Nowadays, a well thought-out and expertly conceived social media strategy is part of a solid marketing mix. Because without social media and especially influencer marketing, nothing works at all anymore. Especially if you want to address Generation Z with your marketing efforts, you need an innovative marketing agency that knows the target group well and knows what makes them tick.
Without a good social media strategy, it’s the same as shooting at sparrows with cannons. How you can develop a good social media strategy and how Adfluencer.de can help you, you can find out here!
Social media strategy – step by step
First of all, it should be noted that the goal of your social media presence should never be pure sales promotion. Doing social media marketing just because everyone is doing it and you think that it will create a new sales channel is counterproductive.
Social media marketing primarily serves the purpose of building a closer relationship with customers – new and potential ones. Trust, brand presence, loyalty etc. are clearly in the foreground. In addition, good social media work also gives you a lot of valuable information about the wishes and needs of the customers, which enables you to adapt your products and services much better. Once a relationship has been established and the customers feel that it is primarily about exchange, information and communication, trust is created, which is then expressed in loyalty and, of course, in consumption.
It should also be clear that there is no universal patent remedy for the social media mix and the appropriate strategy. Every company and every target group is different. It requires a lot of knowledge and above all experience of the marketing experts to tackle the topic for the respective company. The efforts must always be evaluated and corrected if necessary.
Step #1 Determine status quo
- The first thing to do is to determine the status quo:Does the company already have a social media presence? In which channels? Should these be used further? Do the accounts need to be revised? Does a new profile have to be created? Etc.
How does the company communicate otherwise? How should social media channels be integrated into this concept?
What is the competition doing in this area? Is it very active or rather modest in social media? Depending on how strong the competition is, you have to be more or less active yourself.
What resources are available? If you don’t have the time or money for a proper social media campaign, you should rather leave it alone, because social media channels need to be maintained regularly. However, it may be possible to concentrate on just one channel and thus stretch scarce resources.
Step #2 Define target group
You should find out who your target group is and where they are active on the Social Web. This way you can make sure that your website reaches your target group and that you don’t go to all this trouble for nothing.
With whom exactly do you want to enter into dialogue? As soon as you know that, you can determine in the next step in which social media channels this specific target group is primarily active. Generation Z, for example, is particularly fond of YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat – recently also TikTok.
In order to find out where the users you want to address are on the road, you can fall back on empirical values, research on the Internet, view studies, etc. Of course you can also rely on a good influencer marketing agency. In any case, the more you know your target group, the better you can create better content and reach the target group better.
The target group analysis includes aspects like:
Age
Gender
Place of residence
Income
Educational background
By the way, different target groups also have different user behaviour. There are, for example:
Spectators (70%)
This refers to the pure viewers among the users and it is the largest group. They read in blogs, watch videos or inform themselves about products through customer reviews, reviews and forum contributions.
Joiners (59%)
These users maintain a social networking profile and also visit the profiles of others.
Critics (37%)
These users are much more active, because they like to comment a lot and they also like to give product reviews themselves. In some cases they even write reviews of individual products and services themselves.
Conversationalists (33%)
These participants post their own status update or create a post on social networks at least once a week.
Creators (24%)
These are the really creative among the users and are often even influencers themselves. They create their own content in the form of blog posts, websites, videos, podcasts, etc.
collectors (20%)
The users are typically interested in a specific topic and subscribe to newsletters or RSS feeds, make surveys on/for websites with/for or tag content.
Inactives (17%)
As the name clearly states, these are people who are not registered in any network. Maybe there are also some people who have created an account at some point, but do not use it at all and probably have forgotten their password for a long time.
Step #3 Benchmarking
Next, you’ll have to see what your competition is up to in the social media networks. Of course, this is not about copying, but about inspiring. If the competition is doing a good job, you can easily find out how to reach your target group. Conversely, it can also help to see what they are doing wrong and act accordingly.
