What is a social media content strategy? Whether you’re looking to increase sales or simply have a strong online presence, a well designed social media content strategy can help you achieve your goals.
A social media content strategy details everything you hope to perform on social platforms to reach your goals.
For example, if you’re looking to gain followers, you should focus on high quality content that is easily shareable. The more users who see your quality content, the more likely they are to follow. Here are six tips to help you create an effective social media content strategy.
A SMART goal stands for: specific; measurable; achievable; relevant and timely.
These will help you design clear and attainable goals, which will help you achieve your overall social media objectives.
You should refer to these goals throughout the implementation of your social media strategy and update them when they no longer meet one of the SMART parameters.
Remember: your goals don’t always have to relate to revenue! An increase in followers and readers online can increase your reputation as a trusted source, for instance. This will benefit your brand name in the long term – both aesthetically and financially!
Example Goal: Aim to increase followers on Instagram by 10% by March 1st, 2021.
This goal is specific (choosing one social platform only); measurable (did followers increase by 10% from the date the goal was set?); achievable (10%); relevant (Instagram is a popular platform) and timely (a time to reflect has been chosen).
Every well laid plan may need amending over time to reflect new opinions and trends – even the US Constitution has amendments! Social media is no different – did you use TikTok in 2018? It’s now the most downloaded app on the App Store.
However, emerging trends have their pitfalls. You may need to spend more time researching whether this new trend includes your target audience (if it doesn’t, then what’s the point?), which leads us onto…
Knowing who your ideal customer is allows you to target your social media content to their wants and needs. Knowing basic demographics such as age, gender and location are your priority, though learning more about what makes your ideal customer tick is where you’ll find the most valuable data.
You can find many basic demographic stats by using Google Analytics and any tracking pixels you may already have installed, though nothing can match speaking to your current customers and finding out why they chose YOU over a competitor is priceless.
It would also be beneficial to learn more about – who do they trust? Where do they go to find news?
If your ideal customer finds their news via Facebook, you may want to spend more time utilising Facebook technologies and ads to catch your target demographic where they spend their downtime.
Each social media platform has its own algorithm, which dictates what a user is shown on their screens. This means not every person who follows you will see or engage with your posts. In fact, the average organic engagement rate on Facebook is a tiny 0.18%.
By posting consistently, you can use social media algorithms to your advantage. Social media platforms reward timely content with screen time – which should help you reach your objectives.
Did you know you can pay to target exact users who may be interested in your products? By using interest based and lookalike targeting, you can use your ideal customer research to find new potential clients/shoppers.
During this research, you should ensure your website tracking is in excellent condition – there’s no point paying for page views if you don’t know which pages these people have viewed!
Of course, the strategy you design for use today is unlikely to be the most useful in ten months time. By consistently optimising and refining your strategy based on the data gathered from today’s output, you can make sure tomorrows content shines the way it was designed to.
If you need any help with developing a social media content strategy, Tailor-Made Media is here to help. We specialise in developing social media success stories for businesses across the world, including VÖOST, Melitta Professional Coffee Solutions and Yorwaste.
If you’d like to learn more, get in touch with our friendly team today.