Crafting an effective social media strategy takes more than just knowing what platforms to use and when to post. Here are the core tips and tricks to crafting an effective social media marketing strategy for yourself, or in our case, for clients.

First of all, let’s look into social media marketing strategies and define what we’re going to be addressing here.

What is a Social Media Marketing Strategy?

A social media marketing strategy is your core document that will outline how you target your key audiences using social media. See this document as a sort of social media bible; covering the tactics, tools, and audiences that you will look to use. This should also be an extension of your overall marketing strategy, expanding the detail of the social media element. Crafting this strategy starts with your audience and defining the channels that you will use. From here you can then decide on the best tactics and develop a good brand style to be used on the more visual platforms.

Explore the essential elements to your social media marketing strategy

Your social media marketing strategy should have a few core elements, these being the design style, the tone of voice, and your target audiences. 

Exploring your design style

Settling on a style or theme doesn’t have to be forever. This can be something that changes with each campaign, changes seasonally, or goes through drastic updates as and when desired. The key thing is to have a style and stick to it when you’re intending to; this means settling on a colour scheme, font style, image/graphic style, and using a select style of overlays to compliment your design.

Exploring your tone of voice

From developing a marketing strategy, you will have conducted your research and hopefully come to a decision on your tone of voice. This will need to be extended into and throughout all of your social media channels, as this is where your audiences are most likely to get regular updates from you. This can be adapted between channels, with LinkedIn and Instagram likely to require different language, but the same approach should be had with each, extending into video content and podcasts.

Exploring your target audiences

You may have one target market or multiple audiences that require different levels of interaction. Exploring and considering these audiences will help develop your social media marketing strategy. Some of your audience will be more likely to use one platform, some may use another, and then there will be a platform that the majority use. Splitting your comms to reach each user in each channel gives them a more tailored message, with the core platform then providing overall brand updates and very little tailored comms, but, you’re more likely to have your superfans on this core platform.

How to set goals in your social media marketing

Those outside of marketing will assume that social media is the key driver for most sales, but the fact is that tv advertising is still considered one of the most effective forms of marketing. Social media has definitely caught up, but with the rise of other forms of advertising, and with streaming platforms now bringing in advertisements, there are a lot of potential channels to pursue! So setting realistic goals that show value is essential. Your social media marketing goals will also vary depending on your brand and product. Clothing, beauty, and sportswear tend to sell very well on social media as you can quickly see real life examples of what you want to buy. B2B organisations that offer cyber security, office space, or recruitment tend to have a longer customer journey. Setting goals realistic to your industry will mean that no one is disappointed with the results. Realistic also means what you are measuring. B2B organisations may see better value in brand building and engaging with current customers to encourage retention, whereas B2C businesses will look more at click through rates and high numbers of impressions in order to get their products seen more and increase sales.

Creating engaging content inline with your social media marketing strategy 

Social media is all about engagement. Creating engagement is the aim of everyone using social media platforms, be this increasing engagement or engaging with clients. How you create this engaging content should represent you and your brand well and in line with your overall marketing strategy. Eye catching graphics and bold lettering may draw in a user, but if the brand recall isn’t there and the customer journey drops off when they reach your website then the engagement is not being fully optimised to its potential. Sure, if you want to be bold then be bold! But also carry this through to the end of the customer journey and beyond, meaning it should also be represented in your follow up communications such as the newsletter. 

The best way to create engaging content is to create it inline with your brand, so that users have familiarity, but delivering it in a way that the user can remember. Video content tends to work best for this; using a song or catchy phrase increases recall, and having a video style that draws attention keeps eyes on your brand for longer.

Utilise Social Media Marketing Tools

There are so many tools available to marketers now, from content schedulers, to image editors, to AI powered content creators. Knowing what’s out there, how to use social media marketing tools, and why you should be using them is essential to anyone crafting a social media marketing strategy.

What social media marketing tools are out there?

If you work in social media or on the graphic side of marketing but haven’t come across Canva yet, then you need to get out of your cave! Canva has quickly become a go-to tool for social media content creation, content scheduling, and idea generating. Starting off as a simple design software, it is now an AI powered machine that keeps giving! It’s one of the biggest time savers in the industry right now and doesn’t compromise on quality. 

There are also other tools that save time, content schedulers being the big ones! Things like Loomly, Hootsuite, and Brandwatch will give you an easy to use calendar that you can schedule months of posting on, helping you design and deliver months of campaign work in days.

There are also the all-round tools such as HubSpot that not only help with social media marketing, but with your digital marketing as a whole. HubSpot can deliver your email marketing, blog posting, SEO web pages, landing pages, and also give you in-depth reporting on all of this. There are many tools to use to help with delivering your social media marketing strategy, from free tools to higher end paid for tools, but it is highly recommended to see what’s out there and how it can help you.

How do you use social media marketing tools?

It completely depends on the job you want them to do and the outcome you desire. There are tools that can make image creation or editing easier and tools that can help you write content. If your outcome is to quickly put this together then there are many tools for that. A bit of advice though is to make sure you invest time in getting to know these tools and how to use them. The time you invest will be saved further down the line, but having a good understanding means that you get the best value return.

So those are the essentials to crafting an effective social media marketing strategy. If you were just looking to see how to expand on your current strategy or starting from scratch then these tips will keep your strategy inline and as an expansion of your overall marketing strategy. If you still need some help or want an analysis of your strategy, creation of a strategy, or a complete marketing campaign then feel free to get in touch and find out what we can do to get you seen. After all, we create reach and revenue!