Due to a steady rise of online activities, the early 90s gave birth to content writing marketing.
Nearly a decade later, with the emergence of social media, content writing became rife in connecting businesses with their target market. And as industries continue to explore advanced forms of digitized strategies, companies forge neck and neck to outdo each other.
Social media marketing has now become one of the most preferred methods for brand promotion and visibility.
There are several ways in which to encourage a fulfilling relationship with your audience through social media. From responding to your follower’s inquiries quickly, giving exceptional personalized solutions to others, all of them can fuel your brand’s online presence.
However, successful social media marketing does not come overnight. It requires prior planning and solid strategies to reap maximum benefits, and in any case, content is still an important ingredient.
Often many just see social media as an extra step after content creation, to just share the published post or article in their account. But in any case, not every piece of content is social media material.
If you are looking to build your social media as the cornerstone of your business, social media content planning is a must, and here are 7 steps and strategies that can guide you.
But before we start…
Note that you do not have to sporadically post your content on different platforms to appeal to your audience.
Instead, the way to your online victory is by creating explicit goals collaborated with quality content, and then distribute it through the right channels to your audience.
And when it comes to picking your social media platforms, here’s a splendid guide by Accion.
It is important to understand that no particular social media content strategy guarantees instant success.
While one tactic may work perfectly for one business or platform, a similar approach by others may flop on the face.
In this post, we will take you through an effective journey of developing your social media content plan to enhance your chances of standing out in the competition, starting with…
1. Set Your S.M.A.R.T Goals
The initial step to any effective social media strategy is to set out your goals. It is almost impossible to gauge your ROI (return on investment) and overall success without clear objectives.
The easiest route to them is by classifying your goals into 5 helpful ways; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
By using this approach in your social media content creation, it forces you to deep dive into the keystone actions or best content topics that may lead to positive business results.
To find the best actions, often you need to first identify with your brand values as you research what your audience needs. Then, concentrate on developing content that coordinates with the set goals.
Remember that your main purpose here is to convert audiences into leads, and your leads down the lead funnel or landing page.
With social media, you need to ensure that your content is alluring enough to capture your audience’s attention.
There are several ways on how you can evaluate your social media content. First, you need to understand your platform and identify any existing competition.
Then, focus on a particular section of the market and not everyone.
Note that your business may not succeed without knowing who your target audiences are. Because the most effective way to reach your audience is to find the busiest social media platforms with a ready audience.
So take time to craft out your buyer personas and get into as many details as possible.
Next, create quality content that your target audience might be interested.
For an easier transition, make your posts mobile friendly and integrate them with multimedia. Most importantly, remain consistent both in posting and creation of premium content.
2. Transform Your Social Media Ideas into Actions
Defining the social media goals for an organization is not always an easy feat. According to Sprout’s recent study, nearly 50% of marketers struggle when aligning their organization’s goals to the social media campaigns.
The main reason behind this is that there is no solid social media content strategy that works perfectly for everyone.
In reality, even the best social-savvy organizations succeed through different types of marketing strategies and social media goals.
It can be a very daunting process for a marketer to steer the brand to the audience without set goals. That calls for a day to day planning to focus on satisfying your organization’s needs and the clients along the way.
However, just this idea can often stump people and kill your social media strategy young. So though you may have a lot of ideas or lack of, to achieve social media success, you need regular postings.
So take action, and plan it all out on your calendar – both the great content ideas or those still in the works. The idea is you want to pen them down and keep it all scheduled.
Understand that social media content creation is an experiment, and you need to take massive action and regular scheduling. That’s why set your massive actions and schedule seven content a week instead of perfecting that one content for the month.
From the various social media channels, you need to find the best option that suits your brand and easily reach your target audience.
At the same time, posting too much or too little may affect the performance of your site. As much as your audience would appreciate reading new content from you, an overindulgence may appear more like a bother.
Based on a Hubspot recent analysis, an utmost of two postings per day is enough for any organization. While some channels require regular postings than others, it is important to limit them even once a day, especially when you have less than 10,000 fans. For a popular channel like Facebook, you can post at least thrice in a week.
3. Audit your Social Media Channels
Auditing your social media channels refers to evaluating the business metrics to review your business growth opportunities.
Also, it guides an organization on the best tactics that guarantee an enhanced social presence.
There are several ways that you can audit your social media channels.
Some of them include tracking down your social media accounts, recognizing your best posts, calculating your ROI, identifying the audience for each channel, and others.
Remember that auditing also guides marketers on refocusing their business goals to social media marketing. With an assessment, you may understand how your business is fairing, what strategies need to change, and the urgent priorities.
Additionally, it helps to gauge the capability of the team when handling different social media channels.
Note that your channels may not bear fruits if you fail to optimize them well. Successful optimization involves creating and maximizing the social media plan to connect with the right target audience.
Currently, there is a thin line between SEO marketing and social media marketing. It is important to note that an avalanche of Facebook or Instagram likes may not guarantee an instant boost to SEO rankings, but it is a great pedestal to your business success. So, it is essential to balance the performance of these two giants in your SEO journey.
Bear in mind that links are another aspect you should focus on for your SEO success. If you manage to create content that pulls your audience to a discussion, it signifies credibility, authority, and reliability. If your audience manages to effectively share your site links on different platforms, it may play a great role in improving your ranking.
Do not forget to work on your bio sections. A well-done bio helps to initiate a solid relationship with your audience from the beginning.
