About Social Media Marketing:

Social Media has become utmost important digital marketing channel for brands to communicate with their existing audiences and reach to new audiences. It is also has become an integral part for brands to share content, updates, information across social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Whatsapp being widely used and many other social media channels as well. Before diving in depth let us look some data for all these channels

So now with all these varied options available how do we decide that which Social Media channels to choose for our brands, how to succeed with Social Media to be on top notch with so many competitors?

The solution is planning a good Social Media Marketing Strategy for the brand with the right channel mix

What is a Social Media Marketing Strategy?

A social media marketing strategy can be define as a summary of everything you propose to do towards achieving the goals using social media. It involves rigorous planning and analyzing your effort too. It guides your actions and allows you to know whether you’re succeeding or failing. Every posting that is done, a reply, or like, and comment should be driving toward defined goals.

Let’s see how you can create a social media marketing plan in 6 steps :

Step 1: Create social media marketing goals and objectives

The first step to any social media marketing strategy is to determine the objectives and goals that you need to achieve
Having these objectives will also allow you to quickly react when social media campaigns are not meeting your expectations.
If goals are not set, you cannot have any means to gauge your success or prove your social media return on investment (ROI). Most Important thing to take into consideration is that as you write your goals, keep your audiences in mind. Choosing the proper social media goals can make a good impact on your business.

Step 2: Use the S.M.A.R.T. goal framework

When it involves setting social media goals, we recommend using the S.M.A.R.T goal framework—goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Let’s take a glance at each of the five qualities and the way they repose on each other.

Specific Increasing your social media reach, for instance , may be a great goal. But what does that mean, exactly? does one want 50 followers, 500, or 5,000? And on which social network? By having goals that are clear, specific, and not very generic interpretation, you will definitely save on time and energy , and obtain closer to your ultimate goals that you wish to achieve.

Measurable If you cannot measure what you are hoping to achieve , your goal is not specific enough and it likely that it is not really contributing to your business.
Maybe you would like to use social media as a channel for customer service. How will you understand that it’s working or not. A rise in tweets for your brand by your customers? Decreased phone queries and emails over the span of a couple of months? When it involves success, the numbers matter. Hence just do not measure to know you were successful—know how successful you were.

Attainable Have your social accounts contributed to the present particular metric within the past? Use that information to align with your goals that are within your reach. If you have been ready to reach a previously stated goals on, say, Facebook, you know that it can be done. Take the appropriate steps to attain.

Relevant If your goal is to focus on using social media to drive traffic to your website than, say for e.g. staying on top of your Instagram mentions. Ensure that your goal is highly relevant to your business’s success.

Timely Commit to a time-frame to succeed in your goals. By giving yourself a deadline, you will be easily able to less inclined to procrastinate.  This will keep you accountable.

Now let us understand S.M.A.R.T. goal with example:

Let’s say if one of your business goals is to drive more sales for your products —and you are using Instagram to showcase your products—then a simple, S.M.A.R.T. social media goal might look like this:
“We will grow our brands Instagram following by 100 new followers per week.”
Hence the above goal is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Remember, S.M.A.R.T. goals are only truly smart if they present all the five characteristics. If you are missing on the timeliness factor, for example, then it would be impossible to determine how successful a social campaign or strategy really was.

Step 3: Conduct a social media audit

Setting the social media goals and objectives is the first and the foremost step towards crafting a winning social media marketing plan. Next comes an audit part of your existing social channels. This will help you to establish baseline targets, and then set appropriate goals for improvement.

Step 4: Create or improve your social media accounts

Once you have completed with your social media audit, now it is time to work on your online presence. Choose which networks best meet with your social media goals.

Step 5: Gather social media marketing inspiration:

Not very sure that what kind of content and information will get you the most brand engagement? For better vision, you can look to what others in your industry are sharing and use social media listening tools to see how you can distinguish yourself from competitors and appeal to prospects they might be missing.

Step 6: Create a content marketing plan aligned with a social media calendar

Having great content that you can share with your audience will be the most essential part in succeeding at social media. Your social media marketing plan should include a content marketing plan

Your content marketing plan should easily able to cater the answers of the following questions:
1. What are the types of content that you intend to post and promote on social media channels?
2. Who is your target audience for the type of content that you are going to curate?
3. How frequently you will be posting your content?
4. What resources you have that will create the content?
5. What will be the execution plan to promote the content?

Your social media calendar lists the dates and times you intend to publish on social media like Instagram and Facebook posts, tweets, and other content. It is the perfect place to plan all your social media activities—from images and link sharing to blog posts and videos—encompassing both your day-to-day posting and content for social media campaigns.
Create the calendar and then schedule your messaging in advance rather than updating regularly throughout the day.

Ensure that:
• 80% of your posts should inform, educate, and entertain your audiences
• Only 20% of your post should directly promote your brand

Conclusion:
A great Social Media Marketing campaign can help a company build a strong online reputation, increase brand awareness, encourage traffic and sales conversions. Those who do not include a digital marketing strategy before initiating a digital campaign they cannot prosper. Hashtags also plays a major role use them in campaigns regularly. With hashtags, you can: Categorize posts , Grab attention ,Drive conversions , and harness the power of popular topics on social media