Drive success through a social media strategy

We are now into the 2020s and social media is something most of us are familiar with. Over a billion of the world’s population has a Facebook account. Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform. We have the ability to share photos, opinions, events and it has transformed the way we live. It has also transformed the way we do business. 

People who use social media as a significant part of their marketing strategy usually see some measurable results. But the key to successful social media marketing is to not treat it like an extra tool but to treat it with the same care, respect, and attention you do with all of your marketing efforts. 

We have explained some of the noteworthy reasons why social media participation is crucial for growing your business. It includes increasing your online exposure, building customer loyalty, learning about your customers, and improving your sales. 

For this, an effective way to engage your audience on social media is to create social campaigns. These come in a variety of forms such as contests, special offers and sales. These are just a few things to think about when creating your social media strategy;

1. What are your goals?

2. Set your target audience

3. Choose the right platform for each promotion

4. Find or create a theme, then associate your promotion with it

5. Have a proper amount of time duration for each promotion

6. Deliver content consistently

7. Make your customers excited by offering incentives

You will be stunned by the number of followers you will gain, the website traffic boost you will get and the new leads you will have use of. Using social platforms is really an effective and inexpensive way to reach and engage with customers to help your business grow.

Social media marketing can solidify branding, create quality leads and drive sales. But the point is to know how to strategically create, carry out, and measure the overall campaign.

There are some common challenges that we must overcome to achieve successful social media marketing. With some planning, companies are more likely to reach and exceed the payoff that got them excited about social media marketing in the first place.

1. Understand and keep researching your competitors

Researching your competition is the thing that a lot of marketers forget in social media marketing - don't miss this one. You’ll be able to find out what’s working for your competition and you can then use that valuable insight to form and improve your own campaigns.

Knowing the height of your competitor’s wall will allow you to create an even stronger one for your brand, giving you that edge. You can do your research manually, or you can use competitor research tools to compile the data for you.

2. Craft and execute your strategy

Create a solid strategy for your campaigns before you do anything else. Strategies can become complex, but start by breaking it down to the basics.

Keep asking yourself this: do you want to build an online community, drive more leads to your site or help promote your blog? Then, craft a strategy associated with that.

3. Promote one message with different pieces of content

Promote one product with different media types, such as images and videos. See what your audience responds to, and keep using diverse formats while you favour those that come out on top. Doing so will keep your channels interesting and your users engaged.

4. Find a balance between promoted and non-promoted content

If you share only non-promoted content on social media, you won't get the kind of results you're looking for. Mix it up with some ads or “promoted” content as it’s called. That way, your audience gets to see content they might otherwise have missed due to algorithms.

5. Keep your signature style: create unique content

Find your style. This means the tone of your texts, your color scheme and the type of content you post. Don’t simply copy-paste content from other businesses. Make sure to decide what your style is and create a voice for your business. Stick to it until your customers can distinguish it anywhere online.

6. Use scheduling tools to optimize your routine

Create a content calendar in advance. When you have your calendar in place, schedule posts to be published at specific times and dates. This approach significantly reduces the amount of time you'll spend bouncing around on different platforms to upload content, giving you more time to focus on creating great content and engaging with users.

7. Use any social listening tools and engage with your audience

This is to monitor the impact of your campaigns and see what people are talking about. You should also specifically check what questions people have about your product, brand, and industry; such questions offer valuable ideas for content.

8. Create a distinctive hashtag for each campaign

Hashtags are powerful entities on Instagram and Twitter. They can help drive engagement and can help you track the results of your campaigns. By creating a unique, branded hashtag for your brand and specific campaign, you can more easily track engagement and user-generated content even if users don't remember to tag your brand directly in their posts.

9. Analyze and understand your performance

Just because your campaign may be underway or over, doesn't it mean that the work is done. You can get valuable insight into what worked well and what didn't. It also gives you the chance to identify the top content of the campaign. You can then reschedule or repurpose it to run again soon, increasing your results and keeping the momentum going.

Social media campaigns are fun, easy ways to gather demographic information and feedback from your audience, build email lists, and more. Whatever your goal is, you can build a campaign to match it.

For best results, promote the campaign across your existing sites and profiles (and invite entrants to do the same), and be sure that people can access the campaign via mobile.