Social media marketing is a great way to grow your business, connect with customers and increase brand awareness. But it’s not enough to post random content – you need a structured plan to ensure your social media efforts yield results.
A guide to social content strategy will help you take your growth from social media platforms to the next level in 2023. In this article, you’ll learn about 5 essential steps from start to finish that you should follow to create a stellar plan.
1. Why do you need a good social content strategy?
A guide to social content strategy: 5 essential steps from start to finish
With the right social content strategy in place, you can use social media to drive more traffic to your website, increase sales, and build your brand. A good strategy can also help you focus your social efforts so that you’re not wasting time or resources, which can have a major impact on your business’s bottom line.
The first step in developing a good social content strategy is to determine your goals. You can set overall social media goals or specific content goals that align with your business objectives.
Next, you’ll need to research your target audience and choose the social channels that they use. This can be tricky, especially if you’re a startup or small business that doesn’t have the budget to establish and maintain a presence on every social platform.
Once you’ve done that, it’s important to decide what type of content to create for each channel. This will depend on the intersection of your brand expertise and your customer interests.
For example, a coffee roaster may post lots of visual product features on Instagram, but they’ll probably have more text-based posts and links on Twitter. This makes it important to create a social media calendar so that you’re posting at a consistent rate across all of your social platforms.
2. 5 essential steps of a good social content strategy:
If you want to see a positive return on your social media efforts, it’s important to have a strategy. This will guide your approach, map out exactly what you want to achieve, how you’ll get there, and how you can measure your results efficiently.
A good social content strategy starts with a thorough research process. This will help you understand the needs of your target audience and how to address them in your posts.
Next, it’s a good idea to set goals that align with your brand. These could be brand awareness, social selling (based on a relationship-building approach), or customer service.
It’s also a good idea to create a social content calendar, which will make it easier for you and your team to keep track of the content you’re posting across different social media platforms. This is especially helpful if you want to promote an event or other special occasion.
Once you’ve outlined your goals and created a social content strategy, it’s time to start publishing. There are several great post types you can use to engage your followers, including image and video stories. These are a great way to share a behind-the-scenes look at your company or announce new products and services.
Set goals that align with your brand
A social content strategy isn’t complete without clear and specific goals. These can be anything from increasing brand awareness to driving traffic to your website.
To achieve those goals, you need to know your audience and how they prefer to consume your content. This will help you create a more engaging social media experience and build a loyal following of followers.
When you set your social content strategy, make sure they’re SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). This will help you keep track of your progress and see the overall impact of your efforts.
Another important aspect of setting your goals is to understand how they relate to your business. Is your goal to increase brand awareness, increase traffic to your website, or generate more leads?
Achieving these goals can be tricky, but with a bit of research, you can figure out what works best for your business. Moreover, you’ll be able to gather precise and accurate data that will help you make more informed decisions in the future. You can even use this information to improve your marketing campaigns.
Research target audience
When you’re looking to get the most out of your social content strategy, it’s important to know who you want to target. This can be a difficult task, as it requires research and analysis.
Use data from your website and social media analytics to identify the demographics of your target audience. This information can help you narrow down your target audience and develop better strategies for reaching them.
In addition to identifying your audience, you should also identify their interests. This helps you understand how they behave and what types of products they are interested in.
A great way to do this is by reading reviews from previous customers. These reviews give you a glimpse into the life of your target audience, and you can determine what they value most.
Another way to research your target audience is by looking at the competitors in your industry. This can help you understand what they are doing well and what they could be doing differently.
Once you have a better understanding of your target audience, you can start developing buyer personas. These represent the specific needs and wants of your ideal customer, which can be used for directing your messaging.
Optimize your social media profiles
Getting your business in front of the right audience on social content strategy is essential to growing your brand. It’s where your customers hang out, search for products and discuss their brand experiences. If your brand doesn’t have a strong presence on these platforms, you’re missing out on sales, email signups and more.
As with any marketing campaign, it’s vital to have clear goals and objectives in mind before you begin. These should include a specific measurable goal, such as increasing your brand exposure or driving more leads and conversions.
Once you’ve set your goals, it’s time to start optimizing your social media profiles. This will allow you to connect with your audience better, increase engagement, drive traffic to your website and more.
One of the most important parts of your profile is your bio, which is where you tell people about your business and what makes you unique. You want this to be concise and to describe what you do in a way that attracts visitors from search engines.
You can optimize your bio by including a handful of essential and SEO-friendly keywords, including your name and the words “real estate.” This will help people find you in search engines and encourage them to click through to your social channels.
Create great visual for your posts
If you’re looking to boost your social media templates, you need to incorporate great visuals into your posts. They can help you stand out from the crowd, and increase engagement on your content.
One of the most important things to remember when creating visuals is that you must stay true to your brand. This includes using your logo and avoiding straying from the colours, fonts and other branding elements that define your business.
Another way to ensure your visuals are on-brand is by creating a brand style guide. This will enable your designers to create graphics that are consistent with your brand and look professional.
Taking your social content strategy up a notch by incorporating visuals into your posts isn’t difficult and can substantially increase your social media engagement. Here are five, easy-to-use digital design tools that can help you create great visuals for your posts in no time at all.
Schedule publishing content
When it comes to social media, the frequency and timing of your posts can make or break their success. That’s why it’s important to plan out your content in advance and schedule it at times that are most convenient for you, your audience, and your marketing campaigns.
Luckily, there are a few tools out there that make this part of your social content strategy much easier. These tools all come equipped with an easy-to-use calendar that helps you visualize your upcoming social campaigns so you can stay on track and make changes where necessary.
With Later, it’s easy to schedule your posts from anywhere — whether you’re on the go or on your desktop. All you need to do is connect your social profiles and start scheduling!
Once your posts are scheduled, Later will automatically post them at the time and date you set. Then, it’s up to you to customize them with captions and hashtags, if needed.
In addition to scheduling, Later also has a built-in power editor that lets you customize your posts for each individual network so that they’re optimized for reach and engagement. With a few clicks, you can create and customize posts to fit your brand’s specific goals.
