Your 9-Step Guide to Social Media Marketing for Businesses
If you’re part of the 74% that hasn’t developed a social media marketing strategy yet, it’s never too late to get started! You can develop an impactful social media strategy for your business that will help you engage your audience, earn new leads, and drive conversions.
On this page, we’re going to cover nine steps for creating a successful social media marketing business strategy.
If you run or manage a B2B business, check out our video on crafting a B2B social media strategy.
For help getting started with social media marketing for businesses, call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about creating your custom social media campaign.
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Step 1: Set social media business goals
The first step to creating a successful social media marketing strategy is setting goals. Whenever you run any kind of digital marketing campaign, you must set goals to ensure that your campaign is on the right track.
Setting goals will help guide your decisions for your social strategy and allow you to create a campaign that works for your business and audience.
Your goals should be specific and achievable. You don’t want to set generic goals like “increase traffic” or “boost engagement.” There’s no way for you to accurately measure these goals to see if you’ve achieved them.
Instead, focus on goals that are specific and numerically driven. Goals like “Increase website traffic by 30%” and “Increase conversions by 20%” are specific and measurable — and they’ll set your team up for success.
So, what types of goals can you set?
You can set numerous business goals for your social media marketing campaign, including:
- Increase website traffic
- Earn conversions
- Boost brand awareness or establish a brand identity
- Increase engagement on posts
You can use these basic goals and expand upon them to fit your business’s needs.
If you want to know how to do social media marketing, start by setting goals for your campaigns. It will help set you on the right foot towards a successful social media campaign.
Step 2: Establish your company’s target audience on social media
Once you have your campaign goals set, the next step is to establish your target audience. Your target audience encompasses the people you want to reach with your campaign.
To establish your target audience for business-to-business (B2B) social media marketing or business-to-consumer (B2C) social media marketing, you must think about who is most likely to buy from your company. You can look to your current customers to get a general sense of who you can target on social media.
You can define your audience by numerous qualifications, including:
- Gender
- Age
- Occupation
- Income
- Family Status
- Location
- Interests/Hobbies
- Buying Habits
These categories can help you further delve into your target audience and understand them better. When you know who you’re trying to target, you know where to target them. That brings us to the next step.
Step 3: Know which social platforms will help you reach your target audience
Once you know who you’re targeting, the next step is to find where to target them. You want to invest in social media platforms that allow your business to reach your target audience.
Certain demographics tend to frequent specific social media platforms the most. You can look at Pew Research Center’s charts on who is most likely to be on specific social sites.
With this information, you can see where certain demographics, ages, or ethnicities are most likely to be social. This information helps you establish which platforms are likely to help you reach your audience.
The most common platforms used by companies are:
You can use any one of these platforms, or a combination of them, to reach your audience and engage them.
When you know which platform(s) works best for your business, you can start developing a social media marketing strategy for your business.
Step 4: Create a variety of social media content
Once you choose your platform(s), you can start focusing on the content you’ll create on those platforms. To keep your audience engaged and interested in your page, you’ll want to create a variety of content that keeps them coming back to your page.
The type of content you can produce will depend upon the platform. Some platforms offer a plethora of content options, while others are hyper-specific. Let’s take a look at the types of content you can post on the five most popular platforms:
- Facebook: Photos, videos, polls, links to content, 360 photos, and status updates
- Twitter: PHotos, videos, polls, links to content, and status updates
- Instagram: Photos and videos
- Pinterest: Photos, videos, and links to your website within posts
- LinkedIn: Photos, videos, status updates, and links to content
- YouTube: Videos and links to website
As you can see, each platform offers different types of content you can post on their platform. It’s important to understand the type of content you can post before you develop your strategy. Having this understanding will allow you to create a better social strategy for reaching your audience.
When you plan your content strategy, plan to use a variety of each content type. If you’re using Facebook as your primary social platform, you don’t want to only post photos or give status updates. If you can use multiple formats of content, you’ll want to take advantage of that feature.
By creating a variety of content, you’ll build a better social media marketing strategy for your business.
Step 5: Determine how often your business will post on social media
Once you know the type of content you will post, the next step is to establish the frequency. To have an effective social media strategy, you must post content often.
