Create A Social Media Marketing Strategy in 2021 [16 Easy Steps]

If you are using social media to grow your business online and publishing posts without having a social media marketing strategy then you are just wasting your time, money and energy.

Doing social media marketing is not the same as it used to be a few years back where you can grow your audience and reach just by sharing the posts in groups which is why companies and businesses nowadays are hiring social media marketing agency for this.

If you want to grow your business on social media then there are many things which you need to consider before starting like who your target audience is, can your product make an impact on your social media audience, who your goals are, etc.

Here in this article I am going to explain you how to create your own social media marketing strategy and grow your business through social media channels easily.

If you do not know what social media marketing is then do read our guide on social media marketing which is best for beginners.

Table Of Content

1. What Is Social Media Strategy
2. How To Create A Social Media Marketing Strategy
   • Research About Your Target Audience
   • Competitor Analysis
   • Identify The Social Platforms Where Your Target Audience Is Present
   • Content Planning
   • Create A Social Media Calendar
   • Time To Post On Social Media
   • Do Not Post Same Content
   • Work On Brand Awareness & Brand Image
   • Reply To Comments & Feedbacks
   • Offer Unique Deals and Discounts
   • Create Funny & Unique Ad Campaigns
   • Run Cross Channel Social Media Campaigns
   • Collaborate With Influencers
   • Results
   • Social Media Management Tool
   • Share Your Social Posts
3. Final Words

What Is Social Media Strategy?

A social media strategy is a documented layout of what goals you are looking to achieve through your social media marketing and how you are going to achieve those goals.

The strategy is based on what type of content will be published on your social media handles, which social media platform will be used the most, when to post and what audience to target. These are a few goals which every social media strategy should cover.

Also, you need to craft a different social media strategy for every social media handle because every social channel has its own benefits and advantage which is why a strategy working for 1 social media platform might not work on other in a same manner.

How To Create A Social Media Marketing Strategy With High ROI?

A social media marketing is much more than scheduling your posts and sharing those posts in groups and pages. If you are looking to make your product go viral on social media then you need to think out of the box.

For Example: Look at this viral facebook ad which was created by Pepsi on halloween and how Coca Cola reacted to it.

Below given was the Ad Created By Pepsi

and this is how Coca-Cola reacted to the Pepsi ad

As per sources, this ad by Pepsi got viral within minutes and reached a total of 65 million people, resulting in 24,216 shares in just 7 days.

Here are the 16 points which you should Consider when creating a social media marketing strategy:

1. Research About Who Is Your Target Audience

Every marketing strategy starts with researching about the target audience. Without knowing who your target customer is you can never sell your products or services or make your business something big.

Every product has a different kind of audience which is why researching about the audience is the very first part while creating a social media marketing strategy. If you are not able to play with the mind of your user or create an impact on your user’s mind you can never sell your product to him/her.

Here are a few things which you should be definitely knowing about your target audience:

• Age.
• Gender.
• Demographic Location.
• Interests and a few more.

Always get to know the interest of your fans, followers in terms of what they are looking for and how your product is suitable for them.

Important Point:

Never make assupmtions about your target customers. Always run reach ads on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc to gather data and then analyze the data using the social media analytics tools.

Many businesses or to be specific, around 82% of businesses and brands who are running social media ads do not research well about their target market.

2. Do Proper Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is the next step when you are creating a social media marketing strategy for your brand because without knowing what your competitors are doing, what type of content they are publishing, which platforms they are using the most, what audience are they targeting, you can never outrank them.

By doing competitive analysis you can see what types of ads are bringing more customer engagement on your competitors posts, check their likes and share, interact with those users and offer them your products at a better pricing than your competitors.

You can look for content ideas from your competitors pages and posts easily and create something unique using those ideas.

For more do check our detailed guide on how to do a social media audit like a pro in 2021.

3. Identify The Social Platforms Where Your Target Audience Is Present

It is always advised not to focus on every social media platform for your brand because every social media has its own uniqueness and audience which is why you should focus only on the platform which consists of the audience you are looking for.

