How To Nail Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

As of January 2021, there were as many as 20.50 million active social media users in Australia alone, which totals to as much as 79.9% of the country’s population – that’s a lot of people! As a business owner, this makes it more important than ever to use the power of social media to your advantage to attract your target audience. But how can you ensure that your efforts generate a return? It’s all in the planning, so we have put together everything you need to know to begin devising the perfect social media marketing strategy!

A Full Guide To Creating The Perfect Social Media Marketing Strategy

Regardless of the scale of your company, your industry or how long you have been established, every organisation can most definitely benefit from increased online exposure. On average, Australians spend around 1 hour and 46 minutes on social media each day, offering you, as a brand, a wealth of possibilities to catch their attention and, therefore, boost awareness of your products or services. It’s all about leaving a lasting impression, whether that may be through eye-catching visuals or informative posts, helping you to begin building personal relationships with your audience. Eventually, these will naturally transform from customers to brand advocates, further maximising your online presence.

So, where should you start when piecing together your strategy? There are many factors to consider, and nailing your campaigns is likely to take a little trial and error. However, there are a number of helpful hacks which will speed up your journey to success. Without further ado, let’s take a closer look at the following:

• What Is Social Media Marketing?
• Benefits Of Social Media Marketing
• Impact Of Social Media On Business Communications
• Tips For An Effective Social Media Campaign
• Social Media Marketing For Small Business

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Nowadays, social media plays a pivotal role in all of your marketing efforts, whether this may be your SEO strategy or PPC campaigns. Each will work hand-in-hand, creating a consistent brand image throughout your online platforms, which means it’ll also be beneficial to spend time refining your website. But before moving onto how to create your campaigns, it’s important to start from the beginning – what is social media marketing?

Social media marketing involves the use of social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, to promote your brand, services and/or products. As each platform attracts a slightly different audience, it is vital that the content shared by your brand is tailored to the platform in question. In return, this will drive engagement (likes, comments and shares) and build a more accurate image of your company.

The content shared on your social channels can be everything from photos and videos to blogs and case studies, but the key will always be: 1. quality – is your content worth sharing? and 2. consistency – consistency with posting, advertising and analysing. But don’t worry, we’ll delve deeper into how to achieve this later in our guide.

Benefits Of Social Media Marketing

Whether you are for or against the use of social media, there is no denying that is it a powerful resource when promoting any brand. With this in mind, here are just some of the excellent benefits of social media marketing:

Define Your Brand’s Personality

Whether you are a start-up company or an established organisation, clients and customers hugely appreciate a human touch. Trust plays an enormous role in whether an individual decides to convert, and social media is a fantastic way to begin developing your personality and, in return, brand loyalty. On your social platform, you will have far more freedom to conversational, connecting with your audience on a personal level.

Improve Customer Service

Did you know that 63% of customers expect brands to offer customer support through their social media channels? This means that through becoming an active user of social media, you will be able to address situations quicker, ensuring that the customer journey always ends positively.

Boost Search Engine Optimisation

As mentioned previously, social media and SEO work together to improve your online presence. Social media offers the perfect opportunity to create links back to your website, encouraging traffic and spreading the word on your brand. Not only this, but should you update the content on your website then share it on social media, you send a signal to Google that your site needs to be crawled and re-indexed. As a result, you are likely to see your ranking improve. For more information on SEO marketing, take a look at our previous article.

Track Progress In Real-Time

Other popular marketing methods, such as SEO, take time to work their magic, but with social media advertising, you can continue to track its progress using real-time data. Platforms have built-in resources such as Facebook’s Business Manager and Instagram’s Insights, which allow you to determine whether your campaign is going in the right direction and make amendments where necessary. This is particularly beneficial when running paid ads as you can begin to refine your future campaigns to prevent wasted budget.

Achieve High Conversion Rates

There are multiple ways that social media campaigns can lead to a higher conversion rate, and once again, it all begins with trust. From positive reviews across channels to customers sharing stories or publishing posts about your brand, you quickly start to attract a broader yet more targeted audience. They are likely to follow your page, engage with your posts and then when they are in need of your product or service, you will be the first port of call as customers would have already built up that level of trust.

Impact Of Social Media On Business Communications

Effective communication is a vital aspect of any business and is used to reach your goals while retaining customers. The process involves sharing information about your brand both internally and with the outside world. And although not always considered, many are surprised to uncover the vast impact of social media on business communications.

As social media allows your business to reach out to the world, you are able to attract a significant percentage of your target audience in just one place. You can then start to interact directly with your audience on a regular basis, engaging with their needs and communicating your key selling points. As a result, your following will feel connected with your brand and will feel confident that should they ask a question or have a problem, it will be resolved with minimal fuss. Together, this creates a positive image of your brand, helping you to meet your goals.

Tips For An Effective Social Media Campaign

As a social media management agency working with clients in all manner of industries, we have picked up a host of tips on how to achieve campaign success. And although it is important to alter your strategy to meet your customer’s needs, as well as your objectives and goals, all of these helpful tips can easily be integrated into your campaign.

