Getting started on social media marketing is both easy and challenging. It’s easy for brands that know how to take advantage of social media platforms. And it’s challenging for brands that don’t know how to harness the power of social media platforms. However, getting started and taking advantage of social media platforms doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll achieve great results in social media marketing. Therefore, brands need to understand that they need to start in the right way for their social media marketing to achieve great results. This article explains how you can do that.
Step 1: Know Your Business, Market, And Competition
The first step when getting started in social media marketing (or any other marketing) is better understanding your business, market, and competition. So, how should you do this?
Start by outlining your business goals. Your business goals help determine the future of your social media marketing strategy and objectives.
You should then define who your market is by learning more about your audiences’ demographics (take advantage of the data you have on your current customers).
Finally, you need to know more about your competitors. Who are they? Where are they? How are they doing? You can spy on their social media pages to answer questions about your competitors.
Step 2: Develop A Clear. Scalable, And Multi-Faceted Social Media Marketing Strategy
Once you clearly understand your business goals, audience, and competitors, it’s time to start working on your social media marketing strategy.
Identify the social media platforms you believe will work best for your brand and outline the purpose of each platform. Set up your social media accounts and start talking to your audience immediately. These conversations will give you an insight into your market’s needs.
Prepare a social media calendar and ensure you have the right content mix. If you’re not sure of the right content mix, try the 80:20 rule. 80% of your content should be informative and the other 20% should promote your brand. It’s at this stage that you should develop a brand tone. Remember always to remain authentic and relatable when interacting with your audience.
Step 3: Create Strategic Content
Do you remember in step 2, you outlined the purpose of the social media platforms you’ve decided to use? Now it’s time to create amazing content that will help you realize the purpose of each platform.
Each social media platform has content that’s best suited for its audiences. For example, Twitter is an excellent platform to post company news and offer customer support. So, it would be unhelpful if you started posting tutorial videos on Twitter. However, do take your time when figuring out what content works best on which platform. And don’t be afraid to change your plan if something isn’t working.
When creating content, focus more on quality rather than quantity. Create content that audiences will find super helpful. Such content will improve your brand visibility and increase your sales revenue.
Step 4: Track And Measure Your ROI And Content Performance
Social media marketing isn’t clear-cut. Even if you’ve created what you believe is a full-proof marketing strategy, NEVER assume you’ll get everything right on your first try. You should always leave room in your strategy to change what’s not working.
You can use your business goals and sales revenues to track your ROI. As for your content’s performance, many social media tools help track, analyze, and report these data all in one place. The data is reported in real-time, so you’ll be able to trace which social media posts are bringing in the most traffic.
With the help of this data, you’ll be able to evaluate what’s working and what’s not. You can test and compare the performance of different social media posts and campaigns. Depending on your satisfaction with your social media marketing strategy’s results, you can decide whether to set up a new strategy. Or slightly alter your current strategy and refine it.
Step 5: Keep Learning
The best social media marketers will tell you that you can never stop learning new things every day. And that’s because social media is an ever-changing field. For example, today, Tik Tok is currently the hottest kid on the block. Tomorrow a new network may rise and beat Tik Tok in popularity. And who knows how the new network will change how social media marketing is conducted.
Therefore, you need to keep on learning. And as you gain more knowledge, be willing to adapt. Brands that refuse to adapt to the changes in social media will lag behind.
In short, the best way to get started on social media marketing is by developing your goals, building your social media presence, and monitoring and exploring your progress. If you’re ready to get started and would like the help of professional social media marketers, visit our website and learn more about our services.
