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

There is no doubt of many people during lockdown have discovered with many DO YOURSELF (DIY) projects, it can be cooking, baking, taking care of their fitness, making your own sanitizer, beauty and whatnot. A query like how to make a homemade mask is also on the rise. Many of us now are finding ourselves doing things that would have been never anticipated, and that too in just months due to the coronavirus.

Search Interests for “how to query” have spiked drastically globally, in the past few months. While with the Coronavirus turbulence people are mostly nurturing new skills and hobbies, we should not forget that right now the reality is that a normal course of life and business is no more a regularity.

All organizations are touched by this pandemic. If we talk about search trends and consumer’s behavior towards the brand, it has also been shifted drastically, In these times we as marketers play a major role in the success of brands. Especially marketer concern is to now look that at how we can make our brands to be more helpful to their consumers.

In these difficult times, it is very important that your brands should still exist in the mind of your audience and find new opportunities whether your brand is less affected, worst affected, or not at all affected. So the question is how brands can engage?

Below are the 4 behaviors of how people are searching and how brands can help them:

1. Assembling critical information and content consumer require
This requires understanding what people are looking for and providing clear and specific information about when, how, where, and when to get the things they need.
For e.g., if you are into retail/grocery business or food supply and relevant to your brand People try to find grocery stores online who are doing home deliveries as they wish to restrict their visits to grocery stores, as nowadays they are more concern about their health and safety, and as a marketer you know people are showing more interest in searching for things like free home delivery, fresh delivery, quick delivery (Also google trends shows these queries are on the rise) with this opportunity you can provide the information like delivery time, how can they take your order on call, or if you have an app you can promote the same through social media in your area.

A classic e.g. is of Ninjacart brand – It is an India based fresh produce supply chain. It is a start-up and it is offering subsidized rates on the provisioned items like fruits and vegetables to old-age homes, orphanages, and lower economic areas in India.
If you are in a fitness business or beauty salon, you can help people with lots of tips and help with useful information.

If you are an industry that is worst affected like travel you can train travel agents or travel employees on the various products through webinars. Knowledge is never wasted, so what if for some time your business is at a halt, knowledge will always be useful once things normalize. Brands should try to utilize time with upskilling, once the things resume there can be better productivity.

Tips through which as a brand you help your consumer with critical information and content
a) Acknowledge them with the new reality – Now it is easy to get their orders delivered they no more need to visit the store.
b) Give people credible, detailed, and current scenario information about how you are operating at these time – Providing more hygiene is at your topmost priority, Delivery methods, detailed guidelines of how they can order and so on.
c) Regularly keep your consumers updated about the communications through the website, blogs, social media channels even you can update the information on Google maps/google my business.
d) During these times of emergency be flexible with your consumers regarding the cancellations, refunds and provide the best customer services – This can be a long-term impact for your brand, you the consumer will always remember you for good deeds in critical times.

2. Discovering new potentials consumers and nurturing relationships
In the current scenario we are physically apart but not virtually. Thanks to the so diverse options we have to connect through the virtual world. Related to your industry you can identify what people are discovering about and you can nurture the relationships. For instance, on YouTube, you can provide your consumers “with me videos” (According to Google trends which have risen in searches on YouTube). Where people are filming with doing ordinary tasks like cleaning, cooking, also keeping themselves fit through yoga or workouts. Many celebrities and film making production companies artists are already involved in this type of activity, especially in India.

Even Singers releasing their playback songs video and creating YouTube channels. Recently on 14th May 2020, Asha Bhosle Ji released her YouTube channel – “Asha Bhosle Official”. Many spiritual leaders like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Ji are conducting free Meditations and there are millions of people who connect with them throughout the globe. You can also think of how your brand can nurture the relationship with your consumers.

Another classic e.g. is “Study with me” – again this is the popular search term which is most searched on YouTube, especially in countries like Singapore, Hongkong, and South Korea.
Educational institutes can provide good learning videos, for e.g. nowadays people understand digital marketing, and hence the demand to learn digital marketing courses is in demand. Digital marketing institutes can help the brand to really people understand about digital marketing and also provide some important webinars on the same to boost their interest and really discover the new potentials.

Tips through which you can connect with communities and connections
a) Look out for the innovative ways through which you can connect with your consumers locally and globally.
b) Deliberate whether your brand can help with a role play in either creating or enhancing shared experiences virtually.

3) Praising everyday heroes who are serving us
We know many news channels are informing us of how our heroes are working for us endangering their lives that too day and night. It can be healthcare staff like doctors, nurses, frontline cashiers, or delivery people who are serving us even when everything is locked down.

For instance, you can take e.g. of HDFC bank releasing the official video “Hum Haar Nahi Maanenge”. They dedicated this song to the superheroes which depict strength, togetherness, and hope. You can view the video on – https://youtu.be/2VqBlZZ4H6E
They got a good response with 20 million+ views in 10 days, India is standing strong and saying “Hum Haar Nahi Maanenge”

Similarly, Hongkong HSBSC bank which ran the display on buildings giving thanks to unsung heroes. You can watch on – https://youtu.be/8wzp0KmWtYU

Tips through which you can praise the heroes
a) Look for people who are helping citizens in such critical times, find ways to support and celebrate them.
b) Show some gratitude and applaud, also consider some heroes who are in your locality or employees.

4. Taking care of others and yourself too.
As you know with this unpredicted situation people often experience boredom, anxiety, and uncertainty, help people to take care of their physiological needs too. You can provide various hobby tips like painting, music to conduct virtual games, quizzes, competitions which they can participate by collaborating them through webinar platforms, and watch parties. Show people that you care about their wellbeing.

Even if the situation normalizes it is difficult that people will immediately visit malls or movie theatres. You can conduct virtual events.

For e.g. the famous Viviana Mall in Mumbai is conducting various events like music nights, game nights

At another instance – Book my show conducting free events for entertainment and hobbies for an instance you can find Shamak Davar free different style of dance classes session on Instagram

HDFC bank also engaging their consumers with FIN-Gage campaigns where they are having many DIY short 3 min videos, competition, games, even they are giving away the prizes to the winners.

Tips for how brands can help the consumer to enrich their lives
a). With advanced technologies, you can have virtual collaboration all around the world.

Conclusion – We shall overcome, but still normal will not be as normal as previously it used to be, we have to find an alternative and life should move on. Connecting through Digital medium is the best way