10 Step Social Media Marketing Checklist For Businesses
The potential of social media is becoming more evident and apparent to advertisers worldwide. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Google might seem complicated to navigate but once you know how they tick, figuring out how to advertise on these platforms is easy. It is no secret that businesses are honing in on the advantages of social media, as 80% of marketers now look to social media for brand awareness.
Social media is your calling to find customers if you want to expand your business effectively. The average internet user spends 28% of their time on social media. It seems like the perfect opportunity to target this audience for marketing your products or services.
While the possibilities are endless in the enormous social media environment, finding the right strategy is detrimental to being a successful business on social media. We will explore what you need to help your business flourish on those platforms.
1. Pick the Right Platform or Platforms
To utilize the full potential of social media for your brand, you must narrow down which platform will best suit your goals. Firstly, you need to define the goals of your brand. Once you have that figured out, you can then select what kind of demographic you want to cater to. Each platform will have a different kind of audience.
Big multinational companies like Mcdonald’s and Coca-Cola have the resources to use each platform efficiently. If you are a small company looking to grow, it is recommended that you pick a single platform, to begin with. This would save you a lot of time and money. The easiest way to select the right platform for your business is to research the demographics on each platform and see how well your content would cater to them. We will list down the best possible platforms with the kind of content that best suits them.
This platform is excellent for businesses with online and physical stores that want to target local users through social media ads.
This is a starting point for some businesses due to the platform’s simplicity. The user interaction on this platform makes it a suitable place for customer service.
This platform revolves around visually appealing content. You could find ecommerce stores, influencers and brick and mortar brands.
Networking and business-led conversations or topics are what you would find on this platform. If you operate with the B2B space, this platform would be ideal for you to increase your reach.
2. Strengthen Your Profile
Once you know where your brand needs to be positioned, the next step is to ensure your profile is up to date and emits professionalism. This means you must fill up all the necessary information on any social media platform you choose. When consumers come across your business information, including your website links, company photos and contact information, it gives them a sense of credibility.
An essential tip to remember when setting up your account is always to claim your business’s name and URL. There should be consistency with account handles and URLs on any platform you pick. This is to ensure that there is no confusion among users across social media.
Include images and brand creatives on your profile. These would be some of the first initial elements a consumer would see. The creatives should be of high quality, and you should avoid grainy images as they would come as unprofessional. Be consistent with the profile photo you use for your business page on social media. It’d help users to find your brand easily.
3. Content Strategy
Once your profile is updated, you need to focus on content. The best way to optimize your content is to create a strategy. This would guide you to post engaging content that would attract consumers. The goal your business should be striving for on social media would be to keep increasing engagement on your posts and followers on your accounts.
You can choose the format of your social content, including videos, contests, promotion photos, infographics, etc. Every platform would need to have a different content strategy.
For example, if you want to educate your audience on a specific topic, try to publish educational content like blogs, facts and references. If you want to post fun content, try experimenting with memes. A content strategy would also set the tone for the content you want to put, whether you want to be wholly professional, quirky or comedic.
4. Content Calendar
We move to another crucial element of the content: when you should post your content. A content calendar would assist you in planning when and where you will post your content. It becomes easier to stay consistent with your users, which is vital to being relevant on social media. The time you save when your content is planned can be utilized to focus on other aspects of your business.
Some advertisers use third-party apps or programs like Hootsuite to create a content calendar. You can pick the time and the place you want the content uploaded, and the program’s automated system will ensure it is posted per your schedule.
5. Content Bank
Now you know when to post your content and have automated it. It’s time to create a content bank for your brand. The purpose of a content bank is to consolidate all your resources in terms of content material in one place. This would save you time and effort in having to rush around when you need to tweak your content calendar or strategy. This bank would have old and new content, making comparing the two for a benchmark easier.
6. User Interactions
Businesses usually interact with consumers through comments and mentions they receive on their social media accounts. The key to these interactions is to respond to them in a timely fashion.
Social media is all about being social. When users see that a brand cares about their customer’s opinions or feedback, it instills trust between the brand and customers. Answer consumers’ queries and thank them for reaching out. The more your brand interacts with users on social media, the stronger your brand loyalty will be. Always remember to be positive and polite.
7. Social Media Advertising
Now that you have figured out your content and know how to interact with your audience, the next step is to promote your brand and spread brand awareness. Organic posts are usually the way brands reach users on social media, but most social media platforms offer paid advertising features. Brands utilize this feature to increase their user reach and foster a social media presence.
These ads appear on your screen as sponsored posts in your feeds. The most significant benefit of using paid advertising is a precise targeting mechanism. For example, you can target specific demographics based on age, gender, occupation, location, etc. Using these targeting metrics, you can curate the perfect audience who would react positively to it. Paid advertising aims to find leads that can be converted into sales for your business.
8. Social Media Metrics & Analytics
Another vital element to being a successful social media business is monitoring your metrics. Once you start a social media campaign for your brand, you will get daily data on how it performs. Most platforms have analytics tools that help you track your performance. Regularly checking the data and tweaking the content accordingly is detrimental to growing your social media presence.
Metrics like views, clicks, and impressions are what you usually monitor, while some platforms have tabs like Insights that take you directly to the performance data. For example, Facebook and Instagram usually have this kind of tab you can access anytime. Once you see what results are being driven or lacking, you can boost the ones that do not meet your expectations and see how it fares. However, it does require a lot of patience and experimenting to get the right rhythm to which consumers will react positively.
9. Social Media Audit
Whether you are beginning your social media journey or are well versed in that environment, you must conduct social media audits. It is suggested that you perform these audits periodically throughout the year. The focus of these audits is to highlight any inconsistencies or neglects that your social media accounts might have. This should be performed across all your channels.
While you conduct these audits, you can review how well your social media campaigns did.
You could change benchmarks and goals depending on the results, improving your strategy overall. Usually, these audits are performed by marketing experts who know what to look for, but you could always do it yourself if you know what you are looking for. Compare your initial objectives with your current ones and see how much you have improved or slipped. This is necessary to stay ahead of your competition.
10. Your Competition
Observing your competition is crucial when you enter the social media space for the first time or are well established. While you do not have to feel threatened by another brand, you can learn from them. Even the mistake they make can be observed, so you do not follow suit. Every business wants to improve and have good competition in your industry. This can be the positive push you need to create quality content.
Social media has enormous potential for any business; navigating it effectively can be challenging. These steps should guide you towards having a positive impact on social media and also on your consumers’ lives. Keep experimenting with your content and always cater to what your audience wants.
