8 Step Social Media Marketing Strategy for Businesses in 2019

Too many businesses go into social media marketing on an ad hoc basis. They know they should do something about social media, but they don’t really understand what they should do. Some firms just give access to the company social accounts to some junior staff member– merely because they are young, so should know all about social media.

However, in 2019 we are well past a social strategy of post and hope. All businesses need to create a social media marketing strategy and operate the business social accounts in a thoughtful, measured way.

1. Set Relevant and Realistic Social Media Marketing Goals

One of the most significant problems faced by many businesses engaged in social media is that they have never spent the time to set relevant and realistic social media marketing goals. They know they need to be on social media, but they have no idea why they are there.

Of course, your social media marketing goals need to fit into your business planning as a whole. Ideally, you will have set strategic goals for how you want your business to progress. Your social media marketing goals should complement your overarching business goals.

2. Understand Your Social Media Audience

Not all social media audiences are alike. Different types of people use social media in varying ways. If you’re going to meet your goals, you need to be using the same social media networks as your target audience. Similarly, if you intend to engage in influencer marketing, you need to ensure that you engage influencers whose audience matches your target market.

3. Determine Your Most Relevant Metrics

Too many businesses create a social presence and spend time and other resources on using their social accounts, without ever establishing whether they are seeing any success or not.

Unfortunately, social analytics can be a gray area, because they are not the same for every business. Once again, your most relevant social metrics will relate to the goals you have set yourself.

4. Investigate How Your Competitors Approach Social Media

Most firms don’t operate in isolation. You will usually have competitors who will also run a social strategy. You will definitely need to know what they are doing. What is their focus? Whom are they targeting? What key phrases are they trying to dominate?

You can quickly conduct a competitor analysis to help you better understand their strengths and weaknesses. This should give you a better understanding of what potential customers expect from businesses in your industry.

5. Create Suitable Content to Share with Your Followers

Of course, to be successful on social media, you will need high-quality content to share. One of the biggest mistakes that businesses do is to share excessive promotional material. Remember social networks are designed to be social – they were never intended to be a marketplace for you to sell your products.

Therefore, you need to balance the content you share socially, to be a mixture of informative and entertaining items, with a small percentage of promotional material added in. You will also need to like and share other peoples’ content.

6. Engage With Your Audience

People don’t just go onto social networks to read, look at, or watch content. They go online to interact with other people and to be social. Successful businesses do not just broadcast to their social audiences. They engage with them too.

This is why you should not attempt to cover every social network unless you have a very diverse target market and an army of personnel dedicated to this task. By focusing your attention on the social networks your target market frequents, you can use your resources efficiently.

7. Establish the Best Times to Post and Set up a Content Calendar

While you could manually make all of your social posts, that is inefficient, and may not lead to the best results. Most of the social networks now use some form of algorithm to filter the results they give people. This means that if you post at a different time to when your target audience is online, they may never see your content.

8. Track Your Results and Adapt

Of course, no matter how much you plan your social efforts, there is no guarantee that things will work as you expected. If you don’t track your results, however, you will never know the success of your social campaigns.

You began the process by setting goals and then determined your most relevant metrics. Therefore, you will want to keep a constant eye on how these metrics are progressing. Are your social campaigns having the desired effects on these metrics?

Don’t be afraid to make changes if there is a chance that you can further improve your social success.