How to Make A Social Media Marketing Strategy, in As Little as 14 Steps?
Social Media Marketing is the lifeblood of early and repeats traffic to your affiliate marketing blog. It gives you a semi-captive audience long before your e-mail marketing list grows large enough to be a real force. By joining industry groups on social media sites alone, and working on your brand image and profile pages you can expedite your journey from new voice to industry expert.
In the early days of marketing a blog, you have to focus on getting brand images such as your blog name, your name, and your graphical logo out on the web in front of as many eyes as possible in your niche. Keep in mind you are not building a Walmart of brands but instead a small niche department inside a larger group of shoppers when you choose a sub-niche.
A Sub-Niche allows you to focus the brand message and attack appropriate groups that will bring readers to your posts.
Here are the 14 Steps I wrote down to help you get the most out of social media marketing for your blog.
In as little as 14 small to large movements we are going to build your social influence and position you as a go-to voice in your industry.
1. Clearly define goals:
Determine the specific objectives you want to achieve through your social media marketing efforts. Are you building brand recognition? If so how, same with readership, subscribers, sales quota, increasing trust scores, getting feedback, understanding your market better, and increasing conversion rates across all metrics,
2. Target audience analysis:
Understand your target audience’s demographics, interests, and behaviors to effectively tailor your content and messaging. We can not talk enough about your customer avatar which is a fictional image of real people you can write content for. By knowing these things about your ideal buyers you can find the questions they ask during research and write content that answers those demands and often offers product solutions that pay you a commission.
3. Content Strategy:
Plan and create relevant and engaging content that aligns with your brand and resonates with your audience. This is a big brother to #6 and numbers 10 and 11. See to resonate best you will need to monitor statistics and see what is getting comments, feedback, and results.
One of my biggest mistakes some 19 years back was assuming that my niche in online business was not visual. For nearly a decade I shied away from adding related images and learning more about video. I am still weak at my video production skills but you will find me using imagery and tools like Canva a lot more and my conversion numbers are looking up because of it.
4. Platform selection:
Identify the most relevant social media platforms where your target audience is active, and focus your efforts on those platforms. A Business to Business site may perform better on LinkedIn and Bizpreneur than Facebook and Twitter while a site based like ours does well in all four markets plus on our own site Kiosk Social.
If your audience is book reviews or pets you may look golden in forums instead of social sites. I know fishing sites perform best on related content, as do gardening-related contents which are both very visually oriented.
5. Brand consistency:
Maintain a consistent brand voice, visual identity, and messaging across all social media channels to reinforce your brand image.
One of the first steps in setting up my blogs these days is to look at every aspect of logo and brand creation. From tag lines to a graphic logo, you need to sum up who you are quickly. The images are not the only thing though. Your message needs to be consistent and your energy high. Don’t try to be everywhere, if you can’t do well everywhere.
6. Social listening:
Monitor conversations and mentions about your brand or industry to gain insights, address customer concerns, and identify trends or opportunities.
A 2021 Search of resources for Social monitoring offered the following 5 sites as great social analytics sites for growing brands.
- Hootsuite Insights: Hootsuite Insights is a social media listening and monitoring tool that allows you to track and analyze conversations about your brand across various social media platforms.
- Brand24: Brand24 is a social listening tool that helps you monitor mentions, track hashtags, and get real-time insights about your brand’s online reputation.
- Mention: Mention is a comprehensive social media monitoring tool that allows you to track brand mentions, hashtags, and competitors across social media platforms, blogs, forums, and news sites.
- Sprout Social: Sprout Social offers social listening features that help you monitor brand mentions, industry keywords, and competitor activity, allowing you to gather valuable insights and engage with your audience.
- Talkwalker: Talkwalker is a social media analytics and listening platform that provides real-time monitoring, sentiment analysis, and competitive intelligence across various social media channels, online news, blogs, and forums.
Note: Please keep in mind that the availability and features of these tools may have changed since my last listings update in September 2021. It’s always recommended to research and evaluate different options to find the best social listening tool that suits your specific needs. I have used Sprout Social and it more than meets my demands.
