We live at a time and age where social media and the internet have become an integral part of the daily lives of most people on the planet. Look at the typical morning routine of social media scrolling which is being followed by most people today. There’s no point ignoring the influence of social media in the business domain. Many brands around the world have adapted to excellent strategies to capture the social world. Today, we will discuss 3 social media marketing strategies for your brand’s social growth.
In this article, we will discuss:
- What is a social media marketing strategy?
- How to create a social media strategy?
- Examples of 3 social media marketing strategies
1. What is a social media marketing strategy?
Social media marketing lets your brand use the influence of social media platforms to sell to, engage with and understand your customers as well as increase your brand awareness.
A social media marketing strategy, on the other hand, is the blueprint of how you will achieve these goals on social media. It is a set plan that encompasses your social media handles and different strategies designed for different social media platforms. It also contains the content plan and goals that you would like to achieve with the help of social media.
Also read: Social media marketing in Malaysia
2. How to create a social media marketing strategy?
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are among the top favorite social media platforms for businesses that attract huge user engagement. That being said, many brands fail to understand the intricate planning required to use these platforms for their business.
To form a good social media marketing strategy, marketers need to first lay the groundwork for the plan.
● Use Social listening
Social listening is a great way to understand and know your customers and their requirements. This lets you formulate your plan according to the user behavior and pattern of your targetted users.
You can use a great many social media listening tools available in the market today like Sprout Social and Hootsuite.
● Set up the goals
Social media can achieve many goals. However, every brand needs to choose the perfect mix of goals as well as a metric to measure these goals. Without defining your social media goals, you cannot measure your growth and limitations.
You can choose from several goals. For example:
- Lead generation
- Increasing engagement
- Increasing sales
- Traffic generation
- Building community
● Research
After you have decided on your goals, a thorough competitor and audience analysis will help you make some important decisions. Understand the platforms that your competitors are using and the ones that they are not. You can also build a separate community on the platforms that your competitors are not focusing on.
Audience research lets you understand where your targetted audience likes to hang out and the type of content that they like. This research is important to optimize your time and money spent on social media platforms.
● Create meaningful content
A well-thought-of content plan plays a major role in your social media marketing. This content is the main tool that your users will engage with. You can choose different types of content based on your goals. For instance, for effective lead and traffic generation, informative blogs can be used as a medium.
Also read: The Best Tips and Tricks from our Digital Marketing Blog
3. Examples of 3 social media marketing strategies
If you are looking for some inspiration from brands that have developed excellent social media strategies, here are a few of them.
- Netflix
There are some great tools developed by social media platforms that can achieve different goals. For instance, to sympathize and connect with their users during a global pandemic, Netflix used the feature of Instagram lives. They planned and executed a meaningful campaign that connected mental health experts with people.
How did this plan help Netflix and its users? Firstly, users could get answers for their problems from experts. Secondly, these live sessions helped to create conversations around the brand as well as build their image.
- Zoom
To increase their traffic and sign-up rates, Zoom introduced a creative competition. Top users sending creative videos and pictures with their virtual backgrounds won special prizes.
This strategy helped to increase Zoom’s brand awareness as well as boosted the sign-ups for their free trials.
- Spotify
Spotify uses user-generated data to develop a feature called ‘Wrapped’. This is a great way to develop audience loyalty and increase engagement.
The Wrapped feature is fully equipped with a personalized playlist, videos, pictures, and quizzes that are shareable on different platforms.