Social Media Marketing: How to Create a Strategy that Delivers Result

Anyone can set up a social media plan but for someone planning to deliver consistent results with your marketing effort, you need the right social media strategy as your first step to get started.

No! Don’t take my words for it. Millions of other brands before you have failed at their social media marketing effort because they couldn’t find the right strategy.

Check it out. Social media marketing is hard. Hundreds of thousands of brands are working hard to outshine you. And you have to make a mark. But, to make a mark, you have to stand out. And to stand out, you must know what works.

So, in this guide, I’ll be listing out the steps you can use to create a social media strategy that works for your business, even if you’re a beginner.

Find your Goal

As a business, the first step to create a social media strategy that will drive results is to identify the main outcomes you want to achieve for your business on social media.

This is very important.

Although it’s understandable, the general goal for most businesses is to drive growth but, using ‘growth’ as an umbrella term for your overall purpose on social media can be pretty vague.

You want to find out what is unique to you because this is going to shape the whole of your social media strategy and how you’re going to implement it.

It’s also going to evolve your key performance indicators and other variables you’ll use in measuring your effort at the end of the day. So you need to pay attention to identifying your goals.

For example, if your goal is to gain social media visibility or drive brand engagement, your social media marketing strategy will slightly be different from another business whose goal is to build thought leadership or drive sales.

Whatever it is, you must take out time to analyze your business needs and then critically identify the goal you want to achieve on social media and how that goal is going to shape the success of your business before creating your marketing strategy for social media.

Doing this gets you grounded and able to set out a workable strategy that is well targeted and result driven.

PS: Your social media goals might change from time to time, depending on your business goals. You have to pay attention to this and make adjustments as necessary.

Define in your Audience

Defining your audience is not cliché.

If you want to create a social media strategy that works, you have to clearly identify your audience before launching out on any platform.

The reason for this is not simple. Your audience will shape your preferred social media platform, your content and mode of engagement.

So, choosing a platform or creating content without identifying your audience is like putting the cart before the horse – a recipe for disaster that must be avoided by all means.

That said, to identify your audience, get over to step one. Find out the folloiwnng:

• What are you trying to achieve by getting on social media?
• What kind of people can help you achieve this?

Finding answers to the two questions above will guide you on who to look out for as members of your audience and the platform you can find them.

To learn more about how to identify your audience, you can read up this guide.

Identify your Competition

Your competition points the light on what’s right, what’s wrong and what you can do differently.

Since they’ve already been in the business or on the social media platform before you, there are chances that they might have known your audience, the platform they go to and the kind of content they prefer.

It’s possible they might as well have made a mistake or two, in the course of formulating their social media strategy, creating content or engaging with their audiences. You want to tap into this knowledge.

Instead of going ahead to invent the wheel yourself, learn from the experience of your competitors. Take out time to study their handles, find out what worked or what didn’t work.

Or better still, innovate and get something better for your audience. That’s the advantage you have.

If you’re serious about setting out a social media strategy that actually delivers results for your business, you have to know your competition and find out what’s working for them.

Find your top Social Media Platform

There are a number of social media platforms out there but not all social media platforms can deliver the same results for your business.

In fact, you can’t get on all top social media platforms at the same time. So, to create a social media strategy that works, you need the social media platforms that can deliver results.

That said, the first step for you at this stage is to pick up your list of audience as identified in step two above. Run a quick social media survey to find out the platform that has a large number of your target audience.

So for example, the following are the top 5 social media platforms and the kind of audience you can find there:

Facebook: As one of the oldest social media platform with almost 3 billion active monthly users, Facebook is by far one of the social media platforms with widely distributed demographics. Dominated with millennials between the ages of 25-34 years old who collectively make up about 31% of the audience on that platform, Facebook is made up of 43% women while men takes up the remaining 57%.

Instagram: With more than a billion monthly users, Instagram is made up of users between 25-34 years, accounting for 31.2% and 18-24, accounting for 31 percent respectively. With both millennials and Gen Z, accounting for more than 60 percent of users on the platform and a slightly larger female user base, Instagram favors a more picture based or video driven content.

