Develop social media best practices for a brand in your industry.

How to create a social media marketing strategy.

A social media marketing strategy can be defined as a summary of everything you plan and want to achieve specifically on social media. It is a guide line for you and lets you know if you are meeting your needs, and what isn’t working out well. This can be measured by posts and engagement rates (likes, replies, comments, and sharing).

Firstly, one should implement S.M.A.R.T. Goals. What this stands for is

• Specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Retrievable

• Time-bound

Implementing S.M.A.R.T. Goals is crucial to make sure that you’re staying on track with goals, how to achieve them, and giving yourself a specific time frame with multiple deadlines.

This will allow you to track your metrics, which can lead you to finding out what your consumers/buyers are looking for!

Competition

Researching your competition is the best way to stay on top of new ideas, and trends that are working in your market. With almost every company using social media, use this as a free way to see what they are doing right, and what they are not. That is a similar way to say Competitive Analysis.

After conducting what is and is not working for competitors, try and utilize those techinques to better yours.

The Next Step

Create a CONTENT CALANDER!

Having a content calendar is so important is because, it will bring consistency to your work. In the image provided in this section of the blog, we can see that everything is laid out for three weeks. The content calendar tells us that on the 15th, it is Oktoberfest Zinzinnati and Greenpease day. As well as telling us that Two tweets, five Facebook posts, and one LinkedIn post will be made on that day. Utilizing this from a worker stand point, makes sure you stay on track but, it will also give your clients/consumers consistency in when and where to check for updates.

Track, Test, Evaluate, Adjust, repeat

• Track your data for things such as engagement rates

• Test your work to see if it is properly effective

• Evaluate to see if what you are doing is beneficial

• Adjust your plan to add or change anything that could be improved on

• Repeat whole process to make sure what you have adjusted is working

10 Tactics for social media branding success

1. Usage of video marketing

o According to Cisco, 82% of consumer video traffic will be video this year. Many brands are working to take advantage of this. More than a quarter of brands not using video plan to implement it in 2018.

2. Engage with Consumers

o Consumers love feeling like their voices are being heard, and that they have input with a product/service that they are using.

3. Utilize Click Baiting APPROPRIATLY

o Nobody likes reading a header, just to find out that what they clicked on has nothing to do with that they thought. This will make consumers feel as if they are not being treated fairly, and will ultimately deem your brand as “unreliable.”

4. Advertising!

o According to www.sproutsocial.com Given that content labeled as promotional is being actively demoted or hidden, brands have even more of a reason to start experimenting with ad platforms. Rather than be totally frozen out from the feeds of would-be customers, creative ad types such as carousel ads may very well be your best bet for getting discovered.

5. Repurpose your best content

o This does not mean copy and paste. This means, if something worked out really well the first time, try using that same strategy or approach to your benefit once again!

6. Tag Influencers, Brands and put Hashtags in posts

o Posts with hashtags reach more engagement

o Tagging well knows influencers or brands in your posts is a great way to bring in more attention and exposure. This is due to their already established following if they have been successful.

7. Engage with small influencer

o According to a study done by Izea, people tend to trust smaller influencers more than ones with a massive following.

8. Have brand advocates

o Having a brand advocate is a great way to show people that what you have, works. This is done by someone who loves your brand without being persuaded.

9. Research your audience

o See who your audience is in terms of segmentations (Behavioral, Psychographics, Demographics, Geographic’s)

10. Not everything will be done correctly the first time

o Don’t think that what you’re doing is perfect, and be open to change. By following the guides above, success will come your way if you’re open to it.