First of all, it is important that you know who your competition is. So make a list of the three to five most important competitors and see what they do:
On which channels are they active and how heavily are they frequented?
Experience, tact and intuition are important aspects here. For example, it may be that the competition has a proven difficulty in reaching the target group on the channel they use. You can either leave it alone, or try your luck with another strategy and perhaps inspire the target group exactly where they are disappointed by the competition. Or you can choose a completely different channel, where the competition might not be active at all.
What strategy does your competition pursue? The same applies to the strategy: which content is published, where and how often.
How active are the fans of your competition?
Besides the content analysis you can also see how active the fans of your competition are. There are practical tools that calculate the engagement value. This is calculated by the average number of likes, comments and shares per day, divided by the number of fans. This value is much more important than the simple number of fans.
Step #4 Set goals
Anyone who wants to develop a strategy must, of course, first define the goals to be achieved. As already mentioned, the social media marketing strategy should not simply be about increasing sales figures – this will come naturally later on. It is more important to build a lasting relationship with the customers, because social networks are ideal for this. Keywords are here:
Customer loyalty
Reputation
Brand perception
Goals that can be supported by social media, for example, are
Build brand awareness by getting users to recognize the brand and associate the products with it.
Attract new customers by directing traffic to the social media pages or website.
Support customer service by answering questions from prospects or showing them how products work or are used properly.
Communicate with customers/fans by giving them a reason to talk about the brand and encouraging them to make recommendations.
It is best to focus on one primary and one secondary goal at a time to avoid getting bogged down. It is also important to define concrete parameters, such as how many followers should be reached by when. It is important to remain realistic, because unrealistic expectations which are then disappointed are demotivating for all those involved.
#5 Develop content strategy
There are three main components to a successful social media content strategy:
The nature of the content
the date of publication
Frequency of posts
Of course, the decisive factor here is on which social media channels one becomes active at all, because this usually already determines the type of content, e.g:
With Instagram and Pinterest, pure text is of course out of the question and it is absolutely necessary to work with photos or images.
YouTube and TikTok are videos
On platforms like Facebook you can very well post different contents and thus prevent boredom, so for example now and then a video, sometimes just a meaningful photo, an infographics or maybe just an interesting link.
You can offer variety by posting your own and other contents
As for the best time to post, there are numerous studies available. Of course it is important that you know exactly when your specific target group is active. For example, are they nocturnal or early risers?
The posting frequency is as important as the type of content you share. A balance must be struck here so that followers don’t get annoyed by too many posts or feel neglected by too few.
Step #6 Implementation
It is best to start with the channel on which the target group is most strongly represented. If everything is under control here, you can then turn your attention to other channels. By the way, it is a good idea, even if you don’t immediately become active on the channel in question, to create an account with the name so that everything is as consistent as possible in the end, because after all, the company and the brand should be coherently recognizable on all channels.
It is essential to create an editorial calendar in which it is recorded when what is to be posted on which channel. You should also take seasonal conditions into account. For example, think of a special Christmas promotion, Valentine’s Day, Easter, holiday season, etc.
Think about a theme world that fits the product or service and write down all options after brainstorming.
And finally, plan the resources.
Step #7 Controlling
Since all targets have been set in advance and key figures have been defined accordingly, the success of the campaign can then be measured. So make regular analyses and adjust further activities and measures accordingly. Especially in social media and influencer marketing, there are often very unique and spontaneous dynamics and it is essential to remain flexible and constantly realign the course, react to trends and possibly redirect resources from one measure or channel to another.
The advantages of a good social media and influencer marketing agency
You have probably seen for yourself in the course of this article that there is a lot behind a successful social media marketing strategy and influencer marketing. That’s why most companies decided to hire a specialized agency such as Adfluencer.de for social media marketing.
The professionals have the experience and resources to design a successful strategy and then implement it successfully.
The best way is to contact us and we will explain to you how we can help you with words and deeds. Because Social Media and Influencer Marketing is our passion!