Social media has become an essential integrated element in a successful marketing strategy. Designing a winning social media marketing strategy is unfortunately not quite as simple as a few tweets and witty Instagram captions. With over 90% of businesses on social media this year, integrating a winning strategy to place you above the competition is simply a must.
For a business to invest in their social media presence, considerable time and effort must be put in, along with extensive knowledge of strategies to optimize your business’s competitive edge. Social media marketing agencies can allow you to allocate this extensive strategizing to 3rd party professionals whose passion is understanding and improving your social media presence. Here are the 7 steps a social media marketing agency will take to creating a winning social media strategy for your business.
Evaluate your current social media presence
Your business is unique and is compiled of particular values, core goals, strengths, and weaknesses. With this in mind, your social media marketing agency strategy will not gain success with generic strategies. The first step in improving your business’s social media presence is analyzing your current state and decide what is working and what needs adjustment. At this stage, it is crucial to document your current stats on lead generation, social media reach and overall brand awareness.
Make a game plan
Once you’ve gained a clear understanding of where your business’s social media stands, it’s game time. Decide on the goals your business wants to accomplish, whether you want to amp up brand awareness, reach a new target customer, or add to your business’s social media platforms. A social media marketing agency will coordinate a detailed calendar laying out your goals, timed out content, and evaluation checkpoints to ensure your business is on the fast track to success. Forming these goals and assigning deadlines for reaching them will optimize your path to success.
Get to know the team and define the personality of your business
To gain a better understanding of who your business is going to appeal to, you should evaluate what your key values are. Depending on what your business is marketing, you will be able to determine the demeanor of your social media, and even what social media platforms you choose to utilize.
Gain an understanding of your business’s audience
Where Instagram and Twitter may appeal to a decent amount of millennials, a more distinguished and business-oriented customer may be more drawn to LinkedIn and Google+. It’s possible your target customers are a diverse collection of individuals, or you might find they appeal to more condensed groups. Understanding the demographics behind your business’s audience will assist you in gaining a better understanding of who you are going to attract and why.
Do the research on your competitor
Following careful examination of your business’s social media presence, a social media agency evaluates who your competition is and strategizes to outrank them. Additionally, an agency can study the failures and successes of the competition to supply your business with knowledge it needs to overcome your competitors. By knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the competition, an agency can better evaluate the direction to take your business.
Layout your social media content
Once your business forms a game plan on the type of content, social media platform location of content and timing of content posting, you will start to see the initial signs of success. The content calendar will allow for consistent posting at optimal times to maximize your targeted audience. By enlisting an agency to create your business’s content, the stress of devising content for your business is removed from your team and given to an agency designed to build that work for you.
Measure your success
As the results roll in from your chosen social media marketing strategy, you should be aware of a few indicators that will help you best judge what is working for your business and what needs adjusting. Some examples of these indicators of success include social media growth and reach, social media engagement and lead generation from social media. If seeking a potential social media marketing agency they should be able to attest to past success in these areas.
