Social media is a powerful tool to help businesses increase brand awareness and drive return on investment (ROI). It has become an essential tool for businesses to connect and engage with their target audience and build revenue.
However, creating profiles on various social media platforms and posting randomly will not achieve these goals. Businesses must have a clear and well-defined social media strategy to achieve the growth they desire.
In this article, we will explore the steps involved in developing a social media strategy that drives brand awareness and ROI.
Table of Contents
What is Social Media Strategy?
A social media strategy is a plan of action for a business or organisation to optimise its use of social media platforms to achieve its marketing and communication goals. This may include tactics for engagement such as creating and sharing content, engaging with customers and followers, and running social media advertising campaigns, as well as tactics for measuring the effectiveness of the campaigns and making improvements.
The strategy will typically outline specific objectives, target audiences, content, and metrics for measuring the success of a brand or organisation’s presence on social media.
An effective social media strategy will consider audiences’ unique characteristics on different social media platforms. It will involve regularly creating and sharing high-quality, relatable, and engaging content that aligns with the business’s overall marketing and communications objectives. Also, a social media strategy will include tactics for managing and responding to customer comments and feedback, as well as metrics for measuring the success of the overall strategy.
Benefits of Having A Social Media Strategy
According to our definition, a social media strategy is a plan for how a business or individual will use social media platforms to achieve specific business or communication goals. There are many potential benefits of having a social media strategy, including the following:
-
Increased brand awareness and recognition
A strong and well-executed social media strategy can help increase brand awareness by making it easy for customers to find and engage with your business online. Businesses can build trust and credibility with their target audience by consistently posting relevant and interesting content.
-
Improved customer engagement
Social media allows businesses to interact with customers in real-time, allowing for faster feedback and more personal interactions. By engaging with your audience, businesses can build deeper connections with customers and gain valuable insights into their customer’s needs, pain points, and preferences.
-
Increased website traffic
By including links to a website in social media posts, a business with a strong social media strategy can drive more traffic to its website, leading to increased sales, conversions, and revenue. By providing valuable content, businesses can create more opportunities for users to find their websites and learn more about their products and services.
-
Cost-effective marketing
Social media marketing can be highly cost-effective compared to traditional forms of marketing, making it a great way for businesses to reach large audiences without the need for expensive advertising campaigns. In addition, social media platforms offer a range of tools and analytics that can help businesses measure the success of their campaigns and optimise their efforts for maximum ROI.
-
Greater competitive advantage
Businesses with a strong social media strategy can stay ahead of their competitors by understanding the most recent trends. They can understand market behaviors and customer preferences, having access to unique resources or technologies, having a cost advantage, and providing superior customer service.
Read Also: 5 Effective Business Growth Strategies for Small Businesses in Nigeria
Developing A Social Media Strategy that Drives Brand Awareness & ROI
As a business owner, your social media platforms will only be off with an effective strategy. So, think of a strategy as a guide to where your business is headed.
Now that you understand the meaning and benefits of a social media strategy let’s move to the steps you need to create one.
Here are six steps to creating a successful social media strategy:
-
Define your goals
Having a defined goal gives your strategy a meaning
Before creating content or engaging with your audience on social media, you must know your goal. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate leads, or build customer relationships? Clearly defining your goals will help you create a strategy tailored to achieving them.
-
Identify and research your target audience
Once you know your goal, the next step is to identify and understand your target audience. Who are the people you want to reach with your social media efforts? What are their needs and preferences? The best way you can achieve this is to conduct market research.
Understanding your audience will help you create content and campaigns that resonate and are most effective with them and choose the platforms that they’re most active on.
-
Choose the right social platforms
Choose the right social media platform
Choosing the right social media platforms to market your business or brand depends on various factors, including your target audience, the type of content you plan to share, and your marketing goals. It’s worth noting that only some platforms are a good fit for some brands.
Analyse your target audience demographics and find out which platforms they are most active on, then focus your efforts on those platforms.
Read Also: How To Boost Your Site Traffic With Social Media
-
Create a content calendar
Example of a content calendar
Having a content calendar will help you stay organised and ensure that you’re consistently creating and sharing content that aligns with your goals and resonates with your target audience. This can be a simple spreadsheet that outlines the topics you will cover each week or month, the platforms you will use to share them when you plan to post them, and the person responsible for creating and publishing them.
-
Engage with your audience
Social media is more than just sharing your message with people. It is about engaging with your audience and building relationships. Respond to comments and messages, participate in social media conversations relevant to your brand, and use social listening tools to track mentions of your brand and industry keywords.
-
Measure and adjust
The final step in developing a social media strategy that drives brand awareness and ROI is to measure the results of your efforts and make adjustments as needed. Use analytics tools to track your progress against your goals, identify which types of content and tactics are most effective, and make changes to your strategy as needed to continue improving results.
Conclusion
Developing a social media strategy that drives brand awareness and ROI requires careful planning, consistent execution, and a willingness to adjust and improve as you learn what works and what doesn’t.
Although social media can be a powerful tool for driving brand awareness and ROI, businesses need to have a clear and well-defined strategy to be effective. Following the steps outlined in this article, businesses can develop a social media strategy that will help them connect with their target audience, drives brand awareness, improves customer engagement, and generates a positive return on investment.
It’s important to note that a social media strategy must be integrated with the company’s overall marketing strategy and align with it. It will also require regular monitoring, testing and tweaking based on the audience’s behaviour, ongoing trends, and engagement.
Perhaps this post inspires you. Kindly follow us on Twitter to keep track of more interesting posts. You can also join the Insight Whatsapp community to speak about the impact of social media on businesses.
About Author
-
Alimot Akinsanya is an experienced content writer. She creates high-quality, compelling, engaging, relatable, and research-backed long-form content for individuals and businesses. She believes in the power of words to communicate effectively with audiences.
She is a devoted lover of personal development, mental health, self-awareness, and social inclusion.
Latest entries
CareerMay 2, 20246 Digital Skills That Can Make Students Instantly Employable in 2024
Business InsightsSeptember 5, 2023Managing Business Risks in Nigeria: Strategies for Sustainability
Business InsightsJuly 10, 2023Business Case Study And Why You Should Care
Business InsightsMay 31, 2023How To Write Prospecting Emails That Get Replies