In a world with more competition, content, and networks than ever, a straightforward strategy gives you the focus needed to direct your efforts to serve your goals.

Whether you’re new to social media marketing Strategy or want to double-check your priorities, this blog has you covered.

1. How To Build Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

 Whether you want to build a larger following or a more active community, taking the time to define your social goals is the first step to reaching them. Either way, your goals will define your social media marketing strategy and how much time and energy you’ll need to dedicate to your campaigns.

• Increase brand awareness. This means getting your name out there. To create authentic and lasting brand awareness, avoid solely publishing promotional messages
• Generate leads and sales. Whether you’re doing it online, in-store, or directly through your social profiles, you need to have an alerting system for customers about new products and promos, integrate your product catalog into your social profiles, running exclusive deals for followers.
• Grow your brand’s audience. Bringing new followers into the fold means finding ways to introduce your brand to folks who haven’t heard of you before
• Boost community engagement. A recent report showed that 46% of customers think brands that engage their audience are best in class on social, so it’s profitable to explore new ways to grab the attention of your current followers. 
• Drive traffic to your site. you’re going to have to be laser-focused on generating leads or traffic to your website, and social media if you want it to happen. Whether through promotional posts or social ads and keeping an eye on trending conversions.

2. Take time to research your target audience

Much of what you need to know about your audience to influence your social media marketing strategy is already available. You just have to know where to look.

Remember: different platforms attract different audiences

• Facebook and YouTube are both prime places for ads due in part to their high-earning user bases.
• The top social networks among Millennials and Gen Z are Instagram and YouTube, signaling the strength of bold, eye-popping content that oozes with personality.
• Women vastly outnumber men on Pinterest, which is noted to boast the highest average order value for social shoppers.
• LinkedIn’s user base is well-educated, making it a hub for in-depth, industry-specific content that might be more niche than what you see on Facebook or Twitter.

Do your homework on your existing social media audience

There are plenty of other sources of valuable audience data to supplement your social media insights. This includes your Google and email analytics, your CRM, your customer service platform, or even your best-selling products.

3. Establish your most important metrics and KPIs

• Reach. Post reach is the number of unique users who saw your post.
• Clicks. This is the number of clicks on your content or account. 
• Engagement. The total number of social interactions is divided by the number of impressions. 
• Hashtag performance. What were your most-used hashtags? Which hashtags were most associated with your brand?
• Organic and paid likes: These interactions are attributed to paid or organic content.
• Sentiment. This is the measurement of how users react to your content, brand, or hashtag.

4. Create (and curate) engaging social content

 With almost half of the world’s population on social, businesses must understand how to reach their audience through these channels. By marketing to your audience effectively on social media, you can raise brand awareness, increase website traffic, engage with fans and potential customers, and generate new leads.

• The importance of sticking to content themes From graphics to Reels and beyond, many brands rely on the same content formats and creative touches time and again. These themes can help you become more consistent and zero in on a content strategy that makes sense.

• Content ideas for social media marketing
• Stories and time-sensitive posts
• Short-form video
• Posts that show off your human side

• conduct a competitive analysis to help your content stand out. Before you start creating content, you should have a good idea of what your competitors are up to. The simplest way to find competitors is through a Google search. Look up your most valuable keywords, phrases, and industry terms to see who shows up. Then, see how their social channels compare to your promotion strategy.

6. Assess what’s working, what isn’t, and how to keep improving

Without continuously analyzing your efforts, you’ll never know how one campaign did over another. Having a bird’s eye view of your social media activity helps put things into perspective. This means looking at your top-performing content and adjusting your campaigns when your content stalls.

7. Bring other departments into the mix

Social media teams have a unique advantage when it comes to understanding customer sentiment. You’re the eyes and ears for your brand online. Those insights can do more than just inform marketing strategy. They can transform your business.

Read more: What Is the Difference Between Branding and Marketing