Social Media Marketing: How Social Channels Can Work for Your Marketing Strategy
Neglecting the reach and influence that social media marketing can have for your business is missing out on a key channel for you to increase engagement. Marketers have a lot to gain from crafting a social media strategy that works. This includes lead generation, improved search engine rankings, more website traffic, higher conversion rates, and more.
However, knowing the right steps to take to create an effective social media strategy can be tricky. With the long list of options, it can be hard to figure out what is best for your business model and what you or your clients offer to customers. The team at Lyv Marketing is here to help you figure out what social media strategy will be the most beneficial for you. Read this week’s blog to find out more!
Social Media Objectives
The first step to tackling your social media marketing strategy is figuring out what your objectives are. If you can’t explain how a certain social media channel will help you in your journey to achieving your goals, it wouldn’t be worth it to invest your time or money. Most commonly, these objectives include…
Increase brand awareness
Accurately target your audience
Strengthen relationships to build loyalty
Driving website traffic
By clearly outlining your goals and objectives, you can use these social media channels to achieve them. A clear path to reaching your goals helps you to decide what to post and how you want your audience to engage with these channels.
Building a Social Media Strategy
The first step to building your social media strategy from the ground up is choosing which platforms you want to be present on. It makes sense to consider choosing platforms that are established with an audience that is already vast. This helps you choose who you want to target and be specific about your audience. These include the big names like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. However, niche platforms should not be completely ignored. Depending on what good or service you are providing, a smaller, more concentrated platform could benefit you just as much as Instagram or Facebook.
The next step in building your strategy is deciding if you have a budget for paid ads and if so, how much that budget will be. If raising brand awareness is a goal of yours, paid promotion is definitely something to consider for your strategy. Advertising is different on every channel, so take a look at what each platform offers and decide what is right for you. For example, Facebook and Instagram both operate under the Meta business manager, so you can run ads on both accounts at the same time from a central management system.
Building a Community on Your Platforms
Many of the most successful brands at the moment use social media as a way to build loyalty, trust, and most of all, a community of customers. Social Media is the way that most of your audience is engaging directly with your business. Staying authentic to your brand image and directly communicating with your consumer base is a great way to show users that there are people behind your brand. For example, some ways that brands directly engage with their customers include…
Responding to your customers’ questions or concerns via direct message
Show that you are listening to your audience by offering what they are asking for
Show behind the scenes content to give your customers what the people behind your brand do
Collect Data and Recognize Trends
After you create your accounts and start using them, it is important to perform audits and figure out what is working and what isn’t. A social media audit is an examination of data (presence, performance, strategy, etc.) across all channels. An audit helps to identify areas that need improvement, track your progress toward goals, and optimize your marketing efforts.
Analyze Your Competitors
A great way to brainstorm what to feature on your social media is by analyzing what a competing brand is doing on theirs. Now, it is not a good idea to copy their social posts or strategy exactly, but it can be worthwhile to take inspiration from them. This is called a competitive analysis. It collects data from your competitors and what is successful for them to help continue to build your overall strategy. For example, take stock of…
What type of content they post
What platforms they are most active on
How much engagement do they get on their posts
Takeaway: Social Media Channels Should be Working FOR You and Not AGAINST You
Your social media accounts should not cause an unnecessary burden on you and your team. They should exist to push you toward achieving your goals. It is important to pay attention to what works and what doesn’t and adapt your channels and your strategy accordingly.
Here at Lyv Marketing, we are dedicated to providing you with the social media management that you’re looking for. Reach out to us today to schedule your FREE consultation and figure out if our services are right for you.