Your audience is following other businesses, brands, friends, family, and more. It’s easy for their timelines to become full, which also means it’s easy to miss your business. You must post frequently to increase the chances of your audience seeing your content and engaging with it.
So, how often should you post on social media?
The answer is dependent on two factors: the platform and your audience. Some platforms, like Facebook, work better with only a few posts a day, because too many posts can easily clog a user’s feed. Platforms like Twitter, on the other hand, are better for posting multiple times a day because of the nature of the newsfeed.
Aside from the platform, you’ll also want to consider your audience. You don’t want to post too frequently and overwhelm your audience, but you also don’t want to post so infrequently that you don’t make an impression on your audience. It’s important to find a frequency that works for your audience.
Your posting frequency will be trial and error for some time until you can figure out the right frequency for both your platform and your audience. By establishing your frequency, you’ll know how often to post content for your audience.
Step 6: Create a social content calendar for your business
When you’re posting content frequently, it’s difficult to keep track of everything you’re posting. If you’re utilizing multiple platforms, it can make your process even more complicated. By creating a social content calendar, you’ll help your business stay organized with your social campaigns.
Content calendars are great resources for helping you stay organized. You can see when you’re going to publish content and where you’re publishing it. This helps you keep track of all your content.
Additionally, you can create a more cohesive strategy by using a content calendar. A social media calendar allows you to plan your content out and schedule it for the appropriate days.
This calendar allows you to plan out your social strategy in advance so you can create a better campaign. It also prevents you from posting too much on one day or posting the wrong content.
If you want to be successful with your social media strategy for your business, invest in a content calendar.
Step 7: Use social media management tools
In addition to your social media content calendar, you’ll also want to use social media management tools. These social tools enable you to organize your campaign and post your content ahead of time.
When you create a social strategy, you don’t want to take time out of your day to post different pieces of content. It becomes tedious and takes away from other projects. Instead, you can use social media management tools to help you post all of your content in advance.
Social media management tools, like Hootsuite or Buffer, allow you to post content weeks in advance. Not only can you knock out all your content at once, but you can also see the entirety of your campaign to ensure it’s cohesive and relevant.
By investing in social management tools, you’ll create a cohesive campaign that works for your business.
Step 8: Maximize your company’s reach with paid social ads
Aside from organic posting, there’s also the option to run paid advertisements. Paid ads are a valuable part of social media. These ads help you gain brand exposure, earn new leads, and gain valuable conversions for your business.
ORGANIC OR PAID SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING?
SEE WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY
Social media ads allow you to reach people that aren’t following your business. These ads appear in users’ newsfeed to help them find your business. It’s a valuable strategy for gaining new leads and getting users to buy your products.
With social media ads, you can target people more precisely. You can target people based on demographic information, browsing habits, and more. These social ads will appear seamlessly in your audience’s newsfeed, which makes them more likely to engage with it.
When you’re setting up your social media marketing strategy for your business, you’ll want to integrate social advertising into your plan. It’s a crucial component for having success with your social strategy.
Step 9: Monitor and optimize your social media campaigns
Whenever you run a social campaign, you want to ensure that it is successful and driving results for your business. To garner success, you must monitor your campaigns to ensure they’re driving positive results.
You can monitor numerous metrics for your campaign, including:
- Reach
- Clicks
- Engagement (comments, likes, etc.)
- Hashtag performance
- Organic likes
- Paid likes
These metrics provide you with insight into your campaign’s effectiveness. When you monitor your metrics, you can see where your campaign succeeds. You’ll also get insight into where you can improve your social campaign to drive better results.
By continually monitoring and optimizing your campaigns, you’ll drive better social media results for your business.
Build your social media marketing business strategy today!
Social media is a powerful tool for you to reach new leads interested in your business. By finding the right platforms and optimizing your strategy, you’ll help your business create a more impactful campaign that allows you to grow your business.
At WebFX, we have a team of over 500 experts that will bring their knowledge and expertise to your campaign. We’ll help you create a social media marketing business strategy that drives engagement, website traffic, and conversions. Just look at our 1000+ client testimonials that attest to the awesome work we do for them!
If you’re ready to start growing your business through social media, contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about your custom social media business plan.
