It’s easy to get confused with social media strategy even if you only try to structurize activities for your personal accounts. Things become much more complicated with social media strategy for business. A lot of aspects should be taken into consideration and a lot of surprises can happen on the way.

So, how to do social media marketing without blowing up your mind? This guide will help your brand to build a very good presence in social networks, increase your audience, and engage current customers/followers. Your social media strategic plan will include five easy steps.

What is SMM strategy?

A social media marketing plan is crucial for businesses of any size - even if you just dream of being a popular influencer and certainly if you want to help a company grow and prosper.

SMM strategy is a clear plan of actions taken by a company or a person to reach their individual goals. This social media strategy plan should include:

● set your milestones - they should be achievable and connected to a specific period;

● decide on your content - what to you post on social media;

● build a team for creating the best content possible - be realistic here, consider all the factors around this process;

● make a content schedule - your audience should know what to expect and you should know what to do, and content marketing strategy will help with this;

● set an ultimate destination - where the current actions lead you in the future.

Using social media for marketing

Marketing is a huge area that includes multiple components. First of all, marketing helps personalities and companies to position themselves and their products in their specific market.

Use social media for marketing - this channel has become one of the most effective because you can communicate directly with people. All the goals of marketing can be reached through social media. In general, they are:

● Increase brand awareness - let more people know your company and your product, it’s a very important goal in social media strategic planning.

● Attract new people into your community - starting from getting direct followers of your social accounts and reaching the moment when these followers watch your content on other platforms and pay real money for your goods and services.

● Engage the existing audience - remind people about your business and save them from the constant thread of moving away from your community and making purchases from other brands.

What is a social media marketing plan?

Social media and marketing are not separated from each other nowadays, and activities in social networks should be in tune with the general marketing plan. Each company is different, you can’t act with the same pattern for popularizing a game streamer, for selling women’s handbags, and for informing companies about a new SaaS offer. Keep in mind specific features of your business when you think about how to create a social media strategy.

A social media marketing plan is a part of a bigger marketing plan for your business, it’s individual for your company, and it should follow the general line of the company development. There is no such thing as absolutely the best social media marketing plan - individual approach is the best solution.

SMM Strategy implementation

It’s time to move from theory to practice. In the following social media marketing guide, you’ll find five easy steps to your success in creating a social media strategy.

Step 1 - Set your goals

Without this step, your journey risks being chaotic and even pointless. What do you want to achieve from this social media marketing strategy? Make your goal clear to the max but try to avoid specific numbers. The examples are:

● Inform people about your personality/product/company - here we have brand awareness;

● Expand the audience - more followers;

● Increase engagement rate - more likes and comments;

● Earn money - direct sales, bigger traffic for your website, advertisement revenue, sponsorship from other companies.

Set clear, numbers-based metrics - otherwise, you would never know how effective your social media marketing is.

Step 2 - Know your audience

Each social media marketer has to know with whom he communicates. Who are your customers? The answer should be ready - from your business and marketing plan. Then try and know your audience better:

● Age

● Gender

● Location

● Active hours

● Areas of interests

● Preferable social networks

● Any other information that helps to feel the audience

Step 3 - Think over engaging content

This is the most creative part of your marketing on social media. But first, you should build a clear understanding of:

● What social content will help to reach your goals;

● What social content your target audience would like.

Good social media strategies follow here the two first steps of this guide. Be ready to make changes on the way - your metrics are the best indicator of success. Analyze your direct competitors but never copy them, just get inspiration from them. Pay special attention to trends in the world. You can’t know what will happen and what people will talk about but you should be ready to enter this conversation with decent content.

Step 4 - Plan your budget

Never forget about the money you are ready to invest in social networking marketing. A big budget will allow you to boost the results by advertising your posts and by purchasing click/comments/followers. How much can you spend here?

Your budget determines the size and the quality of your team for marketing on social media. How much can you spend on creating quality images, text, and videos? How much can you spend on people who will bring your social marketing strategy to life?

Step 5 - Prepare for analyzing your results

You can’t have results on the stage of planning, but you should be ready to collect and analyze this data. Without it, you will never know how good your strategy is and how to make it even better.

Interim results will help you to adjust actions on each of the previous steps. Final results at the end of the period of your social media strategy planning will lead you to the first step again - to make the next plan on the base of these numbers.

Tools to boost your SMM strategy

One very significant resource should be taken into consideration during developing a social media strategy - time. You have to use every reasonable possibility to save time for your team. Various professional tools will definitely help with this, such as:

● Buffer - this service allows a few team members to work on the content, schedule posts, and get analytics.

● MavSocial - one of the best social media scheduling tools that works with many networks. MavSocial is dedicated to posting visual content first of all.

● Likigram - use this service to boost your success on the primary social media. Likigram offers lots of very convenient and effective tools, so this is one of the best social media management tools for professional and individual use.

Social marketing for business is an amazing area where you have a chance to implement various creative and innovative ideas. In fact, there are no strict rules on how to be successful here, but with the help of this guide, you will be able to realize the full potential of your business.