7. Influencer partnerships:
Collaborate with influencers or industry leaders who have a solid following and align with your brand values to amplify your message and reach new audiences.
By performing tasks like guest posting, being interviewed on industry podcasts, and doing collaborations like webinars and videos you can gain trust from both viewers and experts alike. The more places you can get your name out without losing sleep or sanity the better, and reciprocal agreements will have experts lending their voice to your audience as well as driving subscriber rates through the roof. I call this leveraging other people’s content and it is golden.
8. Paid advertising:
Consider utilizing paid ads on social media platforms to enhance your reach, target specific demographics, and drive desired actions.
Advertising is the method to use for getting eyes on your brand and marketing content. Keep in mind that Advertising grows recognition and Marketing tells your story. Use ads to push content that introduces you to a new audience over sales pitch ads while brand building.
9. Community engagement:
Actively engage with your audience by responding to comments, messages, and feedback promptly and authentically. Engagement works both ways though. I always say that Social Media Is Selfish because not one person on this planet is there to not get their ideas and opinions noticed. We all need the ego to be stoked occasionally and those who engage other people’s content often find that their engagement numbers climb at the same rate.
Just think, every comment you leave gives a name link back to your profile which links to your content.
10. Analytics and metrics:
Track key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of your social media strategy, such as engagement rate, reach, conversions, and customer sentiment. More than one tool is often needed for the whole picture but the time spent is well worth it.
11. A/B testing:
Experiment with different content formats, headlines, visuals, and posting times to optimize your social media efforts based on data-driven insights. While this step is more for your landing pages which often collect leads or e-mail subscriptions before showing off your blog or product reviews, the process is educational and can make you a better content and copywriter as well.
12. Crisis management plan:
Prepare a plan to handle potential social media crises, including monitoring and responding to negative feedback or criticism effectively. Social can blow up in your face. Some people live to bully and get under your skin. Be prepared for those trolls and your missteps. Calmly correct bad events and don’t feed the troll through emboldened arguments.
13. Cross-promotion:
Integrate your social media efforts with other marketing channels, such as your website, email newsletters, or offline campaigns, to maximize brand visibility. Much like the process of Influencer Partnerships, you can collaborate with other publications including in some cases writing a regular syndicated column for news and industry publications.
14. Regular evaluation and adaptation:
Evaluate your social media strategy’s performance, learn from the data, and adapt your approach based on changing trends and audience preferences. TEST, TEST, Re-TEST, and TEST AGAIN!
14 Steps to a Powerful Social Media Marketing Strategy Summary
Imagining a bright future from the efforts of today is not hard, imagining doing the work seems to be a stalling point for many. Social Media Marketing is a great part of the process, it can take years off the content distribution end of this business and is a fast path to research and higher conversions through understanding your readers. A Powerful Social Media Marketing Strategy is always an asset that makes the work part an easy pill to swallow.
Currently, social media is one of the most important parts of most people who spend a lot of time in it, as a result, the effectiveness of these platforms has also increased. I have been watching tutorials about social media marketing for a long time and this article is something like a great summary of all of them. I highly recommend you read this article, it was very useful for me.
I have used social media for research and brand reach for close to 20 years now and you can not run a highly successful brand without it.
One of my first mistakes was wanting to appear on all social media. The task became cumbersome, and I was less productive. It is why I like your fourth point – select relevant social media platforms for your audience. That way, you will be able to concentrate and meet the needs of your target audience. I advise you appear on a maximum of two social media platforms.
How are you doing my friend? I agree, spreading too thin is a recipie for a weaker brand presence. You get reach but no depth.
Wow, you have given a lot for me to think about on the social media marketing front, up until now I’ve basically just put a link on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter when I do a post. But according to your article – which I’m sure is correct – there’s a lot more to consider in the whole world of social media marketing!
The problem is finding the time to follow through – but the steps you mentioned in the article seem like they are logical and would probably be a big help. Thanks!
If your kid has a baseball game you find the time but you also need that same dedication for success.