In 2009, Facebook was just a social platform to share memories with family and friends. But in 2023, it’s a business platform, and the only way to succeed there is to learn how to create a social media marketing strategy.
As a business, you cannot approach Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok the same way an individual does. You need to determine what you want to achieve and how to achieve it.
You’ll do that with a solid social media strategy. Today, I’m going to share the steps to follow to create a strategy for your business. Let’s dive in.
What is a Social Media Marketing Strategy?
Remember that day you thought, “Oh, I should launch my business on Facebook/Instagram?” That was your first encounter with social media marketing. When you post your products online, message people, and comments on people’s posts, you’re doing social media marketing.
Social media marketing is any activity that enables you to sell your products or services on social media.
For you to succeed in selling your products and services, you need a plan. That plan is known as a social media marketing strategy. It’s the most important item to create before you start posting or commenting online as a business.
Since it’s the first thing you need to develop before taking any action, here is a step-by-step for developing your plan.
Step 1 Set Your Social Media Marketing Goals
When Kipchoge Keino participated in the INEOS challenge, his goal was to run the marathon in under 2 hours. It was famously known as the INEOS 1.59. He prepared himself mentally, physically, and spiritually and won the challenge.
The same principle applies to anything you’ll ever do in your life. You need to determine what you want to achieve. If you’re getting on Instagram to create brand awareness, that’s your goal.
And if you’re getting on Facebook to increase traffic to your eCommerce store, then that’s also a goal. The secret is to set smart goals that are:
- Specific
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Align with your brand
- Are measurable
- Time-bound
An example of a goal includes: growing brand awareness by increasing page likes and followers by at least 100 every month
Step 2 Define Your Target Market
Your target audience is critical to your success on social media. Therefore, as stated in our previous blog, tips for creating high-converting sales pages, you need to answer these three questions:
- What are you selling?
- Who are you selling it to?
- What do the people you’re selling to want?
When defining your social media marketing strategy, you also need to understand the behavior of your target market. For example, where do they hang out?
If you’re targeting Gen Z, you need to be on Instagram and TikTok. If your target market is mostly women, Pinterest will do the magic for you. And if you want people with a high budget who also care about family and friends, Facebook is your place.
Factors that’ll help you define your target audience include age, gender, education level, location, brands they’re loyal to, the kind of phones they use, and whether you’re going to run ads to reach them. Once you answer all these questions, proceed to the next step.
Step 3 Establish Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Remember how we said you should set measurable goals? Key performance indicators help you measure the results at the end of the month.
For example, for our goal: growing brand awareness by increasing page likes and followers by at least 100 every month, the key performance indicator here is the number of page likes and followers.
When you hit a hundred followers in a month, then you know you’ve hit your goal. Other key performance indicators include:
- Number of clicks
- Number of social interactions, also known as engagement
- Number of users your posts reached
- Number of views of your videos
- Number of shares
- Number of people who bought from your website from your page
Your key performance indicators will be different from what the business next door will set. Therefore, ensure that your KPIs are measuring what you wanted to achieve from step one when you set your goals.
Step 4 Create Content and Post
Just like a business needs a product or service to start selling, you need content to start posting on your pages. You already know your goals, who you’re going to talk to through your profiles, and how you’re going to measure the results.
Now you need the content to fill the puzzle. Here’s the thing you need to know: you won’t go far by just posting randomly. I did this when I started my Instagram profile and I can guarantee you I didn’t get any results. I didn’t even know who I wanted to reach out to on Instagram leave alone knowing what to post.
Yes, people reacted to my posts, commented, and even saved some of the content. However, due to a lack of a strategy, I could post consistently for one week then skip the next two weeks, and so on.
Now, I’m on Twitter and I post every single day because I have a strategy. I still use Instagram, but I mostly do the behind-the-scenes of my business on there (you should have known what platforms you should be on and what you’ll be using them for now that you completed step 2 above).
According to Semrush, there’s a lot to say online, and you can say it in one or more of the following fifteen formats:
- Videos
- Case studies
- User-generated content
- Testimonials
- Live streams
- Product posts
- Contests
- Press releases
- Questions
- Influence collaborations
- Memes and GIFs
- Quotes
- Thought leadership content
- Presentations/carousels
- Polls
Other things you can post include: answer a frequently asked question, updating your audience on what’s happening in the industry, and launching events.
Step 5 Plan and Schedule Your Posts
From my experience, steps four and five are the most time-consuming. Once you have laid down your strategy, you’ll spend every other week creating and scheduling content for your pages.
Thanks to technology, you no longer have to be online to post. Tools such as Meta Business Suite, Sprout Social, Metricool, and Hootsuite help you plan and schedule content. I use them all the time for my clients.
Here’s what the Meta Business Suite planner looks like:
Source: Meta Business Suite
It’s possible to write content for a full month and schedule it through the tool. Meta will then post your content at the selected time whether you’re online or not. I love this because it means you don’t have to be tied to your business 24/7.
You can go to Paris and come back and no one will know because they’ll still see new content on your page. And you will be responding to their messages and comments as usual (You can hire someone to do this when you’re not available).
Also, the same way you sit and think of winning email subject lines, you need to be creative with your captions. Some of the tricks you can borrow from what I do for my clients include:
- Capture people’s attention with the first sentence
- Create eye-catching graphics to go with your content
- End with a call to action asking people to buy, subscribe, comment, or do what you want them to
- Use relatable stories to connect with people
- Use language your target audience understands (English, Swahili, slang)
- Combine long and short captions
- Use emojis depending on your market
The list is endless. Once you set up your brand and set a clear strategy, the content will come flowing. Also, choose whether you’ll be scheduling weekly, monthly, or daily. Whichever you pick, ensure you’re able to keep up with the schedule to avoid skipping days or weeks.
Step 6 Measure the Performance of Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
Finally, measure performance based on the key performance indicators you set in step three. For example, if you’re on Facebook, check the page insights to find out how your content is performing.
Insights give you information such as who’s visiting your page, whether they’re men, women, or both, their age, posts they’re liking, posts they’re commenting on, location, and more.
These insights will help you make decisions, improve your content, and determine the type of content your audience loves so you can post it more.
Create Your Social Media Marketing Strategy Now
Create your social media strategy now and start engaging with your target market with a plan. I understand you may be busy making those recipes, weaving those beautiful baskets, attending your children’s school events, or catching up with your clients.
However, that’s no excuse to show up on social media like an unannounced visitor. Message me using the Whatsapp button or fill out this quick form so we can discuss how I’ll help you create a winning strategy as I have done with my other clients.