In 2019, an estimated 2.95 billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to almost 3.43 billion in 2023.

Statista.com

By implementing smart Social Media Marketing Strategy businesses could convert those users into followers, and the followers into paying customers.

Moreover, the social media platforms allow businesses to talk directly with their customers and to get insides on how they interact with the brand.

In a few simple steps, this is what your will need to do:

1. Find out which social media (SM) platform your customers are using most.
2. Create your profile or business page, add content.
3. Start making connections by interacting with people.
4. Use contests, special events and promotions to spread the word about your business.
5. Share photos and free content regularly.
6. Use Social Media Marketing to increase your reach.

Now let’s dig deeper to find out how exactly you are going to do it.

Which social media sites are right for your business

When getting started with social media it is a good idea to sort it out into categories.

1. Larger and smaller SM platforms,

• Facebook, Instagram, Google Plus, LinkedIn are very large and popular platforms. This means that your existing and future customers are there.
• Trip Advisor, Open Table are examples of a smaller, more specific platform. There are many more. Do your research and find out what is out there.

Join social media platforms relevant for your business to find your ideal audience.

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2. Different content types SM platforms

• Personal networks

Those are good for light content, not hard sales. People just want to interact there. You can still build your name, by commenting and sharing free info.

• Content sharing

Where you can share your creative content. Like Youtube or Pinterest to share your videos or pictures.

• Professional networks

People share information about their business. You will also find there job offers or job-seeking applicants.

Share relevant content on relevant social media platforms. 

Tips on creating social media account for business

• Use your business email.
• Include your business name and contact details.
• Explore what else you can be posting on various platforms.
• Include plenty of images.
• Create a quality content.
• Be active and interact.
• SM information might be also shared by SE if relevant and good quality.
• Use SM adverting programs.
• Always keep your business goals in mind.

Social Media Plan for your business 

SM can be overwhelming. It is always good to start with a plan. Here’s how to plan your social media expansion step-by-step.

1. Decide what you want to accomplish. Do you want to reach to your existing or new customers. Do you want to bring more traffic to your website or to sell more products from your website.
2. Set up your goals based on a SMART framework. Read more below in Successful Social Media Strategy.
3. Join the right network. Which platforms are you ideal customers using? Which one’s will allow you to reach your marketing goals?
4. Create content calendar. (Read more bellow)
5. Engage and give back to the network. Get your audience involved, by asking them about their opinion. Join social media groups and help others by giving solutions to their problems without charging for it. Be friendly and genuine.
6. Establish how to speak with a different audience on different platforms. There are many types of SM platforms, more and less formal, containing different types of content. Make sure that you post relevant content and use relevant language.
7. Review and reassess. Always measure whether you Social Media Plan is giving you the desirable results. If not change it. Be flexible.

How to create Social Media Content Calendar

Think long term, what you want to be posting for the next 6 months.

• Decide what content you will be sharing.
• Decide when you will be posting.
• Decide where you want to share it.
• Decide who is going to be doing it.
• Don’t forget to think about your business goals when creating your posts.
• Use SM managing tools, like buffer or every post.
• Create a list of posts that will be automatically shared in the coming weeks.
• Use those tools to hear back how people respond to your efforts. 

Check out this Content Calendar Tips from Facebook.

For any business to be successful it must be better or offer sometheing different than the competition. Researching your audience and market is an important part of any business strategy. Along with seating up realistic and measurable goals.

Researching how your competition is using social media and how your potential customers are behaving on social media platforms is an important part of successful social media marketing strategy.

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1. Set up your goals

Remember, to always align your social media goals with your overall business goals. (Read more about seating up smart online business goals in Start Promoting Your Online Business Using Online Marketing Solutions.)

Your social media marketing goals that are measurable will become your Key Performance Indicators. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a very important part of social media marketing strategy. You need to know how to use available data and metrics to market your business, to evaluate and grow. KPI’s will vary depending on the business. They must, however, be measurable and achievable to help you reach your long term goals. 

S – specific

M – measurable

A – attainable

R– relevant 

T – time-bound 

Using SMART framework to create your goals will allow you to measure your success and/or to react appropriately if any of those goals aren’t meet.

Create your social media marketing KPIs based on the SMART framework. Measure your KPIs and respond to the data accordingly.

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An example of a SMART goal for your Social Media Marketing Strategy could be, to increase website visits by 20% per month using Facebook and Instagram advertising.

Remember to always stay flexible. You can adjust the above goal halfway through if the reports are showing that the most traffic is coming from Facebook and end the Instagram campaign. Or change your SMART goal completely if it doesn’t bring you the desired end result.

