How to Create Your First Social Media Marketing Strategy

Quality content is usually the main source of increasing website traffic. Those business owners who invest their money and efforts in the development of social media strategy are able to boost their position in search and attract a new audience. Today, we will talk about how to create your first SMM strategy or review the existing one. In this regard, the first thing you need to do is to make a complete content audit of your site.

How to Make a Complete Content Audit

The quality content audit usually implies a wide range of actions that give you a complete picture of the website content effectiveness and allow you to build a correct SMM strategy. If you do the content check in the right way, it will help you determine the reasons for falling under the sanctions, evaluate the marketing effectiveness of the content, and find the pages that require improvements.

Take the following steps to make a complete audit of the site:

1. Define the purpose of your audit;
2. Collect and analyze the data;
3. Create your step-by-step plan for the future;
4. Rewrite your SMM strategy based on the results of the audit.

Please note that your content must be constantly reviewed and updated so, plan your website audit in advance and make the improvements on time. This rule is applied to both new and old marketing strategies because the quality and relevance of your content is the key factor of success.

How to Make Your Own SMM Strategy

Today, an obligatory part of promoting a business on the Internet should be a promotion in social networks. Attracting a target audience to social networks allows you to get an additional source of high-quality traffic, increase sales, establish communication with customers, and form a positive image of a company or brand. But how to start the promotion on social networks? To fulfill your plan, you need an effective SMM strategy.

The main task of the SMM strategy is to determine the vector of business development in social networks. In order to define the main goals and objectives of promotion, it is enough to answer the following questions:

• Who are our clients?
• What do we offer them?
• How to increase sales efficiency?
• On which platform to promote the product?
• What features of the product should be emphasized?

So, you need to understand that building a community on social networks and publishing posts is not an SMM strategy. This task should be entrusted to professionals. Each step of building a strategy must be proved by analytics and business goals.

7 Steps to Creating an Effective SMM Strategy

The development of a general concept is the most important process in this marketing direction. When the strategy is developed and implemented, only then the posting and administration of the community can be entrusted to the content manager. However, how to start this large-scale work?

Step 1: Defining the Overall Vision

At the initial stage, you need to briefly form a list of core values ​​and business principles that will form the fundament of the basic concept. The overall concept should reflect the competitive advantages of the business. Each team member must correctly understand the promotion vector. It will help achieve a well-coordinated work in all subsequent stages.

Step 2: Defining the Main Objectives and Goals

Defining goals and objectives is an important element in developing a long-term SMM strategy. All goals must correspond to the classic Smart-model:

• Specific – the goal should be equally clear to the project manager and all involved specialists;
• Measurable – you need to accurately measure efficiency or KPIs of the tasks;
• Achievable – regardless of the complexity of the goals, all of them must be achievable in practice;
• Relevant – the assigned tasks must correspond to the competence and capabilities of the employees;
• Time bounded – you need to determine the time frame for achieving the goals.

Such a model will help track the progress of the implementation of the promotion strategy in social networks, as well as understand which tasks have already been solved and which goals have not yet been achieved.

Step 3: Defining a Portrait of the Target Audience

This stage is necessary in order to understand who the target audience is. It will provide an opportunity to reduce advertising costs because you will be able to use the advanced targeting tools on social networks. In addition, the correct definition of the target audience allows you to reduce the cost of attracting subscribers because then the promotion will be focused on people who are interested in the brand.

Step 4: Identifying Suitable Social Networks

The platforms for promotion must be carefully selected since there is no reason for promoting the project in all social networks at once. For example, if the target audience is over 50 years old, then it will be inappropriate to search for it on Instagram, so you can focus on Facebook.

Step 5: Creating a Content Plan

At this stage, you need to create a detailed plan for the content release for the entire period of the campaign. You don’t need to schedule every post: it is enough to highlight the main headings, the order of the topics, and the time of publications. Your content plan should take into account the holidays, as well as important dates for your brand and target audience. Don’t forget about periodic surveys and competitions.

Step 6: Analytics

Once the strategy is launched, you need to regularly engage in complex analytical activities. Collecting and analyzing statistics will help you define weaknesses that require additional attention.

Step 7: Automation

To increase the effectiveness of your campaign, you need to use automation tools such as Postfity. Today, you can publish materials on schedule, collect and organize statistics, create audience groups for retargeting, etc.

Finally, there is no perfect SMM strategy. You always need to find and fix errors, as well as make brave experiments.  Do it and enjoy the result. Good luck!