Twitter: Largely dominated by users within the age range of 18-29 years, making up about 40 percent of all users on the platform, Twitter’s audience consists of 61.6% makes and 38.4% females. A third of Twitter’s audience has a university degree, with an earning roughly 75,000 USD annually.

Linkedin: LinkedIn, the social media marketing platform for professional has more than 810 million users. A majority of these users are between ages 25-34, making up over 58 percent of the users. With 48% females while males make up the remaining 52% users.

Tiktok: With more than 1 billion monthly active users and the largest age group (10-19) making up 25 percent of the platform, Tiktok demonstrates dominance by Gen Z and a much younger audience. However, its video focused content and 89 minutes average daily time spent on app by users are notable factors that can influence a social media strategy.

Based on the foregoing, you will notice the diversity of audience, gender, age, interest and other demographics data that can influence your choice of social media audience.

As someone trying to create better results for their business, after going through this list, identify the social media platform that will drive the best outcomes for your business before you create your social media strategy.

Create your Content Plan

After creating your social media strategy, the next thing on your list is to map out a content strategy for your social media marketing.

A content strategy is a plan that guides how your content will be created and distributed to deliver your expected outcomes.

Considering that you already know your audience and the favorite social media platform they hangout, get over to find out the kind of content that works for this audience and the format.

For example, while most social media platforms are increasingly getting to create more video content, some traditional social media platforms like Facebook will do very well with a mix of text and video or pictures.

On the other hand, a more Gen Z focused social media like Tiktok and Instagram are better off with Videos and Images.

The overall goal of your content strategy is to figure out what works for your audience based on their needs and platforms and to create that kind of content for them.

As part of your content strategy, you will also have to find the best posting hours and other sub platforms you can share your content to drive traffic and engage with your audience.

Share Valuable Content

Without the right content, the best social media marketing strategy can still flop, right in your face.

So, beyond creating a workable strategy, you need a solid content that meets the needs of your audience, consistently.

Remember, a valuable content must be either entertaining, informative, educational or simply, a piece of content tailored to satisfy the needs of your target audience.

Now, since you already know your audience and the competing brands serving them, all you need to do next is to create and share with the exceptional value with your content.

Use every strategy in the book to create content that is share worthy and you’ll find your audience increase in leaps and bonds.

Engage with your audience. Use storytelling to create a content they can relate with.

Beyond sharing, stay consistent too. Follow through your content calendar. And do not forget to share and add your opinion on trending conversations in your niche.

Evaluate your Performance

Setting up a social media strategy does not start and end with identifying your goals and taking specific actions.

At intervals, you need to evaluate your strategy. Find out what’s working, identify what’s not working and then make adjustments as necessary.

Beyond that, as a new brand, keep in mind that you may not really know what’s going to work for you until you try out different methods and strategies.

So, you have to evaluate, analyze and measure your achievements using data generated from your campaign.

And then go ahead and use the insight you generate from this data to shape your strategies to meet up with your new realities.

Final Words

Creating a social media strategy can be tasking but when done right, the results are always in huge.

As a brand, regardless of how demanding creating a social media plan might be, to put your best foot forward, you need a social media marketing strategy for your business.

And using the steps listed in this guide, you’re not only going to create a social media strategy, you will evolve a realistic plan that will deliver on your business outcomes without fail.

While creating your social media strategy though, never underestimate the role of periodic evaluation of your outcomes, alongside your goals. This is very important as it’ll give you insight on what’s working and what’s not. And with such insights, you can always edit or overhaul your strategy, at intervals.

That said, creating a social media strategy without experience can be tasking, but working with our experts you can create a realistic strategy that will brighten your chances of achieving your outcomes. Reach out to our experts and grab a chance to work with us here. You can also join our social media marketing classes here.

Now, it’s your turn. What are your challenges when it comes to creating a social media strategy? Drop your comments below!