What Do You Need to Kick Start Your Social Media Strategy?

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Utilizing social media is one of the best ways to kick start your marketing strategy, but you need to promote your business the right way to succeed. Companies no longer question the importance of marketing online but instead wonder how best to take advantage of the millions of potential customers. Use these tips to create or improve your social media strategy.

Set Goals and Scheduling Times

Social media strategy planning is the first step to freshening up your pages. You need to ask yourself what you want from social media: do you want followers, more reach, more revenue, a stronger community, or a place to experience with your creativity and brand voice?

Whatever it is, you need to be realistic. Most social media strategists will go for one of these five goals: increase brand awareness, generate leads, boost engagement, and drive traffic. To do this, you need to create engaging content that reaches your target audience, which we’ll expand on later. You should try to hit one goal at a time to prevent overwhelm or quitting.

A big hurdle to social media is scheduling times for content, and each platform has different rules for optimal engagement. Below are the most visited platforms you should focus on:

• LinkedIn – Once per week. Use blog posts or question and answer posts.
• Instagram – Two to four times a week, but every day is preferred.
• Facebook – Two to five times a week, use articles and dynamic photos.
• Pinterest – Two to ten posts should be added to your board per day from other creators. Post one unique Pinterest article per day, infographic, or how-to article.
• TikTok – Post as often as possible.

Organizing and scheduling content can be a massive headache if you’re running a big operation, but using a social media scheduling tool will instantly make this process a breeze. 

Understand Your Target Audience

Never make assumptions about your audience because most of your marketing campaigns will fall flat. Thanks to social media analytics tools, you don’t have to guess what’s popular with your audience. Understanding how many unique viewers come to your posts, the number of clicks to your account, engagement, and hashtag performance will help you create better content for your customers.

When you’re starting out, research your competition to see what their audience likes. For example, if you’re a goth clothing company, start watching brands like Killstar who capture the customers you want. Why do they value Killstar’s content? What common complaints do they have? Do they engage because of the clothing, the caption, the models, or the branding?

Some platforms have different audiences, and you should adjust to each demographic.

• LinkedIn – Well-educated and prefer in-depth content.
• Instagram – Flashy. Prefers bright, bold, beautiful, and eye-popping. Millennials.
• Facebook – General demographic, but Boomers are more likely to click articles.
• Pinterest – Women. Pins that do well take up space and explain a bit up-front.
• TikTok – Similar to Instagram but more performance-based. Generation Z.

Don’t forget to monitor separate campaigns and how they perform so, you can twerk or remove failed hashtags or content in the future.

Create Engaging Content

Content is king on social media. Your social media marketing strategy is dependent on how engaging your content is to your audience, so it’s essential to establish a brand identity to make yourself instantly recognizable. Stories and time-sensitive posts, short-form videos, and emotion-based content will always generate views as long as they connect to your audience.

Competitor analysis tools can help you understand how your competitors perform with their content and why it’s engaging. Similar to when you are finding and understanding your audience, researching competitors can give you an excellent basis for content generation. Still, it’s also important to create your unique voice in the industry.

It’s okay to capitalize on viral content but avoid copying your competitors to avoid public embarrassment. After all, if you’re following your competitors, your audience is likely doing the same. Inject your personality in everything you create to establish your brand.

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