Critical Components Of A Successful Social Media Strategy

Author: Christie CA

It is nearly impossible to find a functional and successful company without a social media presence. That being said, only making accounts on every social media platform will not do any good either. Every brand and business needs a well-crafted social media strategy based on the current social media strategy, available resources, and, most importantly, the business’s goals. In fact, you can not think about a digital marketing strategy without social media usage.

While everything on social media tends to hinge on some independent factors, some universal factors can help you make core building blocks of your social media strategy. These will make sure that your business gets the most out of your social media initiatives.

Here is the collection of critical but general components of a successful social media strategy in a modern scenario.

Social Media Audits

A big picture mentality is what matters when it comes to social media strategy. Think beyond what you want each post to achieve. You need to assess the overall standings of your social media presence before you proceed forward.

Make social media audits part of your regular business operations. A self-audit can be crucial in pointing out several inconsistencies. You can learn more about which campaign worked, review benchmarks, also read competitors' social media, and review market trends.

Moreover, you can use social media trends and audits to set new goals, amend strategies, and consistently improve your business’s online presence.

Clear Goals

Clear goals are not only important for your business but also for its components like social media strategy. Before you design or launch any social media campaign, make sure that you are clear about your goals. Know what you want to achieve!

Focusing on clearly set goals will guide you and your team to put their energies in the right direction. This is a secret ingredient to getting to the desired level of social media engagement rates. Only then you will be able to get more returns for your overall efforts.

You can ask the following questions to set your well-aligned goals;

  • Consider your overall business goals.

  • How can my social media usage align with these goals and objectives?

  • What does my audience expect and want me to post?

  • Make sure that you set measurable goals.

  • What does my business really want from your social media strategy?

Perform A Competitive Analysis

Not knowing what’s happening around you will do no good to you. So, after knowing your social media standings, it's time to see what your competitors are doing. This is a good way to compare and know your industry standings in the online community. Moreover, it is also helpful in identifying trends, threats, and standards.

For competitor analysis, you first need to identify the similar businesses that you want to target. Your target companies should be a balance of the brands that are bigger and smaller than your business.

For every selected competitor, ask yourself the following questions:

  • How do your competitors use social media for their business? Analyze their activity level. How frequently they are posting. Which social media platform do they use? Which platform gets the most attention in their strategy?

  • How many followers do they have? Compare their follower count to yours. You can also measure growth levels by comparing followers' gains or losses during a certain period.

  • How is the content they are posting performing? Which content pieces are performing the best?

  • How do they engage with their followers on various social media platforms?

Build An Audience Persona/ Target Right Customers

A whopping 70% of people in North America use social media every day. However, this doesn't mean that you have to reach each and every one of them. Doing so will land you in a mess. Hence, making recognition of the target audience is necessary for every social media marketer.

Efforts in targeting and reaching the relevant niche will get you more leads and conversions as compared to the efforts you put in to reach the masses. For instance, if you try to advertise custom marvel merch to a non-marvel fan, they will not only get irritated but may also end up reporting your account. This is not your only loss, but every scent spent on producing that post, including the salary of your social media manager and the team, will be considered an expense, not a business investment.

To set the target audience, dig deeper into the analytical tools provided by almost all social media platforms and check the nature of people visiting and interacting with your profile. You can ask yourself the following questions to get a more clear picture of your target audience.

  • What are the demographics of your profile visitors?

  • What were this person’s goals, objectives, and intentions for visiting your profile?

  • How do they interact on social media?

  • What components, like hashtags, should be used to reach them?

All in all, every social media strategy should be well-directed toward the audience and aim to achieve the set smart goals of your social media marketing campaign and that of the overall business.