Let’s understand through an example, Suppose you are selling customized back covers for iPhones so according to your product your target audience should cover people owning iPhones, should be aged between 15-40 as mature people don’t tend to use customized or funky cases, should be in your demographic location and should have interest in trending, funky, creative stuff.

As per this example you can clearly see that you can find your target audience only on Facebook & Instagram becasue if you are looking to promote your business on LinkedIn or Twitter then you will be wasting your time and money.

Thus, choosing a right social platform for your business is highly important.

4. Start Collecting Ideas and Planning Your Content

Once you are done with competitor analysis, finding your targeted audience and choosing the right platform for your brand, you should start collecting ideas and planning on what type content you should be creating.

For this you need to have a good content strategy which is why businesses even hire copywriting agency for creating content to fulfil their social media goals.

There are many types of content which you can post onyour social channels like text, image, video, gifs, memes, docs, etc and complete your social media goals.

You have to look for ideas and plan your content accordingly.

50% of your social media success depends on the type of content you post for your brand.

You should be well aware of all the trends which are going on the social media and should try to craft something related to that trend by keeping your product as center of attraction.

Brands nowadays have started using meme marketing as memes leaves a direct impact on your potential audience which makes it easy for them to remember about your product and brand for a long period of time.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Tinder India (@tinder_india)

This is what tinder posted on their instagram page when F.R.I.E.N.D.S reunion was trending all across the internet.

So, start planning on what type of content you should be posting on your social media handles and start creating them as content creation takes time.

5. Create A Well Defined Social Media Calendar

Now comes the part of creating a social media calendar so that you won’t find it difficult to see what content you have to post on what date on which platform.

A well defined social media calendar displays all important events which will be coming in a particular month so that you can know about every event in advance and plan your content accordingly.

Also, having a calender gives you an additional benefit over your competitors who don’t have a social media calendar as you can think and plan your content way ahead than what they can do.

Here is a social media calendar template which you can download for social media marketing of your brand.

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6. Best Time To Post On Each Social Media Platform

Your target audience will never be active on facebook, intagram, twitter or on any other social network at the same time so always check when your intended customers are most active on which social network and post at that time only in order to reach to maximum audience and make your post go viral.

You can check the analytics to find the most active hours of your target users and decide the best time to post on social media.

If you want to know the best time to post on facebook in 2021 then do read this detailed guide.

7. Do Not Post Same Content On Every Platform

Keep a note that different platforms has different set of audiences which is why posting same content on every platform may not work for you.

For example: You can post a long textual post on facebook regarding how your product is going to be beneficial for your users but if you want to post the same long post on twitter then it is not possible as twitter has a character limit of 280 characters per post.

Every platform has its own need which is why each platform is unique in its own manner like Instagram is for posting photos, videos while you can post anything type of content like image, video, text on Facebook.

So, your audience on each platform will be looking for a content which suits that platform.

8. Work On Brand Awareness & Brand Image

Make sure to include your brand name in your social media posts, as logo in your post images, as hashtags, etc. You can run campaigns asking your target audiences to share or retweet your post with your brand name hashtag and a random winner will be selected who will be provided with a product or a gift hamper.

In this manner you can create a brand image and get your targeted audience know about your brand effectively. You can even use brand advocates to spread information about your brand and other businesses on via posts and social media messages to new and existing customers on all major social networks.

Working on brand image also means that you have to make sure that no negative marketing campaign is going around about your brand and if there is one you should be ready to handle the comments and queries.

“Users Buy What They See The Most”

Always remember this line because this will always force you to make your business a brand. Around 92% of marketers around the world believe that users tend to buy products from from the brands which they see on regular basis on social media handles or on billboards.

9. Always Reply To Comments & Feedbacks

According to researches done by marketers, the average response time of a brand on comments and queries is close to 9 hours but most brands believes in replying in less than an hour in order to generate user trust and do all possible things to solve the issue (if any) or provide their users with information they are looking for.