Read more of how to construct KPIs using the SMART framework

2. Research your audience

Using Social media analytic tools you can learn about who your followers are, where they live, which languages they speak, and age group they are. You can also find out how they interact with your brand on social media, by measuring your posts popularity and engagement.

Using Google Analitics will give you details about which social media platforms are bringing the most traffic to your website. What keywords are the most searched for. What time of the day you getting the most views. What devices are most common among your audience.

These insights allow your business to refine your social media marketing strategy and better target your social media campaigns.

Check out our guide to using social media analytics and the tools you need to track them.

3. Research your competition

Find out who your competitors are and what exactly do they offer to their customers. How are they using the social media to promote their brand, products or services?

• Consider your strengths as well as a weakness (SWOT analysis) and compare them with your competitions.
• Use search engines to find out what keywords your competition is using.
• Use Google Alerts to follow the social media topic. To find out what happens daily on social media, what various brands are doing to promote, but also what technical or legal changes and updates are happening on social media platforms.
• Search the competition social media accounts to find out how they communicate their message:
  • What content are they posting?
  • How often they post?
  • What promotions and competitions they run?
  • What engagement are they getting from their posts?
  • How they structure they campaigns?
  • What engagement are they getting from their campaigns?

4. Chose your Unique Selling Points (USPs)

To find out what your USPs are you need to find answers to the following questions:

• Who is my target audience?
• Who are my competitors?
• What problems do my audience have?
• How can I solve them?

Can you offer to your customer’s different solution to their problems than the completion is offering? Or maybe, you can find a solution to a problem that no competitor has addressed yet? If you can, that’s your Unique Selling Point.

When you establish what your USP’s are you can communicate it to the customer via social media posts and campaigns. Remember to always speak common language and engage with your audience.

5. Advertise to increase your reach

Many social media networks offer paid advertising opportunities. Those opportunities can help you in different ways.

• Focus your ads. Narrow down your ad reach: chose the location, gender, age, etc.

• Build bigger audience. SM advertise can help you to promote your posts and reach more viewers. 

• Measure your success. A social media management tools, social media monitoring tools will help you to compare different SM campaigns on a different platforms. Where, Google Analytics will help you to track if the traffic to the website increased based on your social media campaigns.

Read more about the Social Media Strategy.

Social Media Marketing Strategy can help you in increasing the organic traffic to your website, when using the links to your website on your SM platforms. Make sure that you read the SEO Plan and Successful SEM Campaigns to get more insides on search engines. By knowing how to use both your business can achieve even greater online success.

Boring, repetitive sales messages, posting to much or to rarely can hurt your business.

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The important things to remember when promoting your business on the social media platforms, are:

• You are posting for your followers, share content interesting and beneficial for them. Only this way they will interact with your brand and share your content. If you post for your audience they will appreciate it and organically become your brand advocates.
• Aggressive sales push content is not welcome. People use social media to connect and interact. They do not want to be overloaded with salesy content, it doesn’t seam genuine in that environment.
• People want to know that you are listening and responding to their comments. Always acknowledge your audience, nobody want’s to be ignored. Make sure that you read the comments on regular basis and respond in timely manner. If you receive a valuable suggestion form your audience and decide to implement it, let them know about it.
• Negative feedback can be an opportunity. Make sure you address it with care. Respond to all comments and reviews with the same professionalism and care. If you receive a negative comment let the customer know that you are sorry and make up for it. A gesture like a free product or a discount for a next visit can convert an unhappy customer into a loyal one.
• Don’t overwhelm yourself, chose 2-3 SM pages and focus on them. You want to reach your ideal audience and make them happy. Chose the SM platforms which your ideal audience are using, do not waist time on the ones that wont give you the desirable results.
• Be regular and consistent, not updated SM pages don’t look good. For most of the SM platforms posting once a day is a norm, on Twitter – few posts a day. Use SM managing tools that will help you do that. Otherwise your audience will forget about you, or they might even think that you went out of business and stop following you.
• Measure your results, evaluate and change approach if needed. Social Media Marketing Strategy is for your business and investment of time and money. Make sure that all your efforts are worth it. Measure and analyse to find out what is bringing you the desirable results.

Remember, social media platforms can be successfully used to expand your business. They are a great tool to communicate with your audience and give insides into customer-brand interactions. Create content based on your audience needs and they might become your brand advocates on social media. Put together Social Media Marketing Strategy for your business to expand your online reach and convert your followers into paying customers. Always do your research, on your audience, as well as your competition to create your KPIs and USP. To avoid costly mistakes and time-wasting – measure and analyse.

Also read Start Promoting Your Online Business Using Online Marketing Solutions and the SEO Plan and Successful SEM Campaigns for more information on how to grow and expand your business online.

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Thank you for Reading! 

Ola van Zyl

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