Building Your Own Social Media Marketing Strategy: 6 Steps You Need to Follow

Because the world is still reeling from the after-effects of the pandemic, many brands are still reluctant or unable to go back to the traditional way of doing business—brick and mortar stores, pop-up shops, stalls, and other forms of selling that involve physical contact.

That’s why a lot of business owners are opting to continue their expansion on digital platforms, specifically on social media networks. Social media management agencies in the Philippines believe that this trend will persist throughout 2022 since travel restrictions are only starting to be pulled back, which means consumers are more likely to carry on with buying products or services online instead of going out to shop.

With that said, building a social media marketing strategy will be essential for businesses this year. Most especially those who have yet to enter the digital space but want to.

If you’re part of the latter, no need to worry. Just use our simple guide below to develop your own social media strategy and get set up in no time!

1.Set Goals

In any new venture, setting goals and expectations is part of the initial process. And when it comes to entering the digital or social platform, it’s no different. In fact, it’s akin to a rite of passage that you need to accomplish before anything else.

It’s important that you know what you want to achieve. Having a clear idea of what you want to improve on through social media marketing also makes it easier to work towards it. And most significant of all, it will define the tone of your campaigns, especially the activities and the content you’re going to be publishing.

To make it easier for you to visualize, here are some common goals that brands often include in their social media strategy:

• Growing your Audience or Consumer Base

This involves growing your followers and introducing your business to people who are unaware of it.

• Raising Brand Awareness

Brand awareness has something to do with getting your name out there and building consumer recall.

• Improving Lead Generation

Lead Generation is driving customer interest in your products and services. It initiates inquiries into your business.

• Boosting Brand Engagement

Brand Engagement is the process of forming a personal or emotional bond with your consumer or target audience.

• Drive More Traffic to Your Site

Driving traffic to your website, social page, or shop is important if you want to improve your metrics and generate leads.

2. Know Your Target Audience

As we all know, the internet is a very vast place. All kinds of people are on there, which is one of the reasons that marketing has been effective on it. And this is especially true if you take the extra effort of identifying who your audience is.

Knowing the people you want to attract will give you an advantage online. Specifically when it comes to social media marketing. It will make your campaigns more effective and your spending significantly less. Since you are sending out marketing materials and content to people that matter, you gain more persuading power.

Once you’ve defined your target consumers, determining the kind of content that you will release or publish will also come easily to you. In addition, choosing the appropriate social media platform will also be a walk in the park once you know who you want to impress and sell to.

3. Consider Your Resources

As a business, you shouldn’t enter a venture that’s beyond your power or abilities. You always have to make sure that you’re equipped and ready when undertaking a new mission or goal for your brand.

This is exactly the case for social media marketing, which will eat up a lot of your time and effort. If you’re not fully in it, you better take a step back and stop. Because if you choose to continue without having the commitment needed to make it happen, you’ll only be wasting time and effort.

You also have to take into account the spending. We recommend you set a budget for everything. Don’t just funnel funding into it continuously. Be smart with your funds and make the most of what you have.

4. Create and Share Compelling Content

One of the most important aspects of a social media strategy is content. After all, it’ll serve as the face of your brand—the thing that’ll garner and catch people’s attention as well as make them stay.

As we all know, people, nowadays, are more critical of the content and information they see online, specifically on social networks. This means that delivering high-quality content—that’s factual and has value—will have to be a constant for you.

Creating and sharing content that’s half-assed or lacks proper research and fact-checking will ruin your reputation and lead to people unfollowing your page or even boycotting your products.

5. Be Consistent

To always stay relevant to your target audience or followers’ feeds, it’s important that you stay consistent with your content posting and engagement strategies. After all, these two are your best bets on making a lasting impression.

Make the most out of your content releases by publishing them during the best times to engage. Also, you have to be available after posting content—as this is usually the time that potential consumers and customers send in their queries your way. It’s important that you answer these,swiftly as consumers often base their impression on how fast you address their concerns. And as we all know by now, first impressions are important—more so for the online community.

6. Observe Your Competition

If you’re starting from scratch when it comes to your social media strategy, one of the best things you can do is to observe how other businesses navigate social media platforms. Through this, you’ll get a good idea of what to do and the type of content that you can publish to get the most engagement.

Of course, for this to be effective, you have to inspect brands that offer the same service or are in the same field as your business. Because if you use a business whose audience, aim, and goals are fundamentally different from yours as a model, the results you’ll get won’t mirror theirs. In fact, it could go the other way.

An Alternative

While the steps above will surely help you develop your social media strategy, especially if you want to be hands-on with it, you should still seek the assistance or guidance of experts in the field of social media marketing.

Consulting professionals will give you a better idea of how to run your own social media marketing strategy, specifically how to build and manage communities, navigate trending and even incorporate them into your marketing strategy.

If you so wish, you can also partner with them and let them handle everything about your brand’s social media strategy. They’ll help you build it from the ground up!