Tailor Your Strategy To The Platform

Depending on the nature of your brand and industry, you are likely to find that specific social media channels are more beneficial to others. B2B businesses are more suited to LinkedIn as users will be more focused on the textual content, whereas B2C organisations can take advantage of Facebook and Instagram as they can be more informal. However, there are some instances where this approach may not necessarily work. Suppose you are a commercial construction company; in this instance, you may also opt for sharing high-quality imagery on Instagram to showcase your expertise. If you are unsure what channels would prove beneficial, we recommend researching into what platforms your competitors are using to attract customers and which of these generate the most engagement.

Once you have determined the most effective channels, it will be time to tailor your approach to suit the platform itself. For example, Instagram is all about visual content, but on Facebook, users enjoy seeing a story behind the post. On channels such as Instagram, Tik Tok and LinkedIn, you must also factor in hashtags. For more advice on tailoring your message to the various social media platforms, take a look at ROI Online.

Use Industry Trends To Your Advantage

Your social media content does not always have to revolve around your products and/or services, and using industry trends is a fantastic way to boost engagement. From seasonal posts to the latest news, being proactive with the latest trends will always be a success.

With many other daily tasks to tick off the list, we understand it can be tricky to stay on top of trends, which is why we recommend setting up notifications for industry-related sites. There are also platforms such as Feedly, which allow you to keep in the loop with particular topics by creating a dashboard that will be updated with the most recently published articles.

Keep In The Loop With New Algorithms

Social media platforms regularly update or add new algorithms, which can be incredibly frustrating. However, it is important not to try and find quick hacks to overcome the algorithm but instead understand how you can work with them. If you have noticed a sudden drop in engagement or that your posts are no longer as visible as they once were to your followers, spend time determining how your strategy can be altered to meet the latest demands. As mentioned above, social media campaigns will involve a lot of trial and error, but it will most definitely be worth the extra effort!

Consider Partnering With Influencers

Living in the digital era means that we are continually being introduced to new ways to promote a brand, and the most popular in recent years has been influencer marketing. Although influencer marketing can be profitable across all social channels, we recommend using this method for Instagram as it will promote the most return.

Fashion, beauty, travel, food and beverage are just some examples of the industries that can hugely benefit from partnering with influencers. This marketing method allows you to attract audiences that may not have been aware of your brand. Your chosen influencers would have already built a group of loyal followers who, when recommended by them to your brand, will instantly create a positive mindset towards your products or services.

Interact With Your Followers

Some days you may receive a host of excellent feedback, and other days you may be faced with complaints, but either way, interacting with your followers will be imperative. Engaging in conversations with your following is yet another way to connect with them on a more personal level, and even if the feedback is negative, taking the time to rectify the issue with a friendly message may be enough to change their mood. Not only this, but don’t forget to keep an eye out on any conversions that mention your brand, then get involved!

Always Measure & Analyse Your Results

Much like any other marketing strategy, tracking and analysing your social campaigns is vital in ensuring that your efforts are optimised well, and you receive a return on investment. It is always recommended to track factors such as reach, engagement, clicks and impressions. This is even more important when running paid ads as you will need to determine whether to increase, reduce or reallocate your budget, preventing money from being wasted.

Social Media Marketing For Small Business

For those who have been established for many years, running a successful social media campaign will be far more straightforward as they would have already built up a reputation in the industry. However, as a start-up business or smaller organisation, it can be tricky to know where to start. For this reason, we have put together a few extra tips specifically for those interested in social media marketing for a small business.

• Begin with research: From looking into how your competitors use social media to determining your goals and objectives, a significant amount of research will go into your campaign. We recommend using the SMART framework for creating your goals.
• Create a social calendar: Keeping on track of social media while running a small business can be challenging, so by creating a strategic, clear calendar, you’ll know exactly what you are going to be posting and when.
• Focus on quality over quantity: To follow on from the above tip, ensure that every post offers value to your followers, showing them why they made the decision to connect with your brand. Opting for quality over quantity will always be the most effective route, plus it will be incredibly more manageable for your small business.
• Make it personal: As a small business, it will be far easier to take a personal approach to your marketing. Whether it may be uploading stories of your team at work, posting internal updates or responding directly to every comment, taking the time to show your customers that you care will always be beneficial.
• Consider using scheduling tools: To ensure that you stay on track with your social calendar and remain consistent, you may want to begin using scheduling tools such as Hootsuite. This allows you to schedule a week’s worth of content at once, for example, then you do not have to worry about it throughout the working day.

Social Media Marketing Made Easy!

Every day, we see top brands smash their social media campaign, and while they may have a dedicated department working day and night to boost engagement, this most definitely doesn’t mean that campaign success is impossible without these resources. Through selecting the most effective channels to reach your target audience, remaining consistent and posting content that will offer value to your customer, you will begin to notice your analytics improving, taking you one step closer to your goals.