats to be used, the range of colors and the graphic style (corporate image), identifying all the resources and elements to be exploited by the brand (images, videos, use of hashtags and emojis…). Be careful , the use of hashtags can be key to improving engagement on social networks and they work very well as an identifying element of your brand.
If you know perfectly the personality of, for example, your partner, this is how you should also know your own business . Trace the essence of your business and express it in the way you communicate in your networks, it will make you mark your own voice. If that makes you stop attracting a certain type of audience, nothing happens, the important thing is that your potential clients like you.
Post scheduling
Next, you have to make a content schedule, define the channels to work, the frequency of the publications and the schedules.
Keep in mind that if you publish your posts very often, you can fall into the dreaded saturation. And, in addition, it is very possible that your followers only see the publication that Facebook has given more relevance to (because, for some reason, it has worked better and has more interactions).
Analyze what works best with your audience and in each social network. For example, if you post twice a week on Facebook, you may be interested in betting on a higher frequency on Instagram stories.
Make an editorial calendar
Put what is defined in the previous point and put a date on your calendar so that in the next six months you will be clear about what you are going to do, how and why.
To do this, ask yourself these questions:
- What are we going to publish?
- What target are we going to attack?
- Do we have copy and creativity for each channel that meet our style guide?
5. Reputation crisis management plan
We know that social media can be somewhat controversial and a field of misinterpretation. And sometimes that happens in a very short time. For this reason, you must solve doubts in time, be very careful in some matters and prevent possible reputation crises .
It is not about making a post and forgetting about your readers. They may comment, write you privately and ask you questions. It is very important to come up with a reputation crisis management plan, good feedback management and adequate customer service.
It is convenient that you define guidelines for action to follow in the event that different scenarios arise, not only in the case of negative comments, but also prevent false news about the company, sabotage actions, haters, etc.
As a recommendation, you can create a protocol of actions and a document in which you answer yourself the main questions that users may have about your content.
These are my tips:
- Monitor and interact with your followers on social networks.
- Automate some responses for your social networks.
- It shows that behind the brand there is a human team, with personality and willing to help.
6. Analysis of the results
Continuous improvement must be the main motivation for our marketing actions and strategies. Our performance and investment of resources and time will be useless if we do not verify their effectiveness.
Measure the result of your actions through follow-up reports. Above all, do it periodically (weekly, monthly, quarterly and / or annually) to be able to make comparisons with criteria and to be able to follow your evolution over time.
- Interpret the data and analyze the results. How are you doing with the objectives set in point 1?
- What type of content works best for each objective?
- What can we do to keep improving?
Tools to improve your social media marketing strategy
Here are some of the best tools to implement these 6 steps in a simple way, analyze the results and manage your strategy on social networks.
- Google Analytics (free): gives you information on how much traffic comes to your website from social networks, where users come from (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn …). It also provides you with demographic and behavioral information about your audience. In essence, Analytics will help you compare the results between the channels and make decisions about which social network brings you more value and where we should invest more.
- Native analytics of the RR.SS platforms themselves. (free) : Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn have their own detailed statistics so that you can analyze the posts that have worked best and get to know your audience better and better (age, gender, interests…). Tools like Metricool and Hootsuite can be helpful for deeper cross-channel analysis.
- Canva (free) – A tool for quick creative designs. Ideal for creating eye-catching and professional content on the spot. A simple program that allows you to create and design all kinds of graphic content for social networks and much more, with hundreds of creative designs. It can also serve as inspiration.
- Metricool (free): a tool that allows you to plan content, monitor your social networks and analyze your publications, all from the same site. It is perfect for generating reports on the evolution of your social media marketing strategy and controlling the main KPIs.
- Hootsuite (free trial period): an ideal tool for community managers with facilities to:
- Schedule the publications in all your RR.SS.
- Monitor interactions and give quick responses.
- Measure your results.
- And make comparisons between channels.
Of all the points detailed in this article about the marketing strategy to follow in the social networks of your company, I want to highlight the following as a conclusion:
- Before starting to create content, it is worth spending some time on strategy. It will help you be more efficient in the long term, achieve your goals, and keep improving.
- Our social media plan can help you work on each of the points explained in this article and transfer them to paper.
- With so many tools to make our work easier, we have no excuse for not taking good care of our social networks and truly pampering all our followers.
- Well-developed social networks are a great opportunity to increase business results.
Now that you have everything you need to work on your social media marketing, do you dare to start today?