Ahh, the sweet smell of success. You’ve just landed a new job and the beginning of your new venture beckons. You’ve got a brand new office, a gorgeous work station, and a big smile on your face. It’s now time for you to put into practice all of those new skills you’ve learned over the years and help your new company succeed.
If this sounds like you, then congratulations! You’re in the right place. We’re going to walk you through the entire process of masterminding a successful social media marketing strategy that will bring in the leads you need to succeed.
Set A Goal
One of the first things you should do is set a goal for yourself and your team. Are you aiming to grow your Instagram account to 100,000 followers? Are you looking to increase web traffic to your blog by 10% in the next month? Are you trying to become the go-to source for information on your topic? Whatever it may be, you should have a clear idea of what you’re aiming for and work towards that goal.
Setting a clear goal will also give you a sense of direction. You know what they say: aim for the moon and maybe you’ll hit the stars. Setting a goal for your social media marketing will help you decide what content to produce and when to produce it. If you don’t know where to start, setting a goal will certainly give you a boost of motivation.
Determine The Target Audience
After you’ve set your goal, it’s time to figure out who your ideal buyer is going to be. The first step is to determine your target audience. To do this, simply think about your target customer and what they want, need, and want to have. Are they searching for the cheapest travel insurance policy or looking to grow their business internationally?
The next step is to create buyer personas. A buyer persona is simply a person you’ve identified as being a potential buyer of your product or service. You can find a guide to creating buyer personas here
Once you’ve created your buyer persona, you can determine the type of content your target audience wants and needs. Knowing what content your ideal buyer wants will help you find the right people to target and engage with. For example, if you’re selling travel insurance, you might want to produce content that appeals to the millennial demographic.
Keep in mind that your goal is to influence your target audience to purchase your product or service. So it’s important to tailor your content to fit their needs, not your needs. The more you know about your target audience, the better you can serve them and the more you’ll achieve.
Understand The Value Of E-commerce
The internet has changed all of our lives, including the way we buy and sell. Many people don’t realize how much commerce they do online, so it’s important for you to understand how much your target audience values your product. Take a brief look at e-commerce in the United States alone. In 2016, total retail e-commerce sales were worth about 4.9 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide. That’s a lot of dough!
The implications of e-commerce for your business can be profound. If you’re not equipped to leverage the power of the internet for business purposes, you’ll be left in the dust. It’s time to jump on the e-commerce band wagon and start creating content to drive traffic to your online shop.
Determine The Keywords You’ll Need
The words you use to find content on the internet can have a profound effect on your SEO rankings and how often your content shows up in search results. SEO is a form of internet marketing that can boost your content’s visibility on the web. You’ll want to focus on long-tail keywords rather than shorter keywords when doing your research. Long-tail keywords are often quite difficult to rank for, so you’ll want to make sure you come up with the right keywords first.
Once you’ve got your list of keywords, it’s time to determine how you’re going to incorporate them into your content. Are you going to use them individually or in combination?
For example, if you’re trying to sell travel insurance and your keywords are “cheap travel insurance” and “budget travel insurance”, you might want to combine the two and use the keyword “budget travel insurance”. Incorporating keywords directly into the text of your content is a great way to optimize your content for search.
Create Keyword-Rich Headlines
To grab the attention of your target audience, your content needs to have engaging headings and sub-headings. While the content you produce will be important, so will your headlines. In fact, a study from HubSpot Blogging found that only 17% of visitors read the entire article, but 55% of those visitors viewed the headline. To increase the chances of your headline going viral, try using provocative or shocking words or phrases. To create an immersive experience for your visitors, try using “whiz” or “tip” words. For example, “How to Master the Art of Social Media Marketing” would be a great headline for a blog post. It’s attention grabbing, but not so much that it’s likely to be skimmed over.
Decide On The Structure Of Your Blog Post
With all of that talk of heads and sub-headings, you might be wondering what a blog post looks like. A blog post consists of several key components including a headline, a short description of the content, and potentially some sort of resource or offer at the end. Once you’ve got your post’s structure in mind, you can begin to lay out the content. Start with your headline and the first few lines of text, and then work your way down. If you want, you can add an image or two to grab your readers’ attention. Don’t worry too much about making it perfect first time around. As long as you’ve got a rough idea of what the post is going to look like, you can return later and edit it to fit the perfect format. Better to have something that’s close to perfect than something that’s completely unreadable due to formatting issues.
Determine The Outlets And Channels
Now that you have a general idea of the format your post is going to take, it’s time to start figuring out where you’re going to publish it. Simply put, wherever you decide to publish it, you need to consider the audience. Do you want to post on your company’s website? Are you going to write a review and link to the product you’re reviewing? Are you going to put out a press release and see if journalists are interested in covering your story?
When choosing where to publish your content, you need to think about whether or not the location is right for your target audience. If you want to target millennials, you might want to publish on a blog platform like Blogger or Medium. If you want to target corporate executives, you might want to opt for a platform geared towards that audience, like LinkedIn or Bloomberg Businessweek.
Decide On The Tone Of Your Blog Post
Whatever the topic of your blog post might be, you need to decide how you’re going to approach it. Are you going to have fun and play around with marketing terms and phrases? Or does your attitude towards marketing resemble that of a school teacher, where you want to use big words and complex phrases?
To create a memorable first impression, your blog post’s tone should match that of a well-written, school-teacher-like article. If you want to sound like a successful entrepreneur who’s knowledgeable about marketing, go with the approach of a Richard Simmons. Choose your tone based on what will make the most impact on your target audience. If you’ve got a bit of a playful side, go with that. If you’ve got a fairly serious side, go with that too.