Social media marketing strategy for 2021
Looking to fine-tune your 2021 social media marketing strategy?
Good! Now is the ideal opportunity to make it happen and put 2020 behind us for good.
Sure, doing so may appear overwhelming, considering how competitive and sophisticated social media has become.
But what about the reality?
A concise plan will assist your brand in tackling its objectives with a feeling of purpose.
That is why we created a complete guide on developing a social media marketing strategy from the ground up.
Whether you’re new to social media or simply want to double-check your goals for 2021, this guide has you covered.
1. Set goals that make sense for your business
Let’s get started with a simple question:
“What, after all, do you want from social media?
The formulation of your social media strategy should begin with your goals.
Maybe you want to create a community or a more devoted following.
Perhaps you want your social media accounts to generate more income this year.
In any case, your goals will determine your content approach as well as how much time and energy you will need to devote to your campaigns.
Sample social media goals for 2021 and beyond
What is most important is that you create realistic social media goals.
By the way, the word “realistic” is capitalized.
We propose focusing on modest goals that will help you to expand your social activities realistically and economically.
The following are some examples of goals that businesses of all sizes and kinds can pursue.
Increase brand awareness.
This entails publicizing your name.
Avoid merely releasing promotional messaging to build real and long-lasting brand awareness.
Instead, prioritize material that highlights your personality and beliefs.
Generate leads and sales.
Followers will not make social purchases by accident, whether online or in-store.
For example, are you concerned with informing customers about new goods and promotions?
Grow your brand’s audience
Bringing in new followers entails figuring out how to present your brand to those who haven’t heard of you before.
Growing your audience also entails identifying the most important debates about your company and industry.
It’s virtually hard to sift through your social networks if you’re not watching or listening for certain keywords, phrases, or hashtags.
Keeping an eye on these conversations allows you to reach your target demographic far more quickly.
Boost community engagement.
Investigate strategies to pique the interest of your present followers.
Experimenting with messaging and content is essential.
Does your brand, for example, encourage user-generated content and hashtags?
Even something as basic as asking a question might boost your likelihood of engagement.
Customers may be your most ardent supporters, but only if you give them something to do.
Drive traffic to your site.
It’s not too difficult. If you’re determined to generate leads or visitors to your website, social media can help.
Keeping an eye on conversions and URL clicks, whether through promotional posts or social advertisements.
May help you better calculate your ROI from social media.
Any combination of these objectives is permissible, and it may also help you better identify which networks to target.
When in doubt, make your social media marketing plan basic rather than muddled with too many goals that might confuse you.
Choose one or two and stay with them.
2. Take time to research your target audience
Marketers should avoid making assumptions.
And, owing to the abundance of demographic data and social media analytics tools available, you don’t have to.
Much of the information you need to affect your social media marketing plan is already accessible if you know where to search.
In fact, according to a recent poll of 250 corporate leaders, 72 percent use social media as a source of data and insights to guide their company’s business choices.
Remember: different platforms attract different audiences
Consider today’s social media demographics.
These figures directly relate to which networks your company should approach and what sorts of content to produce.
As of 2021, below are several significant takeaways:
• Because of their high-earning user populations, Facebook and YouTube are both ideal venues for advertisements.
• The bulk of Instagram and Tik-Tok users are millennials or Generation Z, demonstrating the power of bright, eye-catching material that radiates personality.
• Women outnumber males on Pinterest, which has the greatest average order value among social consumers.
• LinkedIn has a well-educated user base, making it a hotspot for in-depth, industry-specific material that may be more difficult than what you encounter on Facebook or Twitter.
Don’t overextend yourself. Instead, concentrate on networks where your target audience is already present.
Do your homework on your existing social media audience
Although the demographic information provided above provides insight into each channel, what about your customers?
More research is required before you can establish what your real-world social consumers look like.
That is why many companies utilize a social media dashboard, which can show you who is following you and how they interact with you across all channels.
For example, puts your audience demographics front and center.
It also indicates which social networks are experiencing the greatest activity, assisting you in allocating your time wisely.
Anything mentioned above will eventually have an impact on everything from your marketing messaging to how you handle customer care or social selling.
3. Establish your most important metrics and KPIs
Your social media approach should be data-driven regardless of what you’re offering.
This entails concentrating on the social media indicators that are important.
Rather than focusing on vanity metrics, companies charged with delving into data that directly related to their objectives.
But what metrics are we talking about?
Take a look at the breakdown below:
• Reach. The number of unique users that saw your content referred to as post reach. How far does your material make it into consumers’ feeds?
• Clicks. This is the number of people that have clicked on your content or account. Tracking clicks per campaign are critical for understanding what piques people’s interest or encourages them to buy.
