Your guide to creating Social Media Marketing:
In the past few years, The term “Social Media Marketing” has been heard around a lot, startups and large companies changed their career path to be a social media marketing agency.
But, what is social media marketing? And why is it so important nowadays? Can anyone who has an account on different social media platforms be social media marketer? Is there a social media strategy that should be taken into consideration?
All of those previous quotations and much more will be answered through this article. This article is going to be your guide to know more about social media marketing, so let’s do this!
What Does Social Media Marketing Mean?
It is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, drive traffic to your website, and increase your sales.
Also involves publishing great content on your social media profiles, those profiles can be on the greatest social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc…
social media marketing
How did social media marketing start?
Businesses first started social media marketing by publishing through social media platforms, they were sharing their content on social media platforms to drive more traffic to their websites. But now social media platforms and social media marketing has matured far beyond that.
Nowadays, social media platforms have been used in various ways by businesses to connect more with their audience, target more audience than who are already following them, monitor how their competitors’ social media platforms perform, all of that is known as “social media management”.
So, how does it work? There are 5 main pillars which social media marketing relies on, and these 5 pillars are:
- Strategy
- Publishing
- Engagement
- Analytics
- Advertising
1- Strategy
Social media strategy is the plan that you have to achieve your goals through your social media.
Social media strategy means knowing every step you are going to take for your business marketing, the social media platform you are going to use, the type of content you are going to share, the time and the date of sharing that content.
There are some steps that every marketer should do while creating a social media strategy and here is how to create a social media strategy.
How to create a social media strategy?
The more detailed and specific your strategy is, the more effective it will be. So to make a great strategy here are the steps you need to follow:
A- Social Media Marketing Goals
The first step to establish a winning strategy is to set objective goals, choose social media marketing goals that align with your business objectives. Set S.M.A.R.T. goals.
S.M.A.R.T. goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
By setting SMART goals, they will guide your actions and will lead to real business results.
B- Know your audience
Know your audience persona. By knowing who your audiences are, what they like, how they think, is the key to your success through social media marketing.
Knowing your audience will help you create the right content for them, hence making them engage with your content by liking, commenting and sharing, and eventually increasing your sales.
C- Know your competition
Keeping an eye of your competitors’ social media platforms can help you to create a great strategy. Analyze their performance, know their weaknesses and strong points, can and will help you to make a strong social media strategy.
D- Social Media Audit.
Every once in a while, take a look back at your social media platforms, audit your content, see what is attracting your audience, and what is not.
Social Media audit will help you to get a clear picture of what is the purpose of every social media platform you own and how each one is helping you to achieve your social media marketing goals.
E- Social Media Content Calendar
Sharing great content with your audience is important for your social media marketing, but knowing when to share that content is the key to a great social media strategy.
Having a social media content calendar will help you to keep lists of the dates, and the times of your content.
Social media content calendar is the perfect place for keeping track of all your social media activities.
F- Evaluation
Your social media strategy is a documentation of your business, and you can’t be 100% sure that you will get it right on the first attempt.
As you start planning your strategy, you will find that there are some points and ways that don’t work for you, while others are working perfectly fine.
Evaluate your strategy as you go on the way of your social media marketing.
2- Publishing
Almost everyone around the world is using social media, by being present on social media platforms, you are giving your brand the chance to be discovered by your targeted audience.
You can be presented on social media through publishing and sharing a blog post, an image, video on your social media platform.
As simple as it may sound, all you have to do is planning and auditing the content you are publishing on your social media platform and that is it.
3- Engagement
As you started publishing quality content through your social media platforms, the conversations about your brand will increase. People will comment, like, share or even ask you on our social media posts.
Monitoring all of that using social media listening and engagement tools, and engaging with your audience is a chance you have to use to make your social media marketing even more successful.
4- Analytics
One of the most important steps while social media marketing is to know how your social media marketing is performing, and you can do so through analytics.
Along the way, you need to stop publishing content or engaging on social media platforms and take a look at your performance, is your brand going all the way up? Are people started using your brand hashtag? Are you getting more followers than last month?
Knowing all the previous points will help your social media marketing to be more strong and reach more people and achieve your goals.
5- Advertising
When you have more funds to widen your social media marketing, you might consider social media advertising, social media Advertisements will help you to target more audience than those who are already following you.
Social media advisement can help you target a specific audience by their age, gender, demography,…etc.
There are a variety of social media advertising tools that can help you with your social media advertisements.
Started planning your strategy, know your quince, create quality content, and keep an eye on your competitors, that is your guide for social media marketing.
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