A new year is a great time to try new marketing strategies. Something you may want to try is social media marketing. You may use social media yourself personally. However, you may not know how to use it to market your product or service.

Here are five tips for building your social media strategy:

1. Find Your Why

Everything you do in marketing must have a purpose. Before creating a social media marketing strategy, ask yourself why you’re doing so and set goals based on your “why.”

Suppose you’re looking to expand your reach. Social media provides the opportunity to share your content with a broader audience than you may typically reach.

2. Consider Your Audience

Your audience on social media includes your followers and their contacts. If you use paid advertising, you can create custom audiences to display ads to. You can segment your audience by age, gender, location, and other attributes. Before doing that, consider your audience and how to reach them best.

One way to do this is by creating a buyer persona or fictional representation of your ideal buyer. This can factor into which social media platforms you choose to use. For example, professionals typically use LinkedIn. Meanwhile, a younger demographic uses Instagram for personal reasons.

3. Choose Your Platforms

Not all social media platforms are built the same. Each has its own purpose and requirements. Twitter is text-based. It has a limit of 280 characters per post. YouTube is entirely comprised of videos. Meanwhile, Instagram is image-based. It allows short videos of around 30 seconds through the “Stories” feature.

The platform you use depends on the nature of your business, the demographics of your customer base, and the content you create. It’s better to use one platform well than having multiple profiles that aren’t well-maintained. For example, a photographer would do better with Instagram than a Twitter account.

4. Create The Right Content

Social media has made creating content easier than ever before. The type of content you can create ranges from simple text posts on Twitter to entire photo galleries on Facebook. These types of content allow you to showcase your products and services to a broader audience.

For example, a chef could have an Instagram account with photos of signature dishes. Meanwhile, if you sell tools, you could create a YouTube video tutorial on using your products. More visual content is better as people tend to gravitate towards images.

People also tend to watch videos on social media. So much so that around ¾ of all internet traffic comes from videos. Regardless of what type of content you create, however, you must consistently represent your brand and voice through it.

5. Look at the Data

If you have an existing social media presence, now might be a good time to look at the data and adjust your strategy accordingly. The data you should look at when doing this consists of four key performance indicators or KPIs. These include reach, engagement, retention, and return on investment or ROI.

Here’s a summary of these metrics and what they mean to your social media strategy:

Reach

Reach focuses on the number of followers you have and how they interact with your brand. One metric of reach is called a mention. This is how many times users across social media platforms mention your brand. This can be especially helpful when your goals are around brand awareness.

Engagement

Engagement shows how followers engage with your content. Examples of engagement include “likes” on a Facebook post, comments on an Instagram photo, and “retweeting” or sharing content on Twitter. These actions allow you to interact with followers by responding to comments or other engagements.

These interactions can fuel retention metrics. Customers want to know that the businesses they frequent help them meet their needs. Reviews of your business on Facebook or other platforms can indicate this since customers will share candidly about experiences with your business through these comments.

ROI

These metrics can drive the fourth return on investment, or ROI. Some social media platforms, like Facebook, allow one to sell and purchase items directly on that platform. You, as the retailer, are the one selling these items. As a result, some of your sales may come from Facebook or another similar platform.

Even if you don’t choose to sell products on social media, leads can come from social media posts. If you have a link to an offer on your social media profile, that may attract followers to your online store. Then, they may make a purchase and become a customer. These leads and conversions count as part of those you receive from the offer.

Need Help With Your Social Media Strategy?

Social media has become an important part of our daily lives in recent years. It also provides an opportunity for businesses to market their products and services in new ways.

It can seem daunting to use social media for business, but it doesn’t have to be. If you need help with your social media marketing strategy, contact Links Web Design for a free consultation today.

Links Web Design is a social media marketing agency in Bangor, ME, and Fruitland Park, FL.