• Engagement. The sum of all social interactions divided by the total number of impressions. This reveals how well your audience views you and their desire to connect with you.
• Hashtag presentation. What were your most frequently used hashtags? Which hashtags most closely linked with your company? Having these answers can help determine the emphasis of your future material.
• Organic and paid likes: These interactions are assigned to paid or organic content in addition to the normal Like count. Given how difficult it is to establish momentum through organic engagement, many companies turn to advertise. Knowing these distinctions can help you budget your ad expenditure as well as the time you put in various formats.
• Sentiment. This is a metric that measures how consumers reacted to your content, brand, or hashtag. Did your latest promotion offend customers? What emotions do people associate with your marketing hashtag? It’s always a good idea to delve deeper and see how people are talking about your business.
A successful social media marketing plan based on data.
Having said that, such figures must be placed in a framework that returns to your original objectives.
4. Create (and curate) engaging social content
There are no surprises here. Any content is the foundation of your social media marketing campaign.
Based on your purpose and brand identity, you should have a solid notion of what to post at this stage.
You’re presumably confident in the networks you’ll cover as well.
But what about your content marketing strategy? Here are some ideas and inspiration to get you started.
The importance of sticking to content themes
You’ve probably seen a post from a certain brand that simply seems like, well, theirs.
A fantastic example is the bright, grandiose photos that give Passion Passport’s Instagram grid a recognized, unified vibe.
Many companies rely on the same content formats and creative touches time and again, from filters to captions and beyond.
These content topics might assist you in being more consistent and determining an appropriate content strategy.
“Which types of content should be part of my 2021 social media marketing strategy?
Here are some social media trends to examine to assist you to narrow down.
The details of what you should be producing and ensure you’re generating new content.
Stories and time-sensitive posts
Stories aren’t going away. Stories-style content is both engaging and can’t-miss, capitalizing on your followers’ FOMO (fear of missing out).
Such material, which appears first in your followers’ feeds by default, might help your brand’s account “jump the queue” and stay fresh in your audience’s thoughts.
Stories are especially useful for taking your fans behind the scenes and personalizing your social feed.
Consider how you may utilize Stories to cover an event or take your followers on a journey without requiring them to leave the confines of the ‘gram.
Short-form video
Social video is exploding, thanks in part to the advent of TikTok and the recent introduction of Instagram Reels.
Because of their strong interaction rates, both long-form and short-form works continue to dominate the social arena across all platforms.
Posts that show off your human side
Personal and approachable content should be a cornerstone of any social media marketing strategy, especially as we (finally) exit COVID-19.
To summarise, don’t be scared to remind your readers of the people behind your postings.
5. Make your social presence as timely as possible
For marketers, time is probably more essential than ever.
Not only are you expected to provide new information regularly.
But you are also expected to be available to your followers at all times.
Customers, on the other hand, cannot always be expected to work on your timetable.
When you’re short on resources or part of a small team, staying on schedule might be difficult.
Let’s have a look at some suggestions for making the most of your time and resources.
Time spent on social media
Post at the best times to engage
Quick question: when does your brand make itself available to connect and communicate with customers?
You could find some proposing posting times late at night, for example.
But what is the point of publishing at the “recommended” time if your brand isn’t there to communicate?
Instead, when you tweet or post, make sure your social media or community managers are present and ready to answer any product inquiries or complaints.
It’s a good idea to research the ideal times to publish on social media.
However, it is also important to participate after posting.
Respond to your customer questions and shout-outs ASAP
Customers demand not simply faster replies from businesses, but also meaningful discussions frequently.
These networking essentials must not be overlooked by your brand.
It requires effort to guarantee that discussions or engagement opportunities do not go unnoticed.
By just being there and conversing with your audience on social media, you may build respect as a brand.
That is why social customer care is so crucial for businesses looking to enhance audience awareness. It all boils down to participation.
Businesses should not leave consumers hanging, whether they are capitalizing on praise or replying to a query.
According to our study, the average response time for a brand is about 10 hours.
Did you know, however, that the majority of people feel businesses should reply to social media messages within four hours?
Designating teams to particular responsibilities may help your workforce function like a well-oiled social media team, whether you have one or 100 employees.
As social algorithms evolve, organic content has a more difficult time reaching the bulk of your target audience.
The last thing you want to do is dismiss those who do interact, therefore missing out on sending more people down your marketing funnel.
Conclusion
This tutorial emphasizes that there are several moving parts to a current social presence.
Having said that, putting yours together doesn’t have to be a chore.
If you create concrete objectives and complete each of the stages outlined above, you will be far ahead of the game when it comes to your social media marketing strategy.
You may contact Nummero, Bangalore’s best digital marketing agency.