Throughout this article, I will walk you through three phases of developing a successful social media marketing strategy to increase brand awareness, followers, and revenue. Your social media strategy should consider three steps: audience, brand, and campaign.

What Is a Social Media Marketing Strategy?

As I began utilizing social media marketing, I spent hours taking photos, writing captions, and making videos to promote my small aromatherapy business on social media. However, after one year of consistent posting, our Instagram followers were at most 5K_ from which at least 4K followed us because we followed them.

Yet, our posts’ engagement and content interaction were minor, and not more than 1% to 2% turned into conversions and actual sales on our website. But what was wrong? Why couldn’t we make it? After years of experience in digital ad social media marketing, the answer is clear: Not having a solid social media marketing strategy.

Definition of Social Media Strategy

According to Digital Marketing Institute, a social media strategy is a plan that specifies your social media objectives, techniques for achieving them, and metrics for measuring achievement. This strategy should align with your overall business goals and brand identity.

A robust social media strategy will let you know who is your target audience, how to reach, engage and attract them, and eventually, how to turn them into paying customers. It is a guide and pathway for you to know your content marketing strategy, what brand tone and voice to use, and what type of campaigns to run.

I was unsuccessful at the beginning of my business because I needed to target the right audience, create compelling content for them, and collaborate with the right influencers. Here I’ll explain how to avoid my mistakes on social media and find people who will love your products. But before that, let me tell you why social media marketing should be part of your digital marketing strategy.

Why Is Social Media Marketing Important?

In building Rivalift, I have spoken with almost 100 small business owners. Understanding their social media marketing problems and how I could assist them was essential. Many of them were neglecting the power of social media. They had Instagram, Tiktok, and Facebook accounts, but they needed to leverage their power. The engagement and content interaction on their social arrangements were minimal. Thus, they viewed social media as a non-valued tool, so they instead focused on traditional marketing strategies such as online and offline networking.

In the age of ad blocking and inbound marketing, social media plays an even more crucial role in integrating marketing efforts. As technology enables businesses to respond more quickly and capitalize on the opportunities it creates, change is happening faster than ever. As social animals, social media meets one of our most basic needs: connecting with others. With that being said, and also because 45 percent of the world’s population is on social media, it is naive to think that our business can avoid using social media marketing.

The Relationship Between Brands and Audience on Social Media

In his book _ Social Media strategy, a practical guide to social media marketing and customer engagement_ Julie Atherton states: “Today, we’re experiencing a digital world with social media at the epicenter of a new reality where virtual personal impressions, possessions, and choices are curated on social media profiles and truly becoming the digital self-extension.”

Because of the breadth and complexity of social media platforms, they provide possibilities for your whole business plan that may help your company grow more effectively. If businesses do not treat social as an integral element of their marketing activity, the consumer will have a detached experience. People meet, play, speak about their lives and careers, and share their thoughts and dreams on social media. Understanding the function of social in people’s life is critical_ it is far more extensive and more profound than just an advertising platform.

Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses

As a serial entrepreneur with several businesses, I can assure you that every small business must embed social media marketing in its overall strategy. Other digital marketing channels, such as search engines and email marketing, do not have the potential to create a personal connection between your audience and your brand. Especially for small businesses with access to a limited marketing budget, social can boost their revenue hugely.

It is also critical to build a story and a distinct brand presence on social media, which will boost the exposure and accessibility of your brand for customers and larger consumer audiences. In addition, because social is an intimate, conversational environment, it provides a unique opportunity for consumers to interact with companies more humanely than traditional advertising. As a result, it may significantly influence establishing and preserving your brand’s identity, generating trust, and developing a solid brand-consumer relationship.

In summary, social media allows companies to communicate honest, true stories about their ideas and values. The connection becomes more substantial and loyal when their audience shares those beliefs and values.

Steps of Social Media Marketing Strategy

I will depend heavily on Julie’s Social Media Strategy book in this section. He suggests every social media strategy should contain the marketing ABC components: audience, brand, and campaign.

Audience In Social Media Marketing

Like any other marketing approach, a social media marketing plan begins with audience research. One of the reasons my early entrepreneurship efforts at social media marketing were unsuccessful was that I needed to target the correct demographic.

Social media allows a company to reach closer to its customers or potential customers by giving unique and essential insights into their behavior, opinions, and how they feel about you or by utilizing sophisticated, precise targeting tactics to guarantee they see you.

When developing your plan, you must comprehend your brand’s or business’s social life concerning your commercial short and long-term objectives. For instance, who is your target audience, where do they interact on social media, and how and what do they use?

Brand In Social Media Marketing

Brands are not created in a single location. The world’s most recognizable brands may be seen in various settings, some digital and some physical. As companies increasingly act as cultural, intentional ecosystems, and the customer experience becomes the most important measure, social media guarantees that your brand is present wherever your target audience spends their time.

Given that you have little control over what people say about you on social media, ensuring you have a strong brand presence will complement your overall brand and reputation-building activities and give a narrative to drive good interactions.

The mission of your brand and the passion inside your brand define why you exist. It distinguishes you from your competition and serves as the foundation for your brand’s beliefs and actions, emphasizing why the brand exists above what it offers. You convey these values through content marketing.

Content Marketing

This is a type of marketing in which things are not explicitly sold. Instead, it draws customers to the brand by giving them relevant, helpful, and timely information that adds value to their lives by meeting a specific need. Entrainment, education, assistance, inspiration, or knowledge can add value.

Organic social media works with other inbound channels to improve brand exposure, engagement, and loyalty. Organic social media, which has a tight association with search, may significantly influence search engine optimization if your content marketing approach is authorized in one integrated method.

Content pillars, customer value exchange, and your hero, hub, and help approach are all defined using integrated content marketing approaches.

Campaigns in Social Media Marketing

All companies aim to motivate their customers, consumers, or supporters to take action. That action might be to buy, visit, give, volunteer, promote, or engage in a variety of other activities, and these acts are critical to the company’s long-term success.

Your campaign will drive these actions; some will be made expressly for and on social media, but remember that every activity is now social. Every interaction a person has with your brand has the potential to be videotaped, photographed, remarked on, and shared, improving or detracting from the brand experience and driving or diverting the actions you want them to do.

At the Campaign Level, you can begin to consider particular marketing goals, such as supporting a product launch or a new shop opening, driving sales, or integrating social with an event to increase its effect. Companies provide the option of adding extra social channels expressly for that campaign or incorporating more diverse activities into the primary channels chosen at the brand level.

Don’t let coolness blind you in your campaigns. Every company is attempting to be excellent. Make a name for yourself. Concentrate on influencing non-customers perceptions. Change people’s perceptions of your competition and urge them to buy from you.

Social Media Marketing Agency

As an entrepreneur, I know it isn’t easy to juggle different priorities and responsibilities. Social media marketing can take a lot of time for business owners. Suppose you also struggle with managing your time but want to increase your audience on social media. In that case, you can trust Rivalift experts to develop personalized social media strategies that increase your revenue between 10% to 30%. You can check our services page to see our pricing and plans.