By Harrison Pumphrey
Over the course of the past decade, the business world has witnessed the growing importance of social media as a marketing channel and customer engagement tool. In the ever-changing digital world, it is important to understand how social media marketing is done and which platforms to focus your social media marketing efforts on.
How to make a social media marketing plan
Before hitting the “upload” button on your first post, it is crucial to organize your social media marketing strategy through creating a plan. To understand how social media marketing can help your small business, you should ask yourself a few questions first:
- What are your business objectives?
- Who is your audience?
- What kind of content do they consume?
- Why should they care?
After you have an understanding of what you would like to accomplish through social media marketing efforts and a definition of the audience you would like to reach, it’s time to begin forming a strategy for the content you should upload.
Forming content pillars
When forming your content strategy, you should create three or four distinct content pillars: categories designed to satisfy one or more of the business objectives that you’ve already created. Each of your posts should be created in order to reinforce one content pillar. Examples of content pillars could include:
- Engagement: Posts that actively involve your followers. Product giveaways, Polls, or highlighting customer creations are good options.
- Story-telling: Posts that offer a behind-the-scenes look at your company or tell the story of your brand.
- Reach: Eye-catching or interesting content that would inspire prospective customers to learn more about your brand.
After establishing content pillars, forming a social media calendar with scheduled posts is an important step for small businesses without dedicated in-house social media marketing personnel.
Measuring social media marketing effectiveness
Without measurements in place before you begin implementing your social media strategy, how can you know if your social media marketing efforts are working as planned? But which social media marketing analytics should you use? Your chosen metrics should reflect the business objectives that you are seeking to accomplish. Examples of objectives and metrics used to analyze can include:
- Awareness: impressions and reach
- ROI: referrals and conversions
- Engagement: likes, comments, clicks and shares
Many social media platforms offer native analytics tools for viewing these metrics. If you want the ability to look at insights from all of the platforms at once, there are many third-party social media tools available. Some of the most popular options include Sprout Social, HubSpot, Hootsuite Analytics and Keyhole. These tools can fit any budget and can save marketers time on manually creating reports and putting together different data.
For more information
Creating a personalized online presence for your business has become an essential marketing tool in a growing digital world. The best advantage is using social media to help your business in a way that works for your goals.
If you would like to learn more about building a social media plan for your business, contact 1893 Brand Studio. We have an amazing team of social media marketing experts ready to make your work even easier.
