How to build a successful social media marketing plan?

PostPaddy

January 12, 2023
10:00 am

Building A Successful Social Media Marketing Plan

It is not just enough to post on social media, you need a detailed marketing plan to get your desired results. Learn how to build a successful social media marketing plan with these invaluable tips.

PostPaddy

January 12, 2023
10:00 am

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Introduction

The common quote by Benjamin Franklin, which states: ‘if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail’, applies to the social media efforts of your brand. You can’t just decide that you want to leverage the digital community for the growth of your brand without a plan. This is where building a successful social media marketing plan comes in.

A social media marketing plan outlines the strategies a brand wants to implement to succeed in its campaign. Posting on social media should be based on something other than guesswork or assumptions, hence the need for a detailed and result-driven plan.

Important things to do to build a successful social media marketing plan:

Create social media marketing goals: The foundation of every marketing plan is the goal. Social media marketing goals allow you to set relevant objectives you want to achieve with your strategies. Your social media goals should be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound.

Determine your most relevant performance indicators: Selecting key performance indicators (KPIs) will focus your energy on the right metrics. Your social media goals will determine the metrics you will monitor for your pages. For example, if one of your social media goals is brand awareness, your metrics can include Post Reach.

Research your target audience: The basis of all your social media efforts is to get the attention of your target audience. Therefore, it is important to get it right when it comes to identifying who your target audience is. Make a research about your ideal customers and what their wants and needs are.

For a vivid description of who they are, you can also create a customer persona for them. Do not be bothered when you realize that you have more than one set of the target audience. However, it is important that you figure out who the major target audience are.

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Run a competitor analysis: Conducting a competitor analysis will help you understand what others are doing in your industry and how your potential customers react to it. You can adopt the SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat) technique for better analysis.

Find out the platforms they are most active on and the ones they get high engagement from. Find out what they share on social media platforms and what others say about them. Pinpoint areas they are underserving your potential customers and leverage that for your social media marketing strategy.

Run a social media audit: With the knowledge you have gained from your research (target audience research and competitor analysis), you can then go ahead and audit your page to suit your target audience. This is where you optimize your social media pages, bio and content types. You also get to decide which social media pages you want to focus on – this decision is based on your understanding of your target audience.

Decide content format: It will be easy to determine the content type when you have made the necessary findings as recommended earlier. To choose the content format, you have to consider the customer’s interest and the style of each social media platform. You can also consider creating a content calendar to document your content ideas and how, when and where they will be posted. This is a more organized method of ensuring that your chosen content format is being used.

Conduct social media listening: Use listening tools to find out what is being said about your brand or product on the internet. This helps you understand your customers’ perception of your brand and what they want from it. If you want to get it right with your marketing strategy, then this is a step you should pay attention to.

Create engaging and compelling content: One important question you should ask yourself when creating content is ‘Is this what my target audience needs?’ To create good and engaging content, you have to put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. Would they get value from your content? Can they relate to your content? Does your content make them stop scrolling while on their feeds? Is it a good mix of educational, informational, entertainment and promotional? You are on the right path when you can give positive answers to these questions.

Set up a social media budget: Growing your business online is not entirely free. You have to be willing to invest some amount of money to get your desired result. As a brand seeking to improve its online presence and reach more audiences online, a realistic budget should be set, aside from advertisements and post boosts.

Run social media ads: To improve brand recognition or your social media marketing goals, you can run ads on each platform. You can demographically target your ads, making them only visible to the preferred target audience. Paid promotions expand your reach to the relevant audiences who need to follow your page.

Work on your social media presence: A solid social media presence is not achieved in a day. It comes with consistency, sticking with your goals and dedication. You should also understand that timeliness is important for everything you do on social media. Post at the best times your audience is more active. Respond to customers’ comments and questions.

Track your performance and improve your social media marketing plan: Tracking your performance using the metrics you have selected will help you have a better understanding of your social media campaign. There are various analytics tools you can use to track your success and discover the areas you need to work on. Analyzing your efforts help you put things in a better perspective. Hence, this is a vital part of monitoring your growth as a brand.

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