Another effective way to improve your online presence is to use superior quality images. The good thing is that you may manage to sell your brand and influence your audience to share with other people through it.
4. Plan your Social Content
Remember about the goals we mentioned in the first step? Now is the time to align them with your audit results. For instance, if one of the goals was to increase your page followers, identify the posts that triggered more following.
Check on the choice of words and the language on best performing posts. If you perform less satisfying on other posts, probably, there is something you did wrong in the process. In most cases, when a marketer strays away from a relevant topic or uses vulgar language, it may affect the brand’s credibility.
The best solution here is to stick to a unique approach, different from your rivals, and develop content that positively markets your brand. Also, compare your social media content examples on different platforms.
While you may focus on performing well in all channels, note that some may perform better than others. So, it is important to allocate your time and resources to the platforms that serve you best.
Concentrate on keyword research to create content that increases traffic. The main purpose of keyword research is to pinpoint phrases or words that people use to search for a product or service on search engines.
When it comes to choosing keywords for your content, focus on getting high search volume options in collaboration with high tails and related keywords. At BIQ Intelligence, we focus on matching your keywords with the popular questions that the audience asks.
That way, it becomes easier for you to create social media content examples that give your target audience a solution. If you manage to satisfy your audience’s needs, it easier to increase traffic to the site and rank better on search pages.
5. Develop a Content Calendar for Your Social Media Content Strategy
You’ve already discovered your primary goals and the content that works perfectly for your brand in this stage. That way, it is easier to come up with a social media content calendar. Calendars help marketers to visualize ideas and then systematize them in a way that executes a strategy better. In other words, it is a focal point of your content writing.
To get the best out of your content calendar, you need to repurpose your writing and focus on posting it on diverse social media platforms. Based on your audit report, focus on the topics that attract more traffic to your site.
Sometimes, you may create amazing content but post it at the wrong time giving unsatisfactory results.
Thus, it would help if you used your calendar to determine the best time to post your content.
Several tools in the market help organizations to compile data from the page followers and then report on when to expect maximum reach to the audience. This will also involve a communal approach with other people within your organization or department to decide the most excellent time to post your work.
Content calendars also make it possible for the team to work together on social media posts with others across your organization.
Remember that it is never that complicated to introduce your content to the audience using calendars. As a result, start small with simple blog posts as you progress into creating great landing pages, infographics, landing pages, customer testimonials to others.
Most importantly, embrace the 5:3:2 content rule. This is a ratio that guides marketers on how to plan every ten posts they create. The rule states that one needs to post five contents from other sites that are significant to your target audience. Three translates to posting your creation, while two refers to fun-filled content that gives a human touch and a personalized approach.
It is important to note that, as much as you spend time creating winning content, only a small audience will convert out of it. Nonetheless, if it manages to push your prospects to the next level in the sales funnel, that’s promising enough.
One effective way to achieve this is to align your social messages on converting your audience. When you combine that with the consistent posting of quality content, the conversion process may take lesser time.
6. Promote and Issue out your Content
Social media content strategy goes beyond preparing and publishing your work. The main focus is on identifying reliable platforms to distribute your content to a wider reach.
There are various strategies that you need to incorporate in your distribution process. For instance, you may encourage a question and answer session on your blog’s comments segment or social media. If you are an active blogger, you can also share links or buttons on your content for your audience to distribute to other locations.
When other people come across your content and share it, that’s exceptional social proof for your organization. An effective social media content strategy will also involve you to respond to the section of the audience that shares your content. It does not cost much to appreciate them with a social media message or a free report.
Focus on understanding the best time to distribute your content with maximum benefits. Identifying the time that your audience is most active takes time. Note that different use various tactics to reach their audience. For instance, on Instagram or Twitter, you can use hashtags to distribute your content.
On other platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, you can join interrelated groups within your industry. Another important strategy is to network with other related content writers and bloggers. Note that if you create time to share other people’s content, they may also return the favor. For that reason, you may easily manage to share valuable content about your brand and help to increase your conversion rate.
7. Determine Results and Improve on Social Media Marketing
In this final step, you are required to assess the results of your work from the beginning. Proper monitoring of your progress is ideal in coming with a long time strategy. It is important to keep detailed metrics that will improve your content as you optimize it in the process.
UTM codes are quite efficient when it comes to making consequential metrics. These are simple codes that you can connect to an URL to track a source, promotion idea, or medium. Google Analytics may give information about the searcher, campaign strategy, or the post that directed them to your post from the information collected.
If possible, strive to analyze your content at least every month to monitor the progress. In the process, evaluate how various content in your site performed. Also, check on the benefits they brought forth to your organization.
Confirm if the outcome contributed to the goals mentioned in step one. Some of the important metrics to gauge include engagements, awareness, and ROI. Here, you check how often your audience goes through your content, reactions, clicks, or comments that your content generates, and referrals or conversions from other sites.
At this level, you still need to relate your analytics with the goals mentioned before. Using them as a guideline can assist you in effectively modifying your strategies along the way.
One effective approach is the use of A/B testing. This experiment compares the performance of two or several variations of a similar strategy. The main advantage of using this approach is that it demonstrates impending changes while allowing data-driven conclusions, resulting in positive impacts.
Parting Shot
Setting up a social media content strategy is an unending cycle in an organization. However, it should not be a devastating or taxing experience. Instead, focus on creating social media content strategies on a well-calculated approach.
The simplest way to it is to use the ideas mentioned above. Are you ready to flaunt your presence on social media? Go for it now!
