Looking for ways to bolster your social media strategy to increase followers, engage your audience, and drive traffic to your website? Creating a social media marketing plan that aligns with your ultimate business goals is vital to achieving desired results from your efforts. With social media playing almost as big a role in purchasing decisions as does television, the gains are profound when you execute a working strategy.
The goal here is to share several ways to improve your social media marketing plan to begin experiencing favorable outcomes like boosting brand awareness, growing your leads list, and generating sales.
Having a clear understanding of your target audience is the prerequisite to developing a strong social media strategy. You see, all of your social posts from videos, blog posts, curated content, images, and even quizzes should be content that resonates with and relates to your audience. The more clarity you have on the pains, problems, and challenges of your market, the more effective your content strategy is.
The best way of completely knowing your target audience is through establishing buyer personas. Creating detailed personas will serve as a guide towards publishing content that speaks to your ideal customers. You will naturally attract qualified prospects to your brand when you clearly define who your audience is and how you can help them.
Every post that you publish on your social sites must be attached to a result you desire to achieve. Are you looking to build engagement (likes, comments, shares)? If so, give the call-to-action in your post by specifically asking your audience to comment below or share with their networks. Do you want to capture leads from your followers? Be sure to tell them to click on the link that leads to the capture page. Let them know if the free gift or incentive they’ll receive when opting in.
The key here is to be clear on your social media goals and the exact outcome you’re looking for. When you know the purpose, you’ll be able to confidently convey it in your message.
This may sound redundant, but keep in mind that your objective is to educate, inform, and inspire your audience. Your content must be compelling, valuable, and speaks to the needs of your people to get them engaged with your brand. Publishing remarkable content is at the heart of your inbound marketing strategy.
Here are a few ideas for publishing winning content on social media:
Having landing pages, especially for your social media followers, greatly enhances conversions because its target is specific to a content offer or message you’ve promoted on your social network, and appeals to that exact audience.
More landing pages present the opportunity to capture more leads towards building your list. Consider these pointers in designing winning landing pages for your social media marketing:
After building your first landing page you must continually test variations to improve your conversion metrics (more on this later).
Remember, social comes before media…so interact, engage and have fun with your followers. Refrain from just publishing posts and walking away. Be sure to respond to comments. Personally inbox fans to initiate conversation. Like, share, and comment on their content! You’ll be amazed at how these personal touches will accelerate your social media presence and online success.
The key when implementing these and any other social media tactics is to discover what works best with your target audience. It’s important to test, collect data, and analyze to have a strategy that’s producing results. In other words, when is your audience most active online? What content pieces do they tend to engage with the most? Again, leveraging a social media management tool along with Google Analytics can help you determine this information. Knowing it will position you to give your audience more of what they want…and foster better marketing.
Social media marketing offers tremendous benefits to brands who leverage it correctly and consistently. These tips will undoubtedly help you to improve and better your social strategy.
