social media strategy

Just how crucial is it to have a social media strategy?

Marketing communication through social media sites is today a common tool in most
organizations’ promotional plans. With over 3 billion users active on social media platforms
today, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., having a proper social media
marketing plan is paramount.

In this blog post, I will be looking at the most common arguments given, which underscores why
it is of essence to companies to determine their social media strategy.

Increase Brand Awareness

Social media marketing is one of the many trends that hold the aim of popularizing particular
brands. The personal profile enables the posting of new content that provides your brand with a
nearly infinite touchpoint through the large network of followers, whose timelines you post on,
with the objective of reaching as many potential customers as possible. If properly implemented
and persisted over time, it can eventually enhance your brand awareness rather greatly.

For instance, when you are posting content from your business on IG Stories or posting office
and fun industry stats on LinkedIn, you remind the audience who you are and what you do.

Drive website traffic.

What good is a social media plan if it does not gain you plenty of followers and likes? It directs
traffic back to your website. This can include providing information about your products or
services, taking people to newsletters or video subscriptions, enabling them to make purchases,
and much more.

Seeding your posts with CTAs (calls-to-action), employing the traffic campaigns throughout the
paid social ads, and getting influencers to share your material helps drive more visitors through
the social platforms into your site. The more quality traffic you drive, the more leads and
customers you are likely to produce.

Improve customer engagement

Social media also acts as an easily accessible place where customers can get a feel for your
company. These users may also engage with your offerings, for instance, by inquiring, sharing
opinions, conversing in a quiz, and building an understanding of a more intimate relationship
when observing ‘’ordinary’’ contents of your brand’s everyday operations.

Reactive comments and DMs are good to make the customer feel valued, while reactive
comments help in addressing customers’ complaints more quickly and hence improving the
impressions of the brand. The arguments presented in this part state that more effective
customer retention and loyalty are the outcomes of conversations and new connections
developed on social media.

Gather data and insights.

It is this very real-time, immediate potency that provides immense value in these venues, as well
as the information unrecoverable about your wider marketing efforts. Almost all the social media
provide analytics for the followers, engagement rate, clicks, audiences, best time to post, and so
on.

They make it easier to give your viewers a clearer picture, adjust your approach, create more
appropriate content, target paid ads methodically, and enhance other marketing methods. It
serves as an articulated and rich source of information in decision-making for business and
marketing strategies.

Other marketing communication activities can be complemented by ad messages as follows:
Strategic social media marketing does not only serve to improve the outcomes of those media
platforms. It has offshoots that increase the effectiveness of your other marketing
communication elements.

This content on social drives traffic to your site that may then potentially convert through email
nurturing sequences. Customer experiences create a disposition towards brands on which
conversion is predicated. Paid social web visitors can be retargeted across devices through the
pixels placed on the website.

In other words, social media is used as a booster to enhance the efficiency of other strategies
ranging from email, SEO, content marketing, and paid advertising. Like, all the channels are
perfect if used in cooperation with each other.

Elements of Social Media Marketing

Although I have explained some of the important advantages, what comprises a perfect social
media plan, as we shall see? Here are some of the foundational components every business
should consider:

• goals & KPIs
• Ideal posting schedules
• Engaging content formats
• Account maintenance and storage
• Interaction protocols
• Visual branding guidelines
• Paid vs. organic approaches
• Audience targeting parameters
• Competitor benchmarking
• Analytics & reporting

First, it is critical when setting goals and KPIs to identify who will be responsible for delivering
social media objectives on the organization’s behalf—this specific target must be aligned with
broader organizational goals.

You need to find the right posting frequencies over every platform and content type that would
strategically reach out to your intended audience. There should be specific guidelines as to who
in the core accounts team owns the particular customer and how to answer that customer or
track when they’re communicating.

Color palettes, typefaces, , both stationary and nonstationary, graphic display, and layout keep
on being uniform. Depending on the budgets and performance numbers, define your ratio of
organic content vs. paid advertisements. Who are your prospects? Their buying characteristics,
which include buyer personas, demographics, interest profiles, behaviors, and a lot of other
things, should be specified in as much detail as we can so that our targeting can be as specific
as possible.

It is recommended to benchmark activity regularly against the identified competitors. And they
should clearly define the analytics and reporting that are required to gather information and
prove the ROI.

This is done with a specific intention of helping you to undertake social media marketing in a
much more grounded, goal-oriented way.

Over to You

Thus, although social media appears to be relaxed in terms of marketing strategies, proper
planning for your business-oriented accounts is critical for playing in these highly competitive
fields. They allow you to communicate with customers in a uniquely human fashion while at the
same time responding directly to organizational growth goals.