How To Develop An Effective Social Media Marketing Plan?

  • Date: 09 August 2019
  • reading time: 4 Minutes
  • Blogger: Isabell Gaylord


Introduction

What's the best way to reach your target audience on social media? Which platform is the most appropriate venue for your brand, and what does it take to engage the people with your marketing content? These are just a few of the many questions that you should answer to develop the most effective social media marketing plan that would drive your business forward and enlarge your revenue. 

According to statistics, there are more than 3.5 billion active social media users all over the world, which makes for half of the human population. Being able to reach out to such a vast number of people is an opportunity that only exists on social networks, which is why every scaling business should include this channel in its marketing planning. In this article, we are going to examine some of the crucial steps one needs to take to develop a strong social media marketing strategy.

Determine your target audience

Who do you plan to engage with your campaign? Let's say you run AssignmentMasters writing service and your target audience are students. However, you don't want to show your content to all students on Facebook or Instagram as many of them could be unattracted to what you have to offer. Make your target audience profile as narrow as you can to bring your posts closer only to those that are truly relevant. 

Furthermore, it's important to understand which type of content your audience prefers. This will allow you to develop an appropriate method of communication that will engage your viewers and raise interest in your brand. Furthermore, there are higher chances for an organic share if your content hits the spot with the ones that get into contact with it. 

Choosing the proper channel

Unless you're Nike marketing executive, it's safe to assume that your brand is not equally successful on every social media platform. It's possible that you don't have a business profile on many popular platforms, as well. Therefore, before even starting to develop your marketing plan, it's of utmost importance to analyze your online presence and perform an audit of your existing profiles. 

Consider the number of active followers on each platform, audience engagement rate, your level of activity and profile optimization, and the audience value based on your target audience profile. These variables will allow you to determine which social media website is the best place for your brand. In case you find the whole process challenging, there are many social media audit software solutions you can choose from to automate the process.

followers

Develop a campaign goal

What message are you trying to send to your followers through the content you produce for them? If you opt for random topics and content that doesn't have a clear statement you can lose interest in your audience and seem as if you don't know what you're doing. Moreover, having a clear goal allows you to pursue it using what you know about your target audience and their online behavior. 

Let's stick with the subject of writing and say you want to send a message that your service is more valuable to your audience than any competitor on the market. This would allow you to post USA and UK writings review articles, customer testimonials, success stories, as well as numerous topics and types of content that will make your statement easy to understand. In case you don't have the time or resources to develop engaging content regularly, there are places like trustmypaper and other services that could do the job for you, leaving you with scheduling the perfect timing for publishing. 

Establish success reference points

It's important to know if your hard work is making any positive influence on your business, after all, you're not running your marketing campaign for fun. Some key indicators show if your plan is moving in the right direction:

These pieces of data can lead you to understand which posts are working in your favor and which types of content you should avoid publishing. The deeper you analyze your progress the more valuable pieces of information you will obtain to increase the effectiveness of your marketing. 

Let's say your analysis shows that you have a lot of likes on Instagram but your Facebook posts lead to higher website traffic. Since your brand benefits more from website traffic than Instagram likes, you could decide to focus more on Facebook users and utilize the fact that these followers are more likely to visit your page.

Since keeping track of all the data, especially across multiple platforms, is not an easy task when you also must run an entire business with limited resources, it's not a bad idea to use social media management tools. With a single software that keeps track of all your social media profiles, you can manage your campaign much easier.

Conclusion

As we can see, a successful social media marketing plan rests on thinking through each step of the way. It's important to create a set of activities that will allow you to improve your strategy once you launch your campaign. The digital marketing dynamics often lead to shifts in trends and audience behavior, influencing the flow and success rate of your endeavor. For this reason, the use of marketing software and any other type of help is essential for keeping in touch with the changes and development of contingency plans in case the things go south. 

We would love to advise you on how to get started. Feel free to contact us for a FREE strategy call or join our Social Media Gids Community to follow ongoing (online) trainings, receive tons of support, discuss and find solutions for industry related issues, share information and strategies.

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  • Blogger: Isabell Gaylord
  • Journalist at Essay Expert
  • Isabell Gaylord is a journalist and an essay expert from the US currently working for Ultius reviews. In her free time, she enjoys meeting people who inspire her, practicing yoga and walking around the city. Isabell is fond of writing. Meet her on Twitter.
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