New Year’s resolutions? Nah. It’s the new year, a new social media strategy for marketers.
2020 and 2021 have forced marketers to be more innovative, resourceful, and creative with their marketing strategies. The times called for it, and they were an immediate need in those moments. While that proved helpful for many businesses, it also means the competition has gotten tougher. This, in turn, makes a comprehensive social media strategy a little more critical, especially for the coming year.
A clear and well-made social media strategy will guide you for what the new year will bring and give you the focus to pick and say no to efforts that will only waste your time and resources.
Here, we’ve put together a list of tips to help you boost your social media strategies and set your priorities straight for the new year:
Everything starts with a goal. So, “what do you want from social media?”
Your goals will define your strategy and guide how much time and effort you need to commit to your social media marketing to make them happen. What’s important, however, is you set realistic goals.
Some of the most common social goals, according to Sprout Social, include increasing brand awareness & engagement, driving traffic to your site, and generating leads & sales. Whatever it is, we recommend you to start small. It will allow you to scale your efforts reasonably, and it will be a lot more affordable.
Also, keep it simple. Pick one or two objectives and rally your efforts around those. Too many goals might distract you and keep your eyes away from the real prize.
Assumptions are always bad news for marketers. But the fact is, you don’t need that. Everything you need to know about your audience that can influence your social media marketing strategy is readily available. You just have to know where to look.
For instance:
Different Platforms Have Different Audiences
Take the demographics for today’s social media platforms:
In addition to looking at the data for potential customers, you also have to do homework on your existing social media audience. This will help you see how their tastes, wants, and needs are changing and how you can align your social media strategy.
Social media isn’t a science. But much like science, it should always be data-driven no matter what your goals are. Rather than using every piece of data available to you, focus on the ones that matter. What are they?
This is old advice, but still. Your marketing strategy hinges on your content.
However, it’s good to know what your competitors are doing through competitor analysis before you start creating content. You can engage the services of a third party for in-depth analysis, but you could also simply do a quick google search. Take a look at who the top searches are and their social content.
The goal isn’t to copy or steal ideas from them but to determine what’s working for them and what you can adapt into your campaigns.
You aren’t only expected to put out fresh content on time, but your customers also expect you to be constantly “online.” The problem is timeliness can be a tall order, especially if you’re strapped for resources and staffing. Not only that, but you and your customers might not always be on at the same time.
One way to remedy this is to post in the best times to engage. This way, you can catch questions or feedback right when your customers are most active. And remember, your customers want you to reply ASAP. Most customers put excellent customer service as the bar for best-in-class on social media. To help you achieve that, designate a person or team on specific response tasks to support your customer service running as smoothly as possible.
Once you’ve had your strategy in place, one of the most important things you should keep doing is continuous assessment throughout the year. The market is always ever-changing, and you also need to keep adapting. Having a bird’s eye view of your social media activity will also help put things in perspective and allow you to adjust when a campaign stalls. It will also allow you to make minor tweaks as your campaign runs rather than a vast and expensive haul over.
If you set realistic goals and keep on top of all the steps we’ve laid out, you can have a solid and effective social media strategy that will help guide you in 2022. It will give you a solid base as you scale your business and overall marketing strategy.