How to Create a Social Media Strategy to Grow Your Business
Social media marketing should play an important role in your overall marketing strategy. With over two billion users worldwide and 15.5 people joining social media every single second, chances are your customers are present at least on one social network.
But while you definitely should have a social media strategy, knowing where to start is not that easy. In this post, we’re offering 6 tips that will help you figure out how to use social media to take your business to the next level.
1. Take Some Time to Grow Your Following
The number of your followers can not only impact the decision of other people to follow you but can also influence other businesses and influencers who might be willing to partner up with you. Having a strong following even has benefits for you and your brand beyond social media, helping you boost SEO and drive traffic directly to your site.
But how to get more followers on Instagram or any other social media platform? Some of the methods to take into consideration include following relevant accounts that are likely to follow back, sharing valuable content, actively engaging with your followers, using a growth service, etc.
2. Create Content
Creating content is one of the most important but also most time-consuming parts of social media marketing. Research has shown that over 55% of users would reward relevant content by buying from a brand. On the other hand, nearly 75% of them find themselves frustrated by irrelevant content.
In order to create successful content, you first need to understand what your target audience wants. In addition, the type of content you share will depend on the platform you’re sharing it on. For instance, businesses generally use Facebook to share giveaways, user-generated content, and polls, whereas LinkedIn is perfect for industry news, blogs, and in-depth how-to’s.
3. Take Advantage of User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) refers to content generated by your followers/customers. It can include anything from comments and reviews to social media posts and videos. According to stats, about 30% of the time the millennial generation spends consuming all media is spent on this type of content, and nearly 50% of customers say that user-generated content is an excellent way to discover new products.
Incorporating user-generated content into your social media strategy is a great way to build trust and show your audience that you value their feedback. Some of the most effective ways to utilize and encourage UGC include hosting content contests, creating a branded hashtag, reposting customer reviews and testimonials, etc.
4. Engage Your Followers
Engagement is an excellent way to measure whether the content you are creating is actually resonating with your target audience. In addition, social media posts with more interactions get more reach. Facebook, for instance, uses meaningful engagement as a signal that a post should be prioritized.
Make sure to reply to comments and DM’s, and repost IG Story mentions. If you want to take it a step further, consider sending personalized ‘thank you’ messages to users who leave positive feedback. Finally, don’t forget to add features like fun polls and questions to encourage followers to interact with your content.
5. Keep an Eye on Your Competitors
Keeping an eye on what brands similar to yours are doing will give you an opportunity to stay up to date but also learn from them. You can see what content type they are posting most frequently and how they are interacting with their audience. In other words, you will figure out why they (at least some of them) are doing better than you.
However, getting inspired doesn’t simply mean copying your competitors’ strategies. What works for them isn’t necessarily good for you. So, the best course of action is to take their best ideas and make them your own.
6. Track and Measure Your Progress
How you measure your social media strategy’s progress will depend on your goals. Each goal needs an adequate metric to measure your efforts, and having clearly defined goals is crucial to any social media strategy. While follower count is definitely very important, it’s not the only metric that matters. You should be keeping an eye on impressions, mentions, likes, clicks, comments, retweets/shares, and DMs as well.
You can choose one of these metrics or you can keep an eye on all of them to determine whether you’re making progress toward your goals.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, the tips included in this article have given you a better understanding of how social media can be used to grow your business. Keep in mind that not all content types and strategies mentioned here will work for your brand. Test each one of them, stick with the ones that give the best results, and keep making improvements.