Nowadays if a user is not satisfied by your brand’s products or services then they directly comment on your social media pages which is why reverting to your user’s comments is highly important as those comments are visible to everyone and if you are not replying to the comments then it is giving a negative impression about your brand in other users eyes.

Having a good social media reputation is highly important for your brand in 2021.

10. Offer Unique Deals and Discounts Just For Your Social Media Audience

If you want to grow your social media following and audience and offer deals and discounts which are only available on your social media handles or by creating specific landing pages which are only accessible when someone visits via your social content and give them discounts in a manner in which you force your audience to engage with your posts.

This strategy will help you in growing your social media audience, your post engagement and will give you new and genuine customers easily.

This strategy is used by many famous brands to get their brand name hashtag trending on twitter easily.

A hashtag in trending section is surely going to boost your sales and business in a short period of time.

11. Create Funny & Unique Ad Campaigns

Creating ad campaigns which has the potential to go viral on social media channels can give your business a good boost.

There are many types of ads you can create from your ads business manager but always remember to make an ad which is either unique or is related to the thing which is trending on internet at that specific time.

A great example of the same is the Pepsi and Coca Cola ad we showed you above in this article. That ad went viral like crazy and caught the eye of Pepsi’s targeted audience giving a good boost to their sales during those 7 days.

If you can use facebook advertising paid promotion in a correct manner then you can target your ideal customers or niche audience easily and boost your brand identity with valuable data.

12. Run Cross Channel Social Media Campaigns

A Social Media Campaign is something which not every business is using and if you want to grow your business using online marketing to drive website traffic and generate leads then this digital marketing tactic can be a big boon for your marketing goals.

You can run cross channel campaigns on all social channels and platforms to cover as much audience as possible.

13. Collaborate With Influencers

Reaching out to influencers for brand promotion is always a good idea. Using this you can reach a bigger audience and even gain the trust of the influencer’s fanbase.

If you want to amplify your engagement then this is probably the most important part of your social media strategy.

14. Results

Always set your social media marketing goals and focus on the results which you have achieved through your social media marketing campaign and results which you still want to achieve.

If one of your social media strategy is not working then do not pull your social media campaigns down but instead change your social media marketing strategies and as we have always said make unique social media strategies for your social media channels.

15. Choosing The Right Social Media Management Tool

You can handle your social strategy by using any social media management tool. Such tools helps you in streamlining all the tasks like how a social media campaign is performing, controlling your social media budget, giving you valuebale insights about your social presence and social accounts using which you can see if you have achieved your results or not.

You can post on all your social accounts from one place by using such tools.

Through social media management tools, you can even customize your own strategy and use the valuable insights of your existing social media campaign to strategize your future campaigns for better results.

Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, etc are a few famous tools which you can use to enhance your social efforts and control all your social sites from one place.

Using these tools you can schedule posts for many brands, control your social feeds, see the number of audience engaged with your posts, check your business and brand sentiments through social listening, etc.

16. Lastly, Share Your Social Posts As Much As Possible

If you want to grow your social media presence, social media followers on every social media channel then the best and the most easiest way to do so is by sharing all your posts in different groups and pages.

3-4 years back sharing of posts used to hold the major part in creating brand awareness on social networks but not now anymore.

Facebook and other social media networks have started putting a ban on profiles who are indulge in extensive sharing. But brands have found a solution for this too. They have started creating fake accounts which looks real to users and have started sharing through those accounts to increase their facebook page likes, youtube channel subscribers, and social followers.

Final Words

Do you wish to make your business a brand on all social networks? Do you want your posts to go viral on the social channels? If yes then you definitely need to create a social media marketing strategy for your brand and above given are some of the best tips on how to create a social media marketing strategy.

Create strategies, evaluate them and test them.

Find what maximises your posts engagement and do it more.

Decide the goals that wish to attain and build a social media marketing plan accordingly. Great results are promised only if your audience can